166 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. V., No. 108. 



would prove a great convenience to the business and 

 scientific public, and equalize the time value of the 

 calendar months and quarters. 



A very suitable opportunity to introduce the im- 

 proved calendar would be on the first recurrence of 

 the leap-year, in 1888. In the mean time the proposed 

 change could be fully discussed and ventilated. 



The following table will show the relations of the 

 old and the new calendar to each other: — 



DAT OF TEAR. 





Old calendar. 



New calendar. 



Jan. 



31 





31 



31 



Jan. 31 



Feb. 



28-9 





59-60 



61 



Feb. 30 * 



March 



31 





90- 1 



92 



March 31 











April 



30 





120- 1 



122 



92 

 April 30 



May 



31 





151- 2 



153 



May 31 



June 



30 





181- 2 



183 



June 30 











July 



31 





212- 3 



213 



91 

 July 30 * 



Aug. 



31 





243- 4 



244 



Aug. 31 



Sept. 



30 





273- 4 



274 



Sept. 30 











92 









Oct. 



31 



304- 5 





91 











305 



Oct. 31 



Nov. 



30 





334- 5 



335 



Nov. 30 



Dec. 



31 





365- 6 



365-6 



Dec. 30-1 





92 



91-2 



* In transferring from old calendar to new, from March to 

 July inclusive, deduct two days; from August to December, 

 deduct one day. Tlius March 1 (old calendar) will be Feb. 29 

 (new calendar) ; but Aug. 1 (old calendar) will be July 30 (new 

 calendar). 



The following adaptation of the old lines may serve to assist 

 the memory : — 



30 days, July, September, 



April, June, and November, 



February and December ; 



The last, in leap-year, 31, 



And always the remaining five. 



Edward P. Gray. 



Ingersoll's 'Country cousins.' 



Absence from home has delayed until to-day my 

 seeing the extended (and therefore highly complimen- 

 tary) notice of my " Country cousins : short studies in 

 the natural history of the United States," to which 

 you were good enough to give space in your issue of 

 Feb. 6. 



Acknowledging its kindly tone throughout, I wish 

 to retort with equal courtesy (if possible) upon your 

 writer at the point where he seems to find most 

 fault; namely, my assertion that the flukes of the 

 whale and other cetaceans represent the hinder flip- 

 pers of the seal and the hinder legs of terrestrial 

 quadrupeds. That anybody should deny this, sur- 

 prised me. The language in which I expressed the 

 statement was less precise than that demanded by a 

 technical treatise, as 'Country cousins' makes no 

 claim to be; but only a captious construction could 

 make out that I meant more by what I said than that 

 in a general way the flukes of the Cetacea were rep- 

 resentative (in a greatly altered condition, of course) 

 of the hinder flippers of a seal, and structurally were 

 quite as distinct as they, from the forked tail of a fish. 



Leaving my assertion and possible evidence out of 

 the question, I should like to know what the com- 

 parative anatomists of the country have to say as to 

 this point between my critic and myself. Do not 

 Dr. Elliott Coues and Dr. Theodore Gill teach that a 

 whale's fluke is directly homologous with the integu- 

 mentary portion of the hinder limbs of the rest of the 

 Mammalia? Of course, every one knows there are no 

 bones there. Has not Professor John Kyder discov- 

 ered, since my pages were in type, that the nerves 

 which supply the flukes are not those which pass 

 along the spine into the tail (where it exists), but, on 

 the contrary, are homologues of those in the higher 

 mammals, which, branching from the spinal cord in 

 the lumbo-sacral region, supply the hinder limbs? 

 What has embryology to show as to the genesis of the 

 flukes? Do they arise structurally as the forks of a 

 tail, or as limb-appendages ? It is just possible that 

 the inaccuracy and carelessness with which I have 

 been rather freely accused have been over-estimated, 



Ernest Ingersoel. 



New Haven. 



[In respect to the criticism of ' Country cousins,' to 

 which the author of the work so warmly but courte- 

 ously objects, it may be sufficient reply to quote the 

 statement criticised by the reviewer, which is as fol- 

 lows: " If I had the time, I could prove to you that 

 the difference between the fin of a fish and the bone- 

 leg of an otter or of a dog, or of our own arm, is not 

 so very great ; and it would be easy to show how nearly 

 alike the flipper of the seal and fore-leg of a land 

 mammal really are. . . . The same comparison will 

 hold good for the hind-feet of the otter and the hind- 

 flippers or ' tail ' (which is not a tail) of the seal; and 

 it is equally true of the walrus, and of the whale, por- 

 poise, grampus, black-fish, and other cetaceans.'''' Not 

 a word is said about the ' flukes ' of a whale, nor is any 

 reference made to the 'forked tail of a fish,' in the 

 passage criticised. We again submit that this is ' evi- 

 dence of either ignorance or carelessness' on the part 

 of the author. It is at least a grossly slipshod use of 

 language. — Reviewer.] 



A new method of arranging entomological 

 collections. 



A very large proportion of the time of a faithful 

 curator of a growing entomological cabinet is de- 

 voted to the re-arrangement of his collections, — to 

 simply pulling pins from one place in a cork-lined 

 box, and putting them into another. In large and 

 well-endowed museums this labor can be lessened 

 somewhat by leaving spaces in the boxes for addi- 

 tions; but in an ordinary entomological cabinet this 

 is obviously impracticable, and, even where this plan 

 is adopted, it affords only partial relief. The ad- 

 vance of knowledge is constantly changing our ideas 

 as to the sequence of species; and from time to time 

 the appearance of a monograph necessitates the re- 

 arrangement of our collections, if we would have 

 them represent the present state of science. 



But so great is this labor of re-arrangement, that 

 only few if any of the larger collections are kept in 

 any thing like perfect order. And the faithful cura- 

 tor is forced to give to mere manual labor, time 

 which otherwise would be devoted to original re- 

 search. 



About two years ago I devised and put into use a 

 mode of arranging collections which reduces to a 

 minimum the labor of re-arrangement. This system 

 is an application to entomological cabinets of the 

 principle which underlies the slip system of keeping 

 notes. Its fundamental idea is to fasten in each 



