996 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXI. No. 548. 



wide circuit of the current from the equator 

 and through the Gulf of Mexico. The cli- 

 mate, though warm, is agreeable in summer 

 and usually keeps between 84° and 86°. The 

 trade winds blow steadily, the waters are clear 

 and the people honest and simple hearted. 

 Biological investigators have already found 

 the life there in summer both interesting and 

 delightful. These healthful conditions are 

 of great importance for northern men when 

 working hard with both mind and body on the 

 edge of the tropics. 



While this project centers in Trinity Col- 

 lege, shares have been taken by those inter- 

 ested in other institutions and it is in the 

 largest way for the benefit of all investigators 

 who care to take advantage of the opportuni- 

 ties offered. Charles L. Edwards. 



FEDERIGO DELPINO. 



By the death, at the age of seventy-two, of 

 Professor Federico Delpino, of the University 

 of Naples, modern botany has lost one of its 

 pioneers. For, according to Friedrich Lud- 

 wig, a leading authority on the subject, the 

 foundations of plant biology were laid by the 

 publication in 1867 of Delpino's ' Thoughts on 

 Vegetable Biology, on Taxonomy and on the 

 Taxonomic Value of Biological Characters.' 



Bom at Chiavari, in the province of Genoa, 

 his childhood was largely passed in the garden 

 of his father's house, where he studied closely 

 the habits of ants, bees and wasps and suc- 

 ceeded in discovering the mode in which the 

 great blue-black bee, Xylocopa violacea, con- 

 structs its nests. His education was the 

 classical one usually given to an Italian boy 

 of that day, and his employment for nearly 

 ten subsequent years was in the routine of 

 the custom house. 



About 1864 a friend called Delpijio's atten- 

 tion to the account of an English observer of 

 the manner in which a Ligurian orchid was 

 pollinated by Xylocopa. Delpino at once re- 

 plied to his friend that there should be a 

 similar apparatus in the flowers of the As- 

 clepiadaceae and he hastened to Chiavari to 

 verify this prophecy. Here he quickly found 

 the Xylocopa in the act of pollinating the 

 flowers of a magnificent Brazilian asclepiad. 



The discovery of the relation between this 

 plant and its insect visitor was a turning point 

 in Delpino's career, for the paper which he 

 promptly published at once put him into rela- 

 tions with the botanical world and marked the 

 beginning of a long series of brilliant re- 

 searches. Becoming a professional botanist, 

 Delpino taught successively in the universities 

 of Genoa, of Bologna and of Naples. 



His predominant interest was always in the 

 relations between plants and animals, but he 

 made valuable researches and thought pro- 

 foundly on other departments of botany, at- 

 tacking problems as far away from his chosen 

 subject as phyllotaxy and plant geography. 



As a university professor Delpino was prob- 

 ably more feared than loved by his students. 

 No member of the first class which took the 

 final examination in botany at the University 

 of Naples after Delpino's assumption of the 

 instruction in that department will ever for- 

 get the wholesale manner in which the failures 

 were recorded. His manner, too, would im- 

 press one who met him for the first time as 

 somewhat ascetic. But an experience of al- 

 most ten yeara, of the unvarying courtesy with 

 which Pr' l-.j6ur Delpino, in frail health and 

 loaded with arches of his own, would re- 

 spond to every demand for an opinion leads 

 the writer to remember him as no less tji^ical 

 an Italian gentleman than he was an ideal 

 scholar. J. T. Bergf.x. 



Naples, 



May 26, 1905. 



THE AMERICAN MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 



The twenty-seventh annual meeting of the 

 American Microscopical Society will be held 

 at Cedar Point (Sandusky). Ohio, on July 5, 

 6, 7 and 8, 1905. The society will be the 

 guest of the Ohio Lake Laboratory under the 

 direction of Professor Herbert Osborn of Ohio 

 State LTniversity who has placed at the dis- 

 posal of the meeting all the facilities of the 

 laboratory and who is planning excursions and 

 collecting trips to demonstrate the rich fauna 

 and flora of this region. The meetings will 

 be held in the laboratory with the exception of 

 the president's address which will be given in 

 Sandusky. 



