SCIENTIFIC NEWS. A party consisting of Dr. Joseph D. Hooker, K. C. B., Keeper of Kew Botanical Gardens, Gen. Strachey of India, Prof. Asa Gray and Prof. Joseph Leidy, have, as guests of the U. S. Geological Survey of the Territories, accompanied Prof. F. V. Hayden to Colorado, and will visit Utah and the Pacific Coast. -The army officers at Fort Walla Walla, Washington Territory, have organized the Walla Walla Association for the Advancement of Science, Surgeon George M. Sternberg, U. S. A., being the first president. This is a new step for the military to take, and one in a good direction. We wish the new society all usefulness and success. Dr. Philip Pearsall Carpenter died on the 24th of May at his residence in Montreal, Canada, of typhoid fever, at the age of fiftyseven. He was born at Bristol in England, into the family of the wellknown Dr. Lant Carpenter, among whose eminent children, Dr. W. B. Carpenter, Miss Mary Carpenter, and the subject of this notice, are best known. Dr. P. P. Carpenter was educated as a clergyman, and may be said to have never left off the clerical mantle, so far as a continuance of earnest labors in all matters of moral and sanitary reform may be concerned. There can be no doubt that his unceasing and enthusiastic work in this direction curtailed his opportunities for scientific study and indirectly brought about his premature death. As a student of nature Dr. Carpenter's attention was chiefly directed to the mollusca, and especially to those of the west coast of America. The systematic study of this fauna was begun by him, and his work has rendered it practicable for others to follow him with a vast decrease of labor and bibliographical research. Thorough, careful, conscientious, frank, his reports and papers on this fauna will ever remain as his best monument. He also gave particular attention to the Pandoride, Cæcida, and Chitonida, each of which groups he monographed in a thorough manner. The last mentioned work is yet unprinted, but is believed to be in a condition so complete as to leave little doubt that it will be published, as originally announced, by the Smithsonian Institution. It is a very remarkable monograph, and the first successful attempt to illuminate the darkness which has obscured the group of Chitonida. Malacologists are to be congratulated that this, the author's last, and in many respects most valuable effort, is not to be lost. Personally, he worked for righteousness in all his doings; no one could know without respecting the man, though his fiery enthusiasm was not always appreciated or understood. And beneath a thoroughly English bluntness of character lay an almost womanly tenderness for sorrow, ignorance, or need, in others. He married, in 1860, Miss Minna Meyer of Hamburg, a lady who has proved a helpmeet in all the work of his life, and who survives him. He left no children and for the greater portion of his life was in very moderate circumstances. W. H. DALL. Col. Ezekiel Jewett of Utica, New York, died at Santa Barbara, California, on the eighteenth of May, of pneumonia, at the age of nearly ninety years. A field naturalist rather than an author, as his martial career necessitated, Colonel Jewett was best known to those who have enjoyed his society in camp or on a collecting tour. A man of leonine bearing, tall and soldierly aspect, of brilliant conversational powers and frank and generous disposition; he combined with these a great amount of practical knowledge in some branches of science. Few were more conversant, at one time, with the fossils of New York, and he was thoroughly familiar with the marine mollusca of North America up to a pretty recent date. He was for many years curator of the New York State Cabinet of Natural History, and held other offices of trust. In literature he will be chiefly recalled by the references to collections of his making on which numerous papers by naturalists have been based. Personally he was a man whom to know was to honor and love, and he formed one of the last links between the laborers for science of his own and the present generation, a period covering more than half a century. W. H. DALL. - In a circular issued from the Surgeon-General's office Dr. Elliott Coues, U. S. A., asks the medical officers of the army, and others interested, to cooperate with him in the preparation of a work to be entitled History of North American Mammals, to be published by the government. Dr. Coues desires information regarding the geographical distribution of our mammals; to this end it is desirable that lists should be prepared of the various species found in any given locality, with notes on their relative abundance or scarcity, times of appearance and disappearance, the nature of their customary resorts, etc. The habits of many of the smaller, insignificant, or obscure species are almost entirely unknown. Full and accurate information respecting the habits of the numerous species of hares, squirrels, shrews, moles, mice, rats, bats, weasels, gophers, etc., is particularly desired. The bats offer a peculiarly inviting and little-explored field of research. Among points to which attention may be directed, in any case, are the following: Date and duration of the rut. Period of gestation. Usual time of reproduction. Number of young produced. Duration of lactation. Care of the young, by one or both parents. State of monogamy or polygamy. Times of disappearance and reappearance of such animals as are migratory, and of such as hibernate. Completeness or interruption of torpidity. Times of changing pelage, of acquiring, shedding, and renewing horns. Habits connected with these processes. Habits peculiar to the breeding and rutting seasons. Construction of nests, burrows, or other artificial retreats. Natural resorts at different seasons. Nature of food at various seasons; mode of procuring it; laying up of supplies; quantity required. Various cries, of what indicative. Natural means of offense and defense, and how employed. General disposition, traits, characteristics. Methods of capturing or destroying, of taming or domesticating. Economic relations with man; how injurious or beneficial, to what extent, used for what purposes, yielding what products of value. Specimens, after examination by the undersigned for the purposes of the work in hand, will be deposited, in the name of the donor, in the Army Medical Museum or in the National Museum. Address Dr. Elliott Coues, Office of United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, Washington, D. C. -The Netherlands Zoological Association have founded an establishment on the Dutch coast, where investigations of the fauna and flora of the North Sea can be carried on at leisure. The building is made of wood, and can be transported from one place to another, according to season and varying abundance of material for study. In some parts of California the tomato is perennial. A resident at Los Angeles now (February) gathers ripe tomatoes from the top of a twenty-foot ladder. The vine, which is twenty-five feet high, has been trained on the sunny side of the house, and shows blossoms and fruit in every stage of growth. -In various parts of California experiments are being made in a small way with the cork-bark oak; and the trees are reported thus far as doing well. In Santa Barbara a fine, large, and thrifty specimen may be seen in a garden, which has grown from a seed planted twenty-two years ago. A farmer in Tulare County, California, has been in the habit of using for fuel the stalks of castor-beans growing on his ranch, and finds them a very ready and desirable substitute for wood, the trunks of the larger ones being about the size of a man's leg. The immense growth of this plant in a single year and its prolific bearing qualities make it a desirable crop. -Mr. D. G. Elliot is about to publish in London two monographs, one on the Felidæ, including both the living and extinct species; the other on the Bucerotidae, or Hornbills. - Mr. Robert J. Creighton, resident agent in San Francisco for New Zealand, shipped early in February, by the Zealandia, a box of whitefish eggs, containing 180,000, on account of that colony. This is the second shipment of white-fish eggs to New Zealand, obtained through the United States Fish Commissioners, who pack and ship them from Lake Michigan to San Francisco. Mr. Creighton likewise forwarded for the same colony a parcel of trout eggs from the Cold Spring Trout Ponds, Charlestown, New Hampshire, and Mr. Hugh Craig, agent of the New Zealand Ins. Co., forwards on account of the Auckland Acclimatization Society two California deer and twenty-seven short-tailed grouse from Utah Territory. By the next steamer Mr. Craig will forward prairie chickens, Oregon grouse, Oregon pheasants, and an elk for the same destination. Mr. Thomas Russell, President of the New Zealand Bank, makes a present of these animals to the Auckland Acclimatization Society. About four miles from San Buenaventura, California, on the river of that name, is a grape-vine of the Mission variety, the stem of which measures forty inches in circumference. It covers an area of about eighty feet in diameter. This vine yields about one thousand pounds of grapes annually. The clusters of fruit will measure from twelve to sixteen inches in length, and average three and a half pounds. It is on the ranch of Don Jose Moraga, and was planted by that gentleman seventeen years ago. - A Natural History Review, to be called Termésretrajzi Füretek (Naturhistorische Hefte), to be edited in German, was issued from the National Museum of Buda-Pesth, Hungary, about January 1, 1877. It contains papers on Zoology, Botany, Mineralogy, and Geology. Articles may be printed in various languages, but extracts literally translated will be given in the Hungarian text. It will be devoted wholly to Hungarian matters. A circular was issued December 30, 1876, by the National Society of Natural Sciences of Cherbourg, France, announcing the twenty-fifth anniversary of its foundation, and expressing great gratitude to the learned societies and its corresponding members for numerous congratulatory letters on their jubilee, which it regards as precious testimonials of esteem. -The following facts I learned from Dr. Clark Nettleton, who now resides in Racine. It is too good a story to be lost: One morning in the latter part of February, 1832, the U. S. schooner Shark, Lieutenant Pierce commander, having Audubon and party on board, anchored in Cote-Blanche Bay, at the mouth of Bayou Salie, Louisiana. The scientists here left the schooner, rowed up the bayou in her boats and landed on Michael Gordie's sugar plantation. Audubon made many inquiries about birds, where they could be found, where they roosted, etc., and all day the report of fire-arms was heard among the reeds and swamps where the men were busy procuring specimens of the birds that were so numerous there at that time. Gordie was greatly alarmed. He consulted his overseer and interrogated the blacks with whom Audubon had talked. The conclusion was that the strangers were pirates, and that he would be robbed that night and perhaps lose his life. Thus he reasoned: "The black craft is armed, has guns. No sane man would engage in such trifling occupation as shooting worthless little birds. This is evidently a ruse gotten up to deceive me." So, as there was no chance of procuring assistance, the plantation being isolated by swamps and the bay, he hid his gold, secreted his family, and barricaded the house. He then armed all hands, not a small number either, with guns, pitch-forks, cane-cutters, everything, in short that might be of service in the emergency, and these all stood at their assigned posts, during the entire night, in the momentary expectation of an attack. Day came, and the piratical craft weighed anchor and left the bay, to the great relief of the wealthy planter and his domestic army. The excitement, fear, and suspense were too much for him however. He was taken sick, and sent for his family physician, Dr. Nettleton, who lived twenty miles distant. The doctor had been apprised of Audubon's visit and had a good laugh at the expense of Gordie. poor - Dr. P. R. HoY, Racine, Wis. Our readers will be pained to learn of the sudden death by apoplexy of Prof. Sanborn Tenney, July 9th, while on his way West to meet the members of the Williams College Expedition to the Rocky Mountains. We learn that the Expedition will consequently return. Professor Tenney was author of a Manual of Geology and of two on Zoology, which have been extensively used in schools; he also published a number of articles on geological and zoological subjects. He was born in Stoddard, N. H., January 13, 1827. -A dispatch to the San Francisco papers from Los Angeles, California, under date of the 12th of June, says: A volcanic eruption occurred in the mountains opposite Flowing Wells, a station on the Southern Pacific, about sixty miles from Yuma, at 9 o'clock yesterday morning. It was preceded by a violent vibration of the earth, about half an hour after which a dense volume of smoke and huge black and broken bowlders were observed to issue from the mountains. It continued in an active state all day, but became nearly passive at nightfall. Subsequent dispatches confirmed the above, and a recurrence of the eruption is reported. -After delays which the editors of Psyche, the only American journal of entomology in existence, except the Canadian Entomologist, could not avoid, the first numbers of the second volume have been issued to subscribers. The second volume will be made superior in quality and in quantity to the first. Subscriptions are earnestly desired, in order that the almost inevitable drain upon the purses of the publishers may be as small as possible. We regret to learn that the first volume of this valuable little journal cost more than two hundred dollars beyond the receipts from subscriptions, and the editor had to pay most of the deficit. The subscription price to either the first or the second volume (embracing three years each) is three dollars. -The Woodruff Scientific Expedition around the world proposes to sail in October, and return in October, 1879. We have received the "Final Announcement," a pamphlet of thirty-nine pages, with a map of the route. |