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SCIENCE. 



[Vol. Y., No. 112. 



from the shore, now forms part of Formosa, and 

 under its ruins the water is so shallow that passen- 

 gers land with much difficulty where was formerly 

 deep water. The old harbor is now dry land, con- 

 verted for miles into a plain, where was formerly the 

 fine port of Taiwanfu. The island is very unhealthy 

 for Europeans, and subject to earthquakes, but con- 

 tains no active volcanoes. 



— The veteran zoologists of Cuba — Professor 

 Felipe Poey, who is now nearly eighty-six years old, 

 and Dr. Juan Gundlach, who has completed his 

 seventy-fourth year — are still engaged industriously 

 in studying the fauna of that tropical island. Dr. 

 Gundlach has been publishing his contributions to 

 the fauna of Porto Rico in the Annals of the Spanish 

 society of natural history. The vertebrates (includ- 

 ing fishes by Poey) have all appeared, and recently 

 the fresh-water marine mollusca have been issued. 

 Gundlach has been publishing every month eight 

 octavo pages in the Annals of the Havana academy 

 of sciences, — a contribution to the mammals, birds, 

 and reptiles of Cuba, — and is now at work upon the 

 insects, of which the Lepidoptera are almost com- 

 pleted, and occupy already nearly four hundred 

 pages. Poey has published the fishes of the island in 

 the Annals of the Spanish society of natural history, 

 and Arango has discussed the mollusks. It is to be 

 hoped that these still vigorous naturalists will live to 

 see the completion of the work they have undertaken 

 with so much zeal. 



— The report of the librarian of Harvard univer- 

 sity gives this year a fuller account than we have had 

 before of Ebeling's collection of maps, which is 

 known to be one of the most valuable collections in 

 this country, especially for early maps of America. 

 These maps have now been arranged with the others 

 belonging to the university; and the whole series will 

 occupy at least nine hundred portfolios, of which 

 about three hundred and sixty pertain to America, 

 counting in this seventy-two which hold the coast- 

 survey maps. About one hundred volumes will be 

 collected of maps which may be classed together for 

 binding; and, when these are eliminated, there will 

 still remain about fifteen thousand maps. The Ebel- 

 ing maps belong principally to the seventeenth and 

 eighteenth centuries, and were collected previous to 

 1817. The re-arranging will be completed early in 

 the coming year. Meanwhile considerable progress 

 has been made in a descriptive catalogue, written on 

 slips which are kept in drawers near the cases of port- 

 folios. These entries have been completed for the 

 maps of Great Britain, France, Spain, Italy, and 

 Scandinavia. When this catalogue is finished, an 

 historical and topographical index is proposed. The 

 maps in atlases will be eventually included, and per- 

 haps important maps in geographical serials and other 

 books. With this extent of catalogue and index 

 service, it is not probable that questions of historical 

 geography can be settled so well anywhere in this 

 country as in the Harvard library. 



— The death of Col. Roudaire of the French army, 

 known so widely in connection with the project of an 



inland sea, to be artificially formed by flooding the 

 depressed area of the ' chotts ' in Algeria and Tunis, 

 will not affect the continuation of the investigations 

 relating to that enterprise. Col. Landas, professor 

 of topography in the military school of St. Cyr, has 

 volunteered to take the place of Roudaire. The 

 latter, who had devoted himself with great energy to 

 the scheme for twelve years, received no pecuniary 

 reward for his labors, and leaves a mother, for whose 

 support those interested have subscribed a little an- 

 nuity. 



— ' Melanic variation in Lepidoptera' was the sub- 

 ject of Lord Walsingham's presidential address before 

 the Yorkshire naturalists' union on the 3d of this 

 month. He calls attention to the prevalence of dark 

 varieties of butterflies and moths at great eleva- 

 tions and high altitudes, and attempts to explain it on 

 the theory of natural selection. He points out, that, 

 while vertebrates living through the winter require 

 to retain in their bodies a sufficient amount of heat 

 to enable them to maintain their existence in the 

 severest climates, insects require rapidly to take ad- 

 vantage of transient gleams of sunshine. " Those 

 males," he says, " whose color enabled them to absorb 

 the heat most rapidly would naturally be the first to 

 harden their wings, and to acquire a degree of vitality 

 sufficient to enable them to commence their flight. 

 If we imagine the emergence of a pale and a dark 

 variety side by side at the same moment, it is more 

 than probable that the paler specimen would remain 

 inactive among the herbage, when his darker com- 

 panion had already commenced his flight. In un- 

 favorable weather the degree of warmth sufficient to 

 arouse even the darkest varieties might be of very 

 short duration; and, if this were so, the less favored 

 males might be wholly deprived of the degree of en- 

 ergy necessary to enable them to find their females. 

 The shorter the continuance of passing gleams of sun- 

 shine, the greater would be the influences brought to 

 bear against them; and each separate instance, how- 

 ever infrequent such instances might be, in which 

 they were thus placed at a disadvantage, would have 

 its effect in diminishing their numbers, promoting 

 the survival of only the fittest forms. If this is so, 

 it is sufficiently obvious that the first males on the 

 wing have the best chance of transmitting their color 

 by an hereditary process to the succeeding generation ; 

 and, if these males were always or usually the darkest 

 of the brood, their progeny would also be for the 

 most part dark." In order to test certain questions 

 which would arise in connection with this, he placed 

 several dark and light colored insects on the snow, 

 and found a marked difference in the amount of ab- 

 sorption of heat from the sun, and in the rapidity 

 with which they would make impressions upon the 

 snow. 



— The opening of the Antwerp exhibition, fixed for 

 May 3, will have to be deferred, as the applications 

 for space have been so numerous and extensive that 

 the proposed area is insufficient. 



— The following is a translation of the text of the 

 regulations respecting vivisection issued by the Ger- 



