June 4, 1886.] 



SCIENCE. 



505 



— Mr. R. M. Bache has been ordered by the 

 coast survey to continue the topographical work 

 on the south-east shore of Staten Island, and on 

 the south side of Raritan Bay towards Sandy 

 Hook ; Mr. P. W. Perkins is daily expected from 

 his field -operations on the coast of Louisiana. 



— Velhagen & Klasing (Leipzig) have begun the 

 publication, in twelve monthly parts, of a new 

 edition of Andree's 'Allgemeiner handatlas.' It 

 will contain a hundred and twenty maps. 



— The following works of interest to scientific 

 readers have been lately announced : 1 Earthquakes 

 and other earth movements,' by John Milne (New 

 York, Appleton) ; 'A manual of mechanics,' by 

 T. M. Gordon (New York, Appleton) ; a work on 

 the labor question in America, by Professor Ely 

 (New York, CrowelT) ; ' Photo-engraving processes,' 

 by A. F. W. Leslie (New York, Fuchs & Lang) ; 

 ' The flow of water through pipes and open con- 

 duits and from weirs and orifices,' by H. Smith, 

 jun. (London, Trubner) ; 1 The world as will and 

 idea,' vols. ii. and hi., by A. Schopenhauer, tr. by 

 R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp (London, Trubner) ; 

 ' The Indian empire : its history, people, and prod- 

 ucts,' by W. W. Hunter (London, Trubner). 



LETTERS TO THE EDLTOR. 



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

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



A national zoological garden. 



In 1870 an act of incorporation was passed, estab- 

 lishing a zoological society in W ashingtoa ; but dur- 

 ing the last sixteen years little or nothing has been 

 done towards carrying out what the charter of this 

 society provides for, or taking any steps in the 

 direction of putting into effect the chief objects such 

 an organization would have in view. 



We learn from Science (vii. No. 160) that the 

 public-spirited and venerable exhibiter of animals, 

 Mr. P. T. Barnum, now comes forward and says, 

 that, if congress will grant him thirty acres of the 

 reclaimed flats on the Washington side of the 

 Potomac River, he will expend the generous sum of 

 two hundred thousand dollars in starting a national 

 zoological garden. 



Now, the eastern extension of these flats is not far 

 from the Smithsonian grounds, and, taking every 

 thing else into consideration, there is probably not a 

 better site in this country for this particular pur- 

 pose. The incalculable advantages that would be 

 the outcome of such an establishment can be easily 

 appreciated ; and it is only to be hoped that at an 

 early day congress will take Mr. Barnum's proposi- 

 tion into favorable consideration. 



Few institutions in any country afford better 

 educational advantages than a large, well-kept, and 

 well-managed zoological garden. No better proof 

 of this can be brought forward than the report of 

 Mr. P. L. Sclater, F.R.S., secretary of the Zoological 

 society of London, for the year ending 1885. Mr. 

 Sclater tells us that during the year quoted, 659,896 

 persons visited the gardens, and that the receipts of 



the society amounted to the extraordinary sum of 

 £25,809 10s Id ; while during the previous year 

 745,460 persons visited the gardens, and the receipts 

 were proportionately greater ; in fact, £3,129 more. 



Many of the larger animals in this country are 

 now rapidly disappearing from off the face of the 

 earth, — notably the bison, the elk, and moose, — while 

 numbers of the smaller representatives of our 

 splendid mammalian and avi-fauna are unfamiliar 

 to the eyes of the vast majority of the people of 

 this country, from the simple fact that we are so 

 poor in institutions where the living specimens can 

 be put on exhibition. 



Mr. F. W. True, curator of the department of 

 mammals in the Smithsonian institution, points out 

 in Science (vii. No. 171) another deplorable neglect, 

 which unfortunately we are likewise guilty of, and 

 which the establishment of a zoological society in 

 Washington would do much towards rectifying. 

 With the disappearance of our larger animals and 

 other vertebrates, the opportunities are forever be- 

 ing placed beyond our reach, to intimately know 

 about the anatomical structure of these very forms. 

 In regard to this, anatomists are too apt to say some- 

 thing like this : " Oh, yes ! a prairie dog ; no doubt 

 its organization is very much like the squirrel's, and 

 will not repay exhaustive examination." Now, I 

 say that these related and interrelated types are the 

 very ones that will repay the most exhaustive re- 

 search. 



A competent prosector attached to our zoological 

 garden — one who combined the qualities of an 

 artist, an author, and a general anatomist — would 

 soon demonstrate the high importance of his work, 

 and contribute the most efficient aid to animal tax- 

 onomy. The brilliant productions of Gar rod and 

 Forbes, in the Proceedings of the Zoological society 

 of London, speak volumes in favor of this advan- 

 tage. 



A share of the pecuniary receipts that would ac- 

 crue from such an establishment could be set aside 

 to meet the expenses following the publication of 

 handsomely illustrated memoirs, giving large colored 

 plates of the rarer acquisitions to the gardens, and 

 the investigations of the prosector into the structure 

 of such animals as died from time to time, and thus 

 fell into his hands. We have long felt, in this coun- 

 try, the need of just some such standard publication 

 as the excellently conducted Proceedings of the 

 Zoological society of London ; and this would cer- 

 tainly be realized, and follow as one of the natural 

 results pending the establishment of our national 

 zoological garden. R. W. Shufeldt. 



Fort Wingate, N.Mex., May 26. 



Scent-organs in some bombycid moths. 



At intervals during the past year or two, isolated 

 observations have been made of peculiar filamentary 

 processes protruding from the abdomen of the male 

 of some of our common bombycids, Leucarctia 

 acraea and Scepsis fulvicollis being the observed 

 species. Not long since, I described a peculiar 

 abdominal character in the male of Cosmosoma 

 omphale ; and the recent capture and examination 

 of specimens of Leucarctia acraea has enabled me 

 to add something to the knowledge of the structure 

 in that species. Between the seventh and eighth 

 ventral segments is a narrow opening, entirely in- 

 visible in the dried insect, but readily discerned on a 



