O26. > Scientific News, [September, 
allinze from Alaska and California, and Mr. Lester F. Ward enumer- 
ates the plants added to the flora of Washington, from April 1, 
1882, to April 1, 1884. 
—It will be remembered that the Legislature of New York 
made an appropriation of $18,000 for a course of free public in- 
struction at the museum in human and comparative anatomy, 
physiology and zodlogy, etc. The course having already proved 
successful, funds have been promised, as we understand, to en- 
large the museum by the addition of the rotunda planned in the 
original designs for the entire building, by which a lecture hall 
capable of seating 1200 persons may be built, with other rooms 
for the display of collections, The museum authorities have 
greatly strengthened the scientific corps by the appointment of 
Mr. J. A. Allen, the eminent ornithologist, as an assistant in the 
museum, 
— Volume vi of the Monographs of the United States Geologi- 
cal Survey is devoted to Professor W.M. Fontaine’s contributions 
to the knowledge of the older Mesozoic flora of Virginia, bearing 
date of 1883, but only recently distributed. The work is based 
upon the results of several years’ diligent search in the older 
Mesozoic strata of Virginia. It comprises 144 pages of descrip- 
tion, and is illustrated with fifty-four plates, some of them reprints 
of Emmons’ figures of Mesozoic plants from North Carolina. 
— A new method of collecting rhizopods has been practiced by 
Professor H. Blanc, who obtained material from the deep water 
of Lake Geneva by lowering to the bottom a large St. Andrew's 
cross, to the four extremities of which are attached pieces of very 
thick glass. After three or four weeks this is raised to the sur- 
face again, and the fine mud that has collected on the pieces of 
glass removed with a brush. 
— A new gutta-percha plant has been brought to the rfotice of 
the French Academy (Nature, May 21), by E. Heckel, who sug- 
_ gests that as a substitute for the /sonandra gutta Hooker, which 
is threatening to disappear, Butyrospyrum parkii Kotschy, be used, 
which possesses similar properties, and which is widely diffused 
throughout equatorial Africa, between Upper Senegal and the 
Nile basin. ' 
— A new genus of fleas described by W. Schimkewitsch, under 
the name of Vermipsylla alakurt, has been found to infest cattle in 
Turkestan, producing great debilitation, or even death. It was 
observed in the greatest abundance during severe frosts. Origin- 
ally it is nearly black, but when distended becomes white, with 
_ Variegated bands (Zod/. Anzeiger, VIIL, p. 75). : 
= _ —At the May 5th meeting of the London Zodlogical Society, 
Mr. J. Bland Sutton read a paper on hypertrophy and its value in 
evolution, in which he attempted to show that material changes 
