Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/433

Rh Forests of the Pacific Region.—According to our census report, the forests of the Pacific region owe their density and position to the character of the rainfall, which is heavier on the northern part of that coast than anywhere else in the United States; and their general distribution and density follow the distribution and amount of the rainfall, diminishing as we go southward into drier climates. The forests of this region are: the Northern forest, from the seventieth to the fifty-eighth degree of latitude, composed principally of white spruce and species allied to but not identical with the canoe-birch and balsam-fir of the Atlantic coast; the Coast forest, extending in a narrow strip from the sixtieth to the fiftieth parallel, and thence along the summit of the Sierra Nevada, almost to the Mexican line, composed of a few coniferous species, among which are the Alaska cedar, the tide-land-spruce, the hemlock, and the red fir. Its important feature is the red-wood belt, whose heaviest growth is found north of the Bay of San Francisco, and which contains more wood than any other forest of similar extent. The forest of the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, extending from the base of Mount Shasta to the thirty-fifth parallel, is next in density, is from four thousand to eight thousand feet above the sea, and is characterized by the great sugar-pine. The forest of the Valleys is composed of scattered oaks; and the Interior forest, from the Sierra to the Rocky Mountains, is of inferior importance.

How Milk is tainted.—According to the "Live-Stock Journal," milk is most liable to be hurt by the absorption of odors when it is colder than the surrounding air. For when it is warmer, the air, warmed by the contact with it, expands, with an increased capacity for absorbing gases and moisture, and rises, carrying such odors as it may have collected along with it. Thus, cold air, though it be not wholly pure, does not contaminate milk, but tends to purify it. Milk will not become contaminated, even in the stable, so long as it is warmer than the surrounding air. The question how stable-odors get into milk is answered by the statement that they are acquired from the breath of the cow. The animal can not avoid taking in these odors, and upon entering the lungs they are forced at once into the circulation. The blood becomes charged with them, and the milk, which serves as a means of unloading the blood of its impurities as well as of its nutriment, also becomes loaded with them intensified.

Individual Enterprise in Scientific Research.—While different governments have equipped large expeditions and spent considerable sums of money to assist deep-sea dredging expeditions, a similar work has been going on in Switzerland, which has no marine and not a very plethoric treasury, by individual effort, in the study of life in the depths of the lakes. The brunt of the labor has been performed by Dr. F. A. Forel, of Morgues, Professor of Comparative Anatomy in the Academy of Lausanne, who is at home in nearly all the sciences, a man in the vigor of his age, very active and very enterprising, and acquainted with Lake Leman to its very bottom and in all its moods. He has published a considerable number of memoirs respecting his explorations, and the lessons in biology and the theory of development which they suggest, of which he takes the broadest views, and to which he has given thorough examination. His principal collaborator in the zoölogical field in Dr. Du Plessis, Professor of Zoölogy in the Academy, who has been for twelve years engaged in the determination of genera and species, and has prepared a critical table of the species constituting the deep zone fauna. Dr. Forel has personally made soundings and examinations, besides Lake Leman, in the Lakes of Annecy, Morat, Neufchâtel, Zürich, and Constance. Professor Pavesi, of the University of Pa via, has explored the lakes of the canton of Tessin and Northern Italy. Dr. Asper, of the University of Zürich, has dredged in the lakes of Zürich, Wallenstadt, Egeri, Zug, the Lake of the Four Cantons, Lugano, Como, Klönthal, Silse, and Silvaplana. Some of these lakes are situated high upon the Alps, and are consequently of interest in the study of the vertical distribution of species. Dr. Imhof, of Zürich, has also examined several lakes, and contemplates extending his studies over a considerable geographical area. August Weissman, of