The hatch of salmon trout this season was not far from 1,200,000, and these will be distributed chiefly in the large lakes of the interior. About a million little brook trout were produced. The commission doubts whether much benefit has resulted from attempting to stock small streams that have once been good trout waters, but the temperature of which has been changed by cutting away the forest trees that overhung them. The best results have been attained where the waters are of considerable extent, especially those in and bordering on the wilderness in the northern part of the State. The experiments with California trout, have been very successful, and it is found that the streams most suitable for them, are the Hudson, Genesee, Mohawk, Moose, Black, and Beaver rivers, and the East and West Canada creeks. The commission hopes to hatch 6,000,000 or 8,000,000 shad this season at a cost of about $1,000. Concerning German carp, the commissioners find that the water at Caledonia is too cold for this fish, but think that carp would do well in waters further south.
The commission awaits a more liberal appropriation of money before beginning the work of hatching at the new State fish farm at Cold Spring, on the north side of Long Island, thirty miles out from Brooklyn.
MIOCENE MAN.
Grant Allen, an English evolutionist, gives this imaginary picture of our supposed ancestor: "We may not unjustifiably picture him to ourselves as a tall and hairy creature, more or less erect, but with a slouching gait, black faced and whiskered, with prominent, prognathous muzza, and large, pointed canine teeth, those of each jaw fitted into an interspace in the opposite row. These teeth, as Mr. Darwin suggests, were used in the combats of the males. His forehead was no doubt low and retreating, with bony bosses underlying the shaggy eyebrows, which gave him a fierce expression, something like that of the gorilla. But already, in all likelihood, he had learned to walk habitually erect, and had begun to develop a human pelvis, as well as to carry his head more straight on his shoulders. That some such animal must have existed seems to me an inevitable corollary from the general principles of evolution and a natural inference from the analogy of other living genera."
GOULIER'S TUBE-GAUGE.
As well known, the method by which glass barometer tubes are made gives them variable calibers. Not only do the different tubes vary in size, but even the same tube is apt to have different diameters throughout its length, and its sections are not always circular. Manufacturers of barometers often have need to know exactly the dimensions of the sections of these tubes, and to ascertain whether they are equal throughout a certain length of tube, and this is especially necessary in those instruments in which the surfaces of the sections of the reservoir and tube must bear a definite ratio to one another. Having ascertained that no apparatus existed for measuring the caliber of these and anolagous tubes, and that manufacturers had been accustomed to make the measurements by roundabout methods, Colonel Goulier has been led to devise a small apparatus for the purpose, and which is shown in the accompanying cuts.
