Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/314

310 glimpses of the cottages on the further shore of the harbor. In the foreground the-water is shown as though sectioned to disclose the submarine portions of the wharf piles with their bewildering display of living forms. In the center of the foreground a broken pile is completely covered by a colony of edible mussels (Mytilus edulis) over which has spread the pink and saffron clusters of a delicate hydroid (Tubularia crocea). Other species of hydroids are interspersed with fleshy masses of rosy-pink "sea-pork" (Amaroucium pellucidum), while glowing dully in the center is an orange-red colony of the beautiful red-beard sponge (Microciona prolifera). A graceful yellow and pink-tinted jellyfish (Dactylometra quinquecirra) with frilled mouth and fringed umbrella floats near the pile, and a school of squid (Loligo pealii) swims back and forth among the long thread-like filaments of the alga known as the "devil's shoe-string" (Chorda filum). The pile to the left is encrusted with the tubes of serpulid worms (Hydreides dianthus), whose many-colored gill circlets are protruded flower-like from all parts of the pile, and overhanging these are the yellow masses of the ascidian Molgula manhattensis. On this and the neighboring piles are also scattered in wild profusion sea-anemones, starfishes, mossanimals and several species of ascidians besides those already mentioned. Most of these are sessile animals and form an admirable illustration of adaptation to an inactive life and a diet of microorganisms, as contrasted with the swiftly moving and voracious fishes and squid shown elsewhere in the group.

Other groups which have been completed in this series are the "shore mollusk group," showing the animals of a sand-spit at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, and the "Woods Hole marine worm group." A group to illustrate the invertebrate animals of a Nahant rock tide-pool is under construction.

important international congresses were arranged for the month of August, two of them on this continent. The Congress of School Hygiene meets at Buffalo just after the issue of the present number of the The Geological Congress met at Toronto, and the International Medical Congress at London earlier in the month, but only the cabled accounts of the latter congress are at hand in daily papers. It is gratifying that these should be somewhat full, The Boston Transcript, for example, devoting as much space as two columns in a single issue to cabled despatches. The proceedings of a medical congress, more especially those parts relating to public hygiene, can with advantage be brought to the attention of the widest possible public.

International medical congresses were organized in Paris in 1867 and have since been held at four-year periods. The second congress was held in London thirty-two years ago under the presidency of Sir James Paget. Among those who took part in its proceedings were Pasteur, Virchow, Charcot, Koch, Huxley and Lister. Since that time vast progress has been made in the medical sciences and in their application, but it may be that a generation hence none of those taking part in the present congress will be so widely distinguished.

The general sessions of the congress were held in Albert Hall. The address in medicine was given by Professor Schauffard, the distinguished French physician; the address in surgery by Dr. Harvey Cushing, recently called from the Johns Hopkins University to Harvard University, and the address in pathology by Professor Ehrlich, of Frankfort. The general addresses were continued on the two following days, when Professor William Bateson spoke on heredity and Mr. John Burns, president of the British Local Government Board, gave an address on public