Bacteria of the Dairy.—An investigation of the relation of acid fermentation to the flavor and aroma of butter, made by C. H. Eckles at the Iowa College Experiment Station, has given the results that the flavor is produced by the bacterial fermentations which have taken place in the milk and cream. The kind of flavor depends upon the class of bacteria causing the fermentation. The ripening of a good quality of acid cream is mostly a development of acid bacteria. Four species of acid-producing bacteria, tested in ripening pasteurized cream, were found to give the butter the typical flavor and aroma. Of the species tried, the most common milk-souring organism (Bacterium lactarii) was found to give the most satisfactory results in ripening cream. Cream ripened with common bacteria found in hay dust (Bacillus subtilis) gives a very undesirable flavor to butter. The superior flavor of summer butter is due to the greater number of bacteria of the acid class found in milk during that season.
For Outdoor Improvement.—The American Park and Outdoor Association has taken up and aims to nationalize the important work of the improvement of outdoors. Not that it expects to improve upon Nature, but it hopes to be able to neutralize or remedy the devastation and disfigurement which man has wrought upon her face. At the third annual meeting of the association, held in Detroit in July, 1899, preliminary steps were taken toward offering prizes for the improvement of grounds about manufactories and homes—both front and back lots—and especially about the homes of artisans. A standing committee was instituted to consider the best way of checking abuses of public advertising. A paper read by Mr. F. Law Olmstead, on the Relation of Reservoirs to Public Parks, concerned such construction of reservoirs and the surrounding them with suitable settings as would bring them into closer harmony with the park landscape and make them more a part of it. Another paper, by Mr. R. J. Coryell, of the Detroit parks, might be described as an effort to show how a similar service may be performed for the parks and the people—in other words, how to make the people at home in the parks. Its points were illustrated by citing what had been done in Detroit. Respecting means of preventing depredations, Mr. C. C. Lancey told of good results accomplished in Rochester, N. Y., by the distribution of circulars of information on the subject; and Mr. F. L. Olmstead, Jr., of the interest taken by the children in the school gardens in Cambridge, Mass.
Where Physical Investigation Fails.—From the discussion of the physical method, with its descriptive laws and applications and hypotheses, Prof. J. H. Poynting was led, in his address at the British Association, to the consideration of the limitation of its range. It was developed in the study of matter which we describe as non-living, and with non-living matter it has sufficed for the particular purposes of the physicist. Of course, only a little corner of the universe has been explored, but in the study of non-living matter we have come to no impassable gulfs, no chasms across which we can not throw bridges of hypothesis. Does the method equally suffice when it is applied to living matter? Can we give a purely physical account of such matter? Do we make any attempt to apply the physical method to describe and explain those motions of matter which on the psychical view we term voluntary? In practice the strictest physicist abandons the physical view, and replaces it by the psychical. He admits the study of purpose as well as the study of motion, and has to confess that here the physical method of prediction fails.
Honors to Sullivant and Lesquereux.—"Sullivant day," August 22d, was devoted in the American Association to the commemoration of the lives and works of William S. Sullivant and C. Leo Lesquereux, botanists, the former distinguished for his studies in the mosses and the latter for his researches in paleobotany, both of whom lived and did the work by which they became famous in Columbus, Ohio. Sullivant was born and passed the whole of his life in Columbus. Lesquereux, a Swiss by birth, lived in Columbus during many of his most fruitful years, and worked alongside of Sullivant. A considerable number of objects associated with the two botanists were on exhibition—rare botanical specimens, charts and pictures connected with their labors, and complete sets of their published works—and excellent and highly prized portraits of them were shown. The families of both were represented by the presence of daughters and granddaughters, among whom was Miss Arhart, a granddaughter of Lesquereux, who was associated with him in part of his work, and made most of the drawings for his later books. Prof. C. R. Barnes presided over the exercises. Prof. W. A. Kellerman read a tribute to Sullivant from Dr. Gray's supplement to the Icones. Mrs. Britton gave a short review of the species named from Sullivant (including twelve North American mosses). Professor Barnes read a tribute to Lesquereux, taken from the Botanical Gazette. Remarks were made and papers read on the Progress in the study of the Hepatica, by Prof. L. M. Underwood; the Moss Flora of Alabama, by Dr. Charles Mohr (read by Professor Earle); the History of the Study of the Mosses, by Mrs. Britton; the Classification of Certain Mosses, by A. J. Grout; the Study of Lichen Distribution in the Mississippi Valley, by Bruce Fink; and Botanical Teaching in the Secondary Schools, by W. C. Stevens and Ida Clendenin. Among the exhibits, those of twelve species of hepaticæ from California, by Prof. F. E. Lloyd; forty-five photographs of American students and collectors made famous by their work in mosses, by Mrs. Britton and Professor Underwood; and six species of mosses discovered and collected originally by Sullivant and Lesquereux near Columbus, deserve special mention.
Rate of Evolutionary Variation in the Past.—Mr. Adam Sedgwick, speaking, in his address at the British Association, of variation, selection, and heredity, having raised the question whether the variability of organisms has ever been different from what it is now, answered it in the affirmative, because it would be absurd to suppose that organisms would remain constant in this respect while they have undergone alteration in all their other properties. According to the Darwinian theory of evolution, one of the most important factors in determining the modification of organisms has been natural selection. It acts by preserving certain favorable variations, and allowing others less favorable to be killed off in the struggle for existence. It will thus come about that certain variations will be gradually eliminated, while the variations of the selected organisms will themselves be submitted to selection, and certain of these will in their turn be eliminated. In this way a group of organisms becomes more and more closely adapted to the surroundings. It would thus appear that the result of continued selection is to diminish the variability of a species. Hence, as selection has been going on all the while, variation must have been much greater in past times than it is now. Following out this train of reasoning, we are driven to the conclusion that one of the most important results of the evolutionary change has been the gradual increase and perfection of heredity as a function of organisms and a gradual elimination of variability. This view, if it can be established, is of the utmost importance to our theoretical conception of evolution, because it enables us to bring our requirements as to time within the limits granted by the physicists.
MINOR PARAGRAPHS.
Of the archæology of Block Island, Arthur Hollick found in his explorations that around the shores of Great Salt Pond and on the sand dunes that border the western shores of the island evidences of former occupation by the Indians are numerous. Kitchen middens are exposed in several street cuttings, implements are often found scattered over the surface of the ground in certain localities, and skeletons have been unearthed from time to time. In many places the kitchen midden accumulations were so obvious that it was impossible to ignore them entirely. They were found to consist of the customary collection of oyster and other shells, bones, pottery fragments, fire-cracked stones, charcoal, finished implements, rejects, flakes, chips, etc. The finished implements found were two axes, of a plagioclase igneous rock, and three arrow points, all of quartzite. In the sand dunes were many old fireplaces, mostly buried by the sand which has drifted over them. They could generally be located by the richness of the turf on the surface immediately above. Mixed with the accumulations in these places were the bones and teeth of animals. The island promises a good reward for archæological investigation.
In a form of disease known as peckiness in the cypress and pin-rot in the librocedrus, described by Hermann von Schrenk in a thesis presented to Washington University, the wood is destroyed in localized areas, which are surrounded by apparently sound wood. The cell walls are changed into compounds, which diffuse through the walls and fill the cells surrounding the decayed center, and these have been called humus compounds. In both trees a fungus mycelium occurs, with strongly marked characteristics, which flourishes within the diseased centers, and grows between them without affecting the intervening wood. This wood can be utilized for many purposes even when much rotted, and in neither case does the mycelium grow after the tree has once been cut down. The two trees thus diseased, both representatives of a race of trees the majority of which are extinct, are closely related genetically, although growing in different parts of the country. The two forms of decay differ but slightly, and not more than might be expected in two woods of different character.
Mr. J. C. Arthur, of the Purdue University Agricultural Experiment Station, a few years ago picked up a small white flower (Cerastium arvense oblongifolium) growing unobtrusively among the grass and low weeds of the roadside. It was a little more attractive than its relative which is called the field chickweed, and the author suggests the name of starry grasswort for it. Under cultivation it spread out over the ground in a close mat of foliage in a manner characteristic of many members of the pink family, to which it belongs; and now for six weeks in April and May it is a mass of "dazzling whiteness, softened with the pale green of stems and leaves," while "all winter long the prostrate stems remain alive to their very tips, and the leaves maintain a summerlike appearance," without the indurated, polished look so usually associated with evergreen foliage. This is one roadside flower taken up, perhaps casually, for cultivation and improvement. There are others—no one knows how many—that will doubtless likewise reward the pains taken with them; and this inspires Mr. Arthur to suggest to others that they keep a lookout for plants that may become desirable garden varieties and try them. "It is evident that showiness in the wild state is not the most important criterion by which to gauge the future culture value of a plant. One needs to have many factors in mind to meet with success, and it is hoped that the study of the starry grasswort will be suggestive in this line. The byways and fields undoubtedly hold many incipiently valuable decorative plants which await the discoverer, as truly as do those of the unexplored regions of Asia and Africa."
An experiment has been tried in New York during the past summer in the way of "vacation schools" for teaching housekeeping and domestic economy. Instruction was given daily in these arts in the public schoolrooms in Front and Oliver Streets and in Hester Street. At Front and Oliver Streets girls were taught to air, clean, and take care of a bedroom; to set table, clean, and take care of a living room; kitchen cleanliness; laundry work—one week being devoted to each course, and talks were given on furnishing a flat, the care of a cellar, and the importance of air and sunlight to health. The children were also taught daily to cook appetizing dishes and serve them. At Hester Street more time was given to the cooking lessons, instruction was given on the feeding of babies, and a class in nursing was taught; among other things, emergency bandaging, caring for helpless patients, and the hygiene of the sick-room.