Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/521

Rh  Mammals. By Elliott Coues. Pp .22. Bulletin of the United States Entomological Commission. No. 2. Pp .14. Washington: Government Printing-Office.

The Plants of Wisconsin. By G. D. Swezey. Beloit: Free Press print.



Scientific Associations for 1877.—The French Association for the Advancement of Science will this year hold its sessions in August, at the city of Havre, under the presidency of Dr. Broca, the eminent archæologist. The Geological Society of Normandy will give an exhibition of the geological and paleontological products of that ancient province.

The annual meeting of the British Association will be held at Plymouth, on August 15th; Prof. Allen Thomson, President. The officers of the Association hope to be supported by the personal assistance and written contributions of philosophers of other countries, and they undertake to make preparation for the reception of the distant friends and associates who may give notice of their intention to be present at the meeting.

The officers of the American Association for the next meeting, which is to be held at Nashville, Tennessee, commencing on Wednesday, August 29th, are Prof. Simon Newcomb, President; Prof. Edward C. Pickering, Vice-President of the Physical Section; Prof. O. C. Marsh, Vice-President Section of Geology and Natural History; Prof. N. T. Lupton, chairman of the Chemical Subsection; Prof Daniel Wilson, chairman of the Subsection of Anthropology; R. H. Ward, chairman of the Subsection of Microscopy; A. R. Grote, General Secretary; F. W. Putnam, Permanent Secretary; William S. Vaux, Treasurer.

Shad in the Ohio River.—Mr. Spencer F. Baird, of the United States Fish Commission, in a letter to the editor of Forest and Stream, states that he has received a few specimens of a genuine white shad, four pounds in weight, taken from the Ohio River at Louisville, Kentucky—a direct result from the efforts made by the commission to stock the western rivers with shad. The letter gives a brief account of the work done by the commission toward introducing the shad into the waters of the Western States, beginning with 1872, when Seth Green planted 30,000 young shad in the Alleghany at Salamanca, New York, and 25,000 in the Mississippi near St. Paul. Later in the same year, the Rev. Mr. Clift placed 200,000 in the Alleghany at Salamanca, and a small number in the Cuyahoga and in the White River at Indianapolis. The same gentleman carried 2,000 young shad as far west as the Platte, at Denver. In 1863 about 160,000 shad were placed in the Greenbriar and New Rivers in West Virginia, and about 55,000 in the Monongahela in Pennsylvania and the Wabash in Indiana. Mr. Baird has been informed that for some considerable time forty to fifty shad have been taken daily at Louisville by a drag seine said not to exceed thirty or forty yards long, and that in the shoaler water of only three or four feet, while the regular steamboat-channel is ten or twelve yards deep and 250 yards wide.

A Remarkable Salt-Bed at Goderich, Ontario.—Dr. T. Sterry Hunt gave, at the late meeting of the Institute of Mining Engineers, an account of the layers of rock-salt in the geological strata of Goderich, Ontario, as developed by a boring recently made. The paper has been published in the Engineering and Mining Journal, from which we quote some particulars regarding two of the most important rock-salt beds reached in the course of the boring. A bed of rock-salt of exceptional purity was found at the depth of 1,060 feet, and another bed, not so pure, at the depth of 1,092 feet. Of these, the former is 25 feet thick and the latter 34 feet; they are separated from each other by a layer of less than seven feet of rock, and for practical purposes may be regarded as one. The amount of foreign matter contained in the twenty-five-foot bed is singularly small, being less than a quarter of one per cent. Its remarkable purity is seen on comparing this with the best commercial salts. Thus, Cheshire rock-salt contains of foreign matter 2.67 per cent., and the famous rock-salt of Cardona, Spain, 1.45 per cent, of impurities.

The salts got by evaporation from sea-water and from brines, with which our markets are in great part supplied, contain nearly 