1883. ] Scientific News. 115 
preparation: 2000 copies of the fifth report of the U. S. Entomo- 
logical Commission, with the necessary illustrations. This will 
be an enlarged, revised edition of Bulletin No. 7, on forest and 
shade insects, with many additional illustrations. There was also 
ordered for the Department of Agriculture, 1000 copies of a 
Bibliography of Economic Entomology. This is in preparation 
by Mr. B. P. Mann. Of a report on orange insects §C00 copies 
were ordered for the use of the Department of Agriculture. 
The agricultural report, containing a lengthy report of the ento- 
mologist, is nearly ready for distribution. 
— A steamer of 1090 tons, called the A/éatros, has been built 
by government for the use of the U.S. Fish Commission, and is now, 
according to Professor Verrill, being fitted up expressly for deep- 
sea service, for which she will be, in every respect, well adapted, 
and will have the best equipment possible for all such investiga- 
tions, and at all depths. During the past year improvements 
have been made in apparatus for deep-sea explorations, especially 
in deep-sea thermometers. New forms of traps for capturing 
bottom animals have also been devised. The “ trawl-wings,” first 
introduced by the commission last year, have been used the past 
season with great success, bringing up numerous free-swimming 
forms, from close to the bottom, which could not otherwise have 
been taken. The use of steel wire for sounding and of wire-rop 
for dredging has also greatly facilitated the work. : 
_— Henry Chapman, for several years a member of the Califor- 
nia Academy of Sciences, and recently curator of mammals and 
birds in that Institution, died on the 2d of December at the age 
of 55 years, from the effect of poison inhaled or absorbed in the 
course of his business as a taxidermist. Mr. Chapman was an 
enthusiastic naturalist, possessed of great energy and intelligence, 
exceedingly skillful in his special work, an efficient officer and 
member of the Academy, an excellent citizen and estimable in all 
the relations of life. His death is greatly lamented.—X. Eb. 5. 
— The Zehama (Cal.) Tocsin of recent date reports that an oak 
tree was cut down on Shelton’s ranch, near Newville, Colusa 
county, that measured seven feet and four inches through at the 
stump. There was cut and split 400 posts, seven and a half feet 
long, and 75 cords (two-ties to the cord) of two-foot wood, out of 
it. One man worked forty-two days continuously and two men 
ten days. The posts are worth twenty cents apiece, and the wood 
two dollars per cord. It therefore yielded $230 —R. E. C. S. 
— In a letter to Vature, Mr. Gwyn Jeffreys reports that Pro- 
fessor Giglioli made a few hauls with the dredge the past season 
in the Mediterranean in depths ranging from 389 to 857 fathoms. 
A rare and peculiar abyssal fish (Paralepis cuvriert) was procured. 
A new water-bottle was tested, and also Capt. Magnaghi’s n-w 
currentometer, “a most valuable discovery, by means of which 
