1897.] Editor’s Table. 309 
whether they be printed in the English language or not, if we are to 
maintain a place among civilized nations. It is true that we have 
legislators who object to laws providing bodies for the study of anato- 
my in our medical schools; and perhaps such as these desire to see the 
education of our citizens taxed and suppressed in other ways; but it is 
scarcely possible that a sufficient number of members of our national 
legislature can be found to support the provisions of the Dingley bill, 
which will restrict the development of intelligence in this country to 
the rich, and cut it off from the poor. 
Since the above was written protests from many institutions of learn- 
ing have reached Washington, and it is said have produced some im- 
pression. We hope that this may be true, and that education may be 
fostered by the Dingley bill as well as it has been done under the 
Wilson bill. 
THE present regulations of the Universal Postal Union admit speci- 
mens of Natural History to the mails thereof only at letter rates, five 
cents per half ounce or fraction thereof. 
At the International Congress of Zoology, held at Leyden, Holland, 
in September, 1895, Dr. Chas. Wardell Stiles, official delegate of the 
U. S. Government, offered resolutions, which were subsequently adopted, 
that the Swiss Goverument be requested, through its delegate to the 
Congress of Zoology, to propose to the next International Postal Con- 
gress an amendment to the regulations thereof whereby specimens of 
Natural History shall be carried in the mails of the Universal Postal 
Union at the rates for samples of merchandise; that an appeal should 
be addressed to all the delegates and members of the Congress of Zoology 
to bring this amendment to the notice of their respective governments, 
so that those governments should instruct their delegates to the Postal 
Congress to act favorably upon the same; that copies of these resolu- 
tions be sent by the Secretary of the Congress of Zoology to all govern- 
ments forming part of the Universal Postal Union and which were not 
represented at the Congress of Zoolo 
In accordance with these resolutions, Dr. Stiles suggested to the com- 
mittee of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia in charge 
of the matter of postage on Natural History specimens, that, although 
it is probable that the U. S. Government will vote in favor of this pro- 
posed amendment, seeing that it is the same proposition which the 
United States had presented at the last International Postal Congress 
of Vienna, the cause would be helped by the Academy adopting 
resolutions in favor of this proposed amendment and requesting the 
