1894.] Editorials. 937 
EDITORIALS. 
We have frequently complained in these columns of the exclusive 
conduct of scientific enterprises by persons not acquainted with the 
sciences and not engaged in their pursuit. We will not enumerate the 
blunders committed by such persons under such circumstances, as 
they have recently come under our observation; but only refer 
now to a question of taste in which some of these well meaning 
persons have immortalized themselves in stone. A new building 
for the use of the collections of the Academy of Natural Sciences 
of Philadelphia was recently erected, chiefly from money appro- 
priated by the Legislature of Pennsylvania. An entrance door- 
way was devised, andin order that it should represent the uses of the 
building, it was adorned with figures and reliefs of animals. Persons 
possessed of the least spark of originality would have seen the propriety 
of representing in these figures something appropriate to the country, 
and if possible the institution. Nothing would have been easier than 
to have placed at the entrance of the Museum, figures of some of the 
forms of life discovered by its members. The idea was suggested to 
the gentlemen in charge of the construction, but to commemorate in so 
conspicuous a manner the services of the naturalists of the Academy 
it did not strike them favorably. So it came that the apex of the en- 
trance was surmounted by, not even an African lion, but an official 
British lion, with his mane brushed into a collar like Punch’s 
dog, such as one sees on Government buildings in Great Britain. On 
each side isa lioness similar to those seen on buildings all over the 
world. At the summit of one lateral column is a head of a hound, and 
on the other side a ram with very unsymmetrical horns, both foreign 
importations. Of the animals in relief above the door, the only Amer- 
ican animal is a crab, Lupa diacantha, which is indeed, very appropri- 
ate to the building commission, as it generally goes backwards, and 
pinches its nearest neighbors. 
—Wnurxs the natural sciences are taught in our publie schools, there 
will be fewer absurd and untrue stories published in the newspapers. 
Thus a recent Philadelphia paper tells of a man in Arizona who had 
two Helodermas (“Gila monsters ”), each three feet in length, which 
acted as watch-dogs for him, and which killed a would-be assassin who 
entered his house at night. From New York comes a story of a physi- 
