of the work (in vol. xv, p. 72 of this Journal) with a remark or two upon the completed volume. While congratulating the enterprizing publishers and the ardent editor upon their success, which ensures a full continuance of the publication, we shall, on this very account, freely offer any criticisms that may conduce to its improvement. "Flowers and Ferns in their horticultural and popular aspects" do not here concern us. We dismiss their consideration to the horticultural and the literary press. There is much to interest both, and the plates will interest and satisfy amateurs generally, and more critical botanists not rarely. But the botanical aspects are sometimes taken from a rather high point of view, and the same may be said of some of the botanicoetymological researches. While most may pass without grave dissent, there are morphological and etymological statements which we would be sorry to have set down as specimens of American culture. The morphological and other botanical points to which exception should be taken may pass with this simple caveat, as we have no room to discuss them, and to botanists whom we address there is little need. But there are two bits of philology in one number (the sixth) which it would be wrong to pass over, being very characteristic for a tendency to be "wise above what is written."

Sedum has by long prescription been thought to be derived from Sedeo, sedere, to sit, as on rocks. The editor of the work in hand devotes nearly two pages mainly to the reconsideration of this question, and comes to the conclusion that sedo, to assauge, is the root of the name, Linnæus and the rest to the contrary notwithstanding. To be sure "the name is a very old one and was merely adopted by Linnæus," who may be all wrong in philology. Still we botanists are not likely to know much better. Tournefort had indeed given his readers the choice of these two derivations; but he did not decide the question. Prof. Meehan decides for sedo, and confirms the opinion by the statement that the e in Sedum is long. But the Latin dictionaries agree that it is short.

Limnanthemum is thought a badly named genus because its species grow in water rather than in mud or marsh. But the classical meaning of the first member of the word is a pool of standing water and a marshy lake. If "it is properly an aquatic," we should think it properly named. But "our species was named L. lacunosum, from the Latin lacus, a lake, by Grisebach, author of a Flora of the West Indies, from its actual place of growth, and it might be supposed as a corrective of its generic name. But there are in other countries more species that grow in lakes, so we see there is nothing distinctive in either name, and those therefore who might infer it to be so would be led into serious error." The danger of supposing that the name of a species founded on its place of growth indicates that it is the only species in such places, is not imminent. And only the very few can "be led into serious error" here who have first adopted the notion that lacunosum (full of lacuna or pits, as in the lower face of the leaf) is an adjective of

lacus.

A. G.

5. Der Zoologische Anzeiger, of J. V. CARUS.-The recent publication of the Zoological Record for 1876, of the Bericht of Leuckart for the years 1872-75 and of the first numbers of the Zoologische Anzeiger by Carus, naturally suggests an examination of our methods for recording progress in Zoology. We cannot expect either the Jahresberichte which have for so long a time formed one of the annual volumes of the Archiv für Naturgeschichte, or Hofman and Schwalbe's Jahresberichte, or the Zoological Record to appear early enough to be of immediate use to specialists in the course of their investigations. These reports necessarily date back so long that they can only be an indispensable compendium for the general worker who wishes to take up a special subject or see what has been done in the general field.

to see.

Some of the recorders have limited their task to a strict analysis of the publications issued within the time included in their record, while others have added to this a running commentary and a more or less favorable criticism. This seems somewhat superfluous, for we can scarcely expect any thing beyond the most limited "notice" in the space at the command of the recorders. In a review of the last Zoological Record in a late number of "Nature" the recorders are all taken to task for not giving greater prominence to Wallace's "Geographical Distribution." What any recorder can find to say in the space at his disposal, which the zoological student has not found out long ago from the work itself, it is difficult And certainly the writer of the notice in Nature hardly expected zoologists to obtain their first information of its publication from the pages of the Zoological Record. The great difficulty under which we all labor is to obtain early information of the articles appearing in the publications of learned societies. These are now so numerous that the majority of our public institutions receive but a small proportion of what is annually published, and what they do receive is issued irregularly and is generally from six to eighteen months in reaching its destination, according to the distance from the point of publication. The question naturally arises: cannot a system be devised by which zoologists will be able to receive by mail early notice of all that is going on, and thus enable them to make special efforts to obtain what they most desire? The Zoologische Anzeiger of Carus seems to us to meet the case. If working naturalists will agree to send to Professor Carus the title of any paper they publish, the moment it is printed, giving in a few words also the table of contents and the usual details regarding the number of pages, plates, size, and place of publication, we may hope to be kept informed of all that is going on in Zoology without needless delay. And if Professor Carus could be induced to print the titles on one side of the page, these titles could then be cut up and arranged systematically or alphabetically or both, and no one need remain long in ignorance of what is doing by others. This would probably necessitate giving up the literary notices, but with the large number of zoological periodicals now issued it would not lessen the value of the Anzeiger.

A. AG.

6. Note on Borings of a Sponge in Italian Marble; by A. E. VERRILL.-Some very interesting specimens were recently presented to the Peabody Museum of Yale College, by Dr. I. P. Trimble, of New York. These are fragments of white Italian marble, from a cargo wrecked off Long Island in 1871, and taken up this year. The exposed portions of the slabs are thoroughly penetrated to the depth of one to two inches by the crooked and irregular borings or galeries of the sponge, Cliona sulphurea V., so as to reduce it to a complete honey-comb, readily crumbling in the fingers. Beyond the borings the marble is perfectly sound and unalterd. The rapid destruction of the shells of oysters, etc., by the borings of this sponge has long been familiar to me,* but of its effects upon marble or limestone I have not before seen examples, for calcareous rocks do not occur along the portion of our coast which it inhabits. Its ability to rapidly destroy such rocks might have a practical bearing in case of submarine structures of limestone or other similar materials.

7. Ophiurida and Astrophytidæ of the Challenger Expedition, Part I. By THEODORE LYMAN. Bulletin of the Museum of Comp. Zoology, vol. v, No. 7. Cambridge. 104 pp. 8vo. 10 plates. In this important contribution thirteen new genera and ninety-six new species are added to those families included in this part. This shows, very conclusively, that the Ophiuroids, as a group, are largely deep-water forms. The new species are well illustrated and described at length. The new genera are Ophiomastus, Ophiopyrgus, Ophiocrinus, Ophiotrochus, Ophiophyllum, Ophiobyrsa, Ophiochiton, Ophiocamax, Ophiosciasma, Ophiogeron, each with one species; Ophioplinthus, Ophiopyren, and Ophiolebes, each with two species. Of known genera, there are described of Ophiocten, 4 species; Ophioglypha, 35; Ophiomusium, 12; Ophioceramis, 1; Ophiozona, 4; Ophioscolex 2.

V.

8. Synopsis of the Pycnogonida of New England; by EDMUND B. WILSON, Trans. Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, vol. v, Aug. 1878. 26 pp. 8vo, 7 plates.-The North American Pycnogonida have hitherto received very little attention. In this paper fourteen New England species are described, of which five are new. Of the remainder, six are Greenlandic and North European species, and three were described by Dr. Wm. Stimpson from the Bay of Fundy. The genera represented are as follows: Pycnogonum, 1 species; Tanystylum, 1; Achelia, 1; Pseudopallene, 2; Pallene, 1; Phoxichilidium, 2; Anoplodactylus, 1; Ammothea, 1; Nympthon, 4. The species are all illustrated.

V.

9. Proceedings of the United States National Museum, 1878. Vol. I. Washington, D. C.-We have received the first seven signatures of this new serial, which, in general character, resembles the Proceedings of the various learned societies, and contains both brief and somewhat lengthy articles on a variety of zoological subjects. Among the articles are several by Mr. W.

*See Report on Invertebrate Animals of Vineyard Sound and adjacent waters, in first Report of U. S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries, 1873, p. 421.

H. Dall, on shells, recent and fossil, mostly of the Pacific coast; several by Mr. G. Brown Goode, and T. H. Bean on Fishes, including a number of additions to the United States fauna; one on the fishes from the Clackamas River, Oregon, by D. S. Jordan; on the birds of Dominica, by G. N. Lawrence; a review of the American species of the genus Scops, by Robert Ridgway; on the voices of the Crustacea, by G. Brown Goode.

V.

10. Report on the Hydroida collected during the exploration of the Gulf Stream, by L. F. De Pourtales; by GEO. J. ALLMAN. Memoirs of the Mus. of Comp. Zoology. Vol. V, No. 2. 66 pp. 4to, with 34 lithographic plates. In this work a large number of very interesting new genera and species are described and profusely illustrated. The total number of species is seventy-one, of which sixty-four are described as new, the remaining seven being regarded as identical with European or arctic species. The Plumularida are particularly numerous, comprising twenty-eight species, of which twenty-six are new. Seventeen species occurred in less than fifty fathoms; thirteen between fifty and one hundred fathoms; sixteen between one hundred and two hundred; eight between two hundred and four hundred; and four between four hundred and six hundred fathoms.

V. MISCELLANEOUS SCIENTIFIC INTELLIGENCE.

V.

1. Report on Bridging of the River Mississippi between Saint Paul, Minn., and St. Louis, Mo.; by Brevet Major General G. K. WARREN, Major of Engineers. 232 pp. 8vo, with many maps. Washington, 1878.-This Report, after a prefatory chapter on the origin and nature of the investigation of which it treats, gives, in Chapter II, a general account of the Mississippi and Minnesota River Valleys, with maps illustrating the former drainage of Lake Winnipeg southward through these valleys; and in the following chapters, various details connected with the subject of bridging the river. The larger part of Chapter II, which has great geological interest, will be reproduced in another number of this Journal, together with the maps which relate to it.

2. Report of the Survey of the Connecticut River, made to the Secretary of War, by Brevet Maj. General G. K. WARREN. 144 pp. 8vo. 1878.--This valuable document consists mainly of the Report of General Theodore G. Ellis, who had charge of the work under General Warren. General Warren, in his preliminary statements, observes that the velocity observations made in the course of the survey (numbering at Thompsonville 1,434) confirm fully the deduction of Humphreys and Abbott (given in their Physics and Hydraulics of the Mississippi) as to the parabolic form of the curve of subsurface velocities. The maximum discrepancy between the requirements of the Humphreys and Abbot formula and the observations is only seven-hundredths of a foot per second. The observations are given in detail in General Ellis's Report, which follows; and as they were made with great

care, and without prejudice in favor of the conclusion reached, they are of the highest importance in the department of hydraulics.

General Ellis also gives the observations made with reference to the monthly and annual discharge of the Connecticut. These observations were carried forward at Hartford, which, although over forty miles from Long Island Sound, is reached by the tides, the amount of tide at the lowest water being about ten inches in range. This discharge for the year 1876 and 1877 was as follows:

The highest known freshet on the Connecticut below Holyoke is stated to have occurred in May, 1854, when the water at Hartford gauge stood twenty-nine feet ten inches above lowwater mark. The next highest on record-that of 1801-carried the waters up to twenty-seven feet six inches.

The report contains also the results of borings near the Connecticut River Channel at Hartford and to the north up to twenty-five miles. At Hartford and two-thirds of a mile north the depth reached was fifty feet below low water and in the latter case "hard red marl" was struck; at a point 1.56 miles north of Hartford, a boring of 90 feet ended in clay; 2.39 miles north, one of 123 4 feet reached, probably, rock; at 3.37 miles north, rock was reached in 21.11 feet; and at 44 miles north, rock was reached in 34.8 feet.

3. Translation of Weisbach's Mechanics.-The second part of Vol. II of this translation by Professor DuBois (8vo, viii and 559 pp.), contains a full discussion of the important subjects of Heat, Steam and Steam Engines. The first part on Hydraulics and Hydraulic Motors appeared about a year ago (this Journal, xv, 78). Numerous additions to the original work have been made in the form of notes. These are largely by Mr. Richard H. Buel, and are given in order to complete the work in those directions in which there has been recent progress, and to adapt it more fully to American practice.

The third and final volume of Professor Weisbach's great work is now undergoing thorough revision in Germany by Professor Hermann, and its translation will be issued by the publishers