ADVERTISEMENTS. i 
S 
One of the greatest needs of American science 
at the present time is a convenient medium in which 
brief preliminary notices of the results of investigation 
can be published. A considerable length of time of 
necessity elapses between the conclusion of any series 
of observations and their appearance in print, and it 
is of great advantage to the observer, and still more to 
his fellow-workers, to have the results made known as 
soon as possible, thus insuring priority of discovery to 
the one, and allowing the others to keep more perfectly 
posted with what is going on in the scientific world 
around them. 
A preliminary notice should be published a7 once 
to be of value, and hitherto there has been no scientific 
periodical in this country, published at sufficiently brief 
intervals, and open to all investigators, which has 
specially opened its columns to the publication of such 
notices, and has undertaken to make them public with 
as little delay as possible. This the NATURALIST 
proposes to do, and invites the coóperation of all in- 
vestigators in an attempt to inaugurate a department 
- for the prompt and satisfactory publication of prelimi- 
nary notices of the results of scientific investigations. 
