April 16, 1886.] 



SCIENCE. 



351 



given. How far and in what direction from 

 nearest town ? On or near what stream, if any ? 

 On whose property? The occurrence of native 

 objects of copper, or articles of European intro- 

 duction, should be mentioned. Communications 

 maybe addressed to Henry Phillips, jun., secre- 

 tary, Philadelphia. 



— Naturalists will be pleased to learn of the 

 early publication of Mr. Scudder s extensive work 

 on New England butterflies, which has been nearly 

 completed for a number of years. Those who have 

 seen the elegant colored plates, and are aware of 

 the thorough monographic way in which each 

 species is treated, will appreciate the value of the 

 work. The author is desirous of obtaining addi- 

 tional material for the illustration and description 

 of the earlier stages of a number of species, and 

 will welcome any assistance that may be afforded 

 him in diminishing his list of desiderata. 



— Hardly a week passes without the announce- 

 ment of some new literary or scientific enterprise 

 from Germany. This time it is the appearance 

 of the opening number of a Zeitschrift filr assyri- 

 blogie that we have to announce. It is published 

 by Schulze at Leipzig, and Assyrian scholars speak 

 very highly of the part just issued. 



— Lea & Son's 4 Encyclopaedia of dentistry,' an 

 important work on odontological science now pub- 

 lishing, will contain extended illustrated articles 

 on the teeth of vertebrates, both fossil and recent, 

 and of invertebrates, — on the former by Mr. J. H. 

 Wort man, and on the latter by Mr. W. H. Dall. 



— William Paul Gerhard's ' A guide to sanitary 

 house-inspection ' (New York, Wiley, 1885) will 

 serve as a comprehensive vade mecum for the 

 house-holder and house-hunter. It contains suc- 

 cinct and complete instructions for the sanitary 

 inspection of city and country dwellings, and for 

 the choice of their surroundings. Much of the 

 contents common sense and common prudence 

 ought to suggest to the intelligent person ; but, 

 unfortunately, common sense and common pru- 

 dence in sanitary matters are not usually the at- 

 tributes of the ordinary householder, nor indeed 

 frequently of the educated one, as witness a case of 

 a city physician in good practice who failed to 

 discover in many months that the sewerage con- 

 nections of his house were untrapped. For those 

 who cannot employ an expert, this book can be 

 recommended as a useful guide in building or in 

 the choice of dwellings. 



— Mr. W. T. Hornaday of the national museum 

 will shortly issue his second book, 4 Canoe and 

 rifle on the Orinoco,' being a history of his hunt- 

 ing and exploring experiences on that river. 



— There has recently been issued by Cupples, 

 Upham & Co. of Boston a pamphlet on the present 

 condition of electric lighting, written by one N. 

 H. Schilling, Ph.D., purporting to be a report 

 made at Munich, Sept. 26, 1885. To whom this 

 report was made is not stated in the volume ; but 

 from the statement made at the bottom of p. 5, 

 that ' no business loss has been sustained by us ' 

 by the introduction of electricity for lighting the 

 Munich railway-station, "since gas-motors are 

 used for the production of the current," it is 

 natural to suppose that the report was made to 

 one of the gas companies of that city. Similar 

 references occur on other pages, and the report 

 cannot, therefore, be considered an unbiassed 

 statement of the present condition of electric 

 lighting. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



*** Correspondents are requested to be as brief as possible. The 

 writer's name is in all cases required as proof of good faith. 



Preliminary description of a new squirrel from 

 Minnesota (Sciurus carolinensis hypophaeus 1 

 sp. nov.). 



One of my mammal collectors has recently sent me 

 from Sherbourne county, Minnesota, a number of 

 specimens of the gray squirrel of that region. The 

 locality is considerably north of the supposed north- 

 ern limit of the animal's range, and the specimens 

 differ markedly from the previously described 

 varieties of the species. They are as large as, or 

 slightly larger than, their nearest ally, Sciurus 

 carolinensis leucotis, with which they agree in the 

 size and bushiness of the tail and in the color of the 

 upper parts. They differ from it, 1°, in having 

 broader ears, the convexities of which are adorned 

 with large and very conspicuous white woolly tufts, 

 the yellowish-buff being confined to a narrow strip 

 along their anterior borders ; 2°, in having the white 

 of the under parts very much restricted. The color 

 of the back and sides encroaches everywhere upon 

 the belly, leaving a small and irregularly defined 

 patch of white in the centre of the abdominal re- 

 gion, and even this is usually much mixed with gray. 

 The breast and throat are grizzled gray, more or less 

 strongly suffused with yellowish fulvous. The pelage 

 is noticeably softer and denser than in the common 

 gray squirrel. C. Hart Merriam. 



Names of the Canadian Rocky Mountain peaks. 



I willingly admit the inaccuracy of the correction 

 as to the names of some Eocky Mountain peaks made 

 on my authority by Mr. Ernest Ingersoll in Science 

 (vii. No. 165). Had I supposed that Mr. Ingersoll 

 would have thought it worth while to publish any 

 note on the subject, I would have been more precise 

 in specifying the names to which it should, apply. 

 Mr. Ingersoll, in his original article, wrote (Science, 

 vii. No. 162), ''Many of the principal peaks in this 

 part of the range were long ago named Balfour, 



1 Y7r6<|>ouos : V776, below ; c/xzid?, dark — in allusion to the 

 dark color of under parts. 



