164 Editors’ Table. [ Feb. 
their appreciation of public favor by increasing the size and im- 
proving the quality of the magazine. There is still room for 
improvement, and it is confidently believed that the present 
volume will surpass any of its predecessors, a belief that seems 
warranted by the reputation of the J. B. Lippincott Company of 
Philadelphia, which has assumed the business management. The 
enterprise shown by this house in other lines is an ample guar- 
antee that in all that pertains to the mechanical execution the 
future volumes will be better than the past. It also ensures a 
wider field of influence and a larger circulation, and this, in turn, 
will result in still further improvements. 
With the present volume there is a change in the editorial 
management. Professor A. S. Packard, to whom is due the 
credit of starting the magazine, and who has labored unceasingly 
for its success for twenty years, retires from the management. 
He has won the thanks of every lover of Natural History, and 
has fully earned the relaxation and release which his retirement 
will give him. Certainly no one has done more for the spread 
of a knowledge of nature than he. His place will be taken by 
Dr. J. S. Kingsley, of Malden, Massachusetts, who needs no in- 
troduction to the readers of this journal, and who prefers to begin 
his editorial labors without further announcement. The depart- 
ment of Entomology will be in the able hands of Professor J. H. 
Comstock, of Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. 
In the years 1878 and 1880 Congress, by concurrent resolution, 
ordered the publication “ by the public printer, with the necessary 
illustrations,” of the third and fourth volumes of the final report 
of the U. S. Geological Survey of the Territories, at that time 
under the direction of Dr. F. V. Hayden. These volumes were 
to contain the reports on the Tertiary and Mesozoic Vertebrata 
of the West, by Professor E. D. Cope, which were to be based on 
materials preserved in the collection of that naturalist, On the 
faith of these resolutions of Congress, Professor Cope undertook 
extensive explorations in all parts of the far West, at his own ex- 
pense, examining various regions from Southern Texas to North- 
ern Montana, and from Kansas to Oregon and California. This 
was necessary, erage oa survey was not in a financial 
— Loca sustain the expenses of the investigations in the field _ 
of v > palzeont og) yand h he had no other collectors of ver- 
