90 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. VII., No. 15 6 



In the autumn of 1881, sixty-seven carp were 

 placed in a pond near Worcester : they have 

 grown and bred very rapidly, without especial 

 care having been given to them ; so that the pond 

 is now full of fish from four to twenty-five inches 

 in length, and weighing as high as sixteen pounds. 

 The most important fact connected with the other 

 fisheries is the decrease in the catch of some of 

 the more valuable kinds, such as the striped bass, 

 Spanish mackerel, and bluefish ; the last especially 

 has everywhere been found less abundant than in 

 recent years. 



A movement is before congress to establish a 

 commission to determine the feasibility and value 

 of inoculation with the causative agent of yellow- 

 fever as a preventive of that disease. Dr. Walcott, 

 president of the American public health associa- 

 tion, and Dr. Holt, president of the Louisiana 

 state board of health, appeared before the senate 

 committee on epidemic diseases last week in this 

 interest, accompanied by Drs. Billings, Toner, and 

 Smart, of Washington. It is proposed to establish 

 a commission to go to Mexico and South America 

 to investigate the system of inoculation of Freire 

 and Carmona, whose experiments have proved so 

 successful in those countries, and also to investi- 

 gate the principles of Pasteur, Koch, and others, 

 in their special application to yellow-fever. The 

 proposed bill will be reported favorably to the 

 senate, and there is strong reason to hope for 

 similar action in the house. The plan offers the 

 possible emancipation of the people living in 

 yellow-fever districts from the dominion of a 

 pestilence which frequently costs tens of thou- 

 sands of lives and hundreds of millions of dollars. 



The extremely cold weather at the south 

 during the present season has strengthened the 

 popular impression that the region in question is 

 subjected to greater ranges of temperature and a 

 less equable distribution of rainfall than formerly. 

 With a view of testing the correctness of this 

 impression, the Alabama weather-service has col- 

 lected from the early Spanish, French, and colonial 

 records, a mass of references to the weather. This 

 ' record of the weather' goes back to 1701, when it 

 was recorded by one of the French officials resi- 

 dent in Louisiana, that " the water has been so 

 intensely cold that water poured in a tumbler to 

 rinse it froze instantaneously." The records of 

 1711, 1718, and 1723, refer to destructive floods in 



the lower Mississippi ; and in 1732 a hurricane is 

 reported in Louisiana which " destroyed the crops, 

 resulting in extreme scarcity of provisions." A 

 number of references to hurricanes are given in 

 the record ; but, in all probability, they were of 

 the same local nature as the tornadoes of the 

 present day. The record is published as ' Special 

 paper of the Alabama weather-service No. 1,' and 

 is evidence that the service is desirous of doing its 

 share toward adding to the valuable meteorological 

 literature of the day. The editor of the ' record ' 

 is, however, an historian as well as a meteorolo- 

 gist, as he opens his work with a sketch of the 

 early history of the Gulf states, and, under the 

 date 1736, says nothing of floods, cold, or winds, 

 but does tell us of " Bienville's expedition through 

 Mobile, up the Bigbee River to Old Town Creek, 

 thence north-west to the Chickasaw villages a few 

 miles north-west of Tupelo, where the battle of 

 Ackia was fought and the French badly defeated. 

 Near the same spot D'Andreville shared a similar 

 fate in 1753; and DeSoto, in March, 1541, fared 

 but little better." Is not this an unnecessary 

 mixing of sciences ? 



"A debt of $135,000 encumbers the Cincinnati 

 zoological gardens, and it is announced that they 

 must be sold unless the business-men of the city 

 come to the rescue. A system of private sub- 

 scriptions is proposed by the managers, whereby 

 there is a faint hope of securing a longer lease of 

 life." In such words is the announcement made 

 in the daily press of the present condition and 

 probable fate of the Cincinnati gardens. In 

 Science of Nov. 13, we referred to the financial 

 difficulties of the Philadelphia zoological garden. 

 It is certainly greatly to be regretted that suffi- 

 cient support cannot be obtained in this country 

 for these institutions. Boston and Washington 

 are anxious to have zoological gardens ; but the 

 projectors will receive little encouragement from 

 the financial history of those now in existence. 



In view of the recent announcement that the 

 faculty of Harvard college has decided to again 

 allow the students to take part in intercollegiate 

 football matches, it is interesting to note the fre- 

 quent cases of football accidents to which the Lan- 

 cet calls attention. That paper states that on Jan. 

 11 an inquest was held at Bridge water, England, 

 on the body of William Poole, aged twenty, who 

 came by his death from injuries received whilst 



