Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/780

760 at last the queen escaped without having completed her work. Thus the workers knew how to advise the queen that something was as yet to be done, but they knew not how to show her where it had to be done. In the same hive there appeared to be two political parties among the workers, dissenting about the construction of the combs, one destroying what the other had begun to build.

The Western Grasshopper Plague.—A lady correspondent of a Western journal gives the most graphic description we have anywhere seen of the annoyance and discomfort caused by the grasshoppers during their recent invasion of some of the Western States and Territories. Writing from Northeastern Kansas, under date of August 5th, the correspondent states that then the grasshoppers were flying all around, and alighting on every thing, pelting against doors and windows as fast as hailstones ever came. It was scarcely possible to see through a screen door, on account of the insects swarming on the netting. Out-of-doors, the appearance was as though a severe snow-storm were raging, the wings of the flying grasshoppers looking white like flakes of snow. "They destroy every thing they alight on; every tree and shrub is covered with them. You know we read of Pharaoh's plague, where the insects got into the kneading-trough. I think this is one of them. I went out by the door to try and drive them off, and they flew all over me, and I had to change my dress to get rid of them. Instead of having rain, we are having showers of grasshoppers. Our six windows are completely covered with them, and as I write they are pouring down the chimney, and coming down the stove-pipe."

The Flora of the Black Hills.—General Custer, in a dispatch dated August 2d, graphically describes the botanical wonders of the Black Hills country, Dakota. Of "Floral Valley" he says that it surpasses in its display of flowers any public or private park he had ever seen. Every step of the march up that valley was amid flowers of the most exquisite colors and perfume. So luxuriant in growth were they that the troopers plucked them without dismounting. At one of the halting-places. General Forsyth plucked, choosing at random, seventeen beautiful flowers, of different species, and within a space of twenty feet square. The same evening, while seated at the mess-table, an officer called attention to the carpet of flowers under foot, and the question arose, how many different species could be plucked by the company without leaving their seats at table. Seven beautiful varieties were thus gathered. Prof. Donaldson, botanist of the expedition, estimated the number of flowers in bloom in Floral Valley at fifty, while an equal number of varieties had bloomed or were yet to bloom. The number of trees, shrubs, and grasses, was twenty-five, making the total flora of this valley embrace 125 species. Through this beautiful valley meanders a stream of crystal water, so cold as to render ice undesirable, even at noonday. The temperature of two of the many springs found flowing into it was ascertained to be 44° and 44$1/2$° respectively.

An International Pharmacopœia.—In the American Journal of Pharmacy for July 1st, Dr. Charles H. Thomas, of Philadelphia, calls attention to the serious disagreements existing between the British and United States Pharmacopœia; and strongly advocates the adoption of some measures by which the two books may be brought into greater accord, or, better still, fused into a single one. As they stand at present, the terms employed and the formulæ used are widely different, so that, while in the other departments of medicine what the student finds in the text-books and oral teaching of one country is common to both, in the department of materia medica, and in pharmacy, the variations and discrepancies could hardly be greater were it a case of two different languages. This condition of things operates as a great annoyance to the physician of one country wishing to practise in the other, and is still more aggravating to the teacher, who is unable to lay down any established rules of guidance beyond the limits of his own country, whereas these rules should be coextensive with the language.

Dr. Thomas thinks that the general adoption of the metrical, or some other