1897.] The Cricket as a Thermometer. 971 
The rate of chirp seems to be entirely determined by the 
temperature and this to such a degree that one may easily 
compute the temperature when the number of chirps per min- 
ute is known. 
Thus at 60° F. the rate is 80 per minute. 
At 70° F. the rate is 120 a minute, a change of four chirpsa 
minute for each change of one degree. Below a temperature 
of 50° the cricket has no energy to waste in music and there 
would be but 40 chirps per minute. 
One may express this relation between temperature and 
chirp rate thus. 
Let T. stand for temperature and N, the rate per minute. 
T1504 728: 
For example. What is the temperature when the concert of 
crickets is 100 per minute? 
T.=50-+-"~ =65°. 
EDITOR’S TABLE. 
—One of the most important advances based upon scientific re- 
searches is now under discussion in Boston. The Associated Boards of 
Health of Massachusetts now advocate the licensing of every person 
engaged in the milk business, the licenses only to be granted after the 
thorough inspection of the locations of the business and the sources of 
the supply, even to an examination of the cows. Within the past year 
several severe epidemics of typhoid fever in and near Boston have been 
traced to milk supplies, and the very source of infection found. Only 
a few years ago milk was looked upon as the very safest drink and food 
for mankind, but one has only to consider the facts brought out by 
Prof. W. T. Sedgwick in his report upon milk to the Associated 
Boards of Health to see that we must sooner or later come to some 
governmental supervision in this matter, for as the case now stands in 
our cities, milk is about the most dangerous substance that enters our 
houses, 
—Every one who reads the foreign journals is frequently gratified 
by the praise they accord to our government publications. Typo- 
