A Texas Trip.
Butler college, Irvington, Indiana, will send an expedition to Texas, with headquarters at Dallas in that State. Studies in geology and natural history will be mainly pursued, and collections made of birds, fishes, reptiles, insects, plants, and fossils. The number of students will be from ten to twenty-five, and they will leave Indianapolis June 20, under the charge of Prof. John A. Myers. Mammoth Cave, Lookout mountain, and other places of interest in Tennessee and Alabama, will be visited, and the party will return in time for the Association for the Advancement of Science meeting at Nashville. Dallas, which is to be the centre of operations, is a thriving town in the grazing region of Texas, and is a good place for the study of botany and zoölogy.
Another lake excursion is projected by the Institute of Mining Engineers, who expect to spend two weeks in visiting the famous mining districts of that region. Though not precisely a "summer school," this will be both a professional and social excursion.
A committee of Wisconsin teachers recommend the introduction of this system of summer schools in that State. They want to have a class formed under Prof. T. C. Chamberlin, State geologist, to commence at St. Croix Falls, and make geological, zoölogical, and botanical studies down the Mississippi to Rock Island. Headquarters would be on a large boat.
Directors of other summer schools are requested to send notices of the work they are planning to do to the office of this magazine.
AN INTELLIGENT QUARANTINE.
The quarantine history of New York was quite remarkable in 1876. Yellow fever was epidemic at several ports along the Gulf and Atlantic coast, and no less than 363 vessels came into New York from those ports, ninety-nine of which had the disease on board, either during the voyage or in port. Under these circumstances, it may be supposed that the authorities were not disposed to encourage commerce between the city and the infected towns. Philadelphia and Baltimore adopted an interdiction of all trade with Savannah, as a precaution. But a bolder and wiser policy has gradually been introduced into the New York quarantine. Instead of being a loser by the yellow fever, that city was called upon to take the whole trade, and did so without hesitation, though the voyage from Charleston and some other ports occupied less time than the average incubation period of the disease, which might be introduced unnoticed into the city unless preventative measures were taken. Orders were given to receive no passengers from the afflicted cities, so that the quarantine authorities had only the cargo and crew to deal with. The ship was thoroughly fumigated and the cargo discharged as rapidly as was consistent with safe supervision. This rapid discharge is advised because a ship's heated hold is just the place for the full development of the fomites. If the cargo does carry the germs of the disease, the worst thing that can be done is to leave it in the ship, which is then likely to become a pest-house. Prompt removal reduces the danger to a minimum. By this intelligent course New York was able to keep open her communication with Savannah in the height of the epidemic, and she was the only city on the Atlantic to do so. More cotton than ever came to her harbor. The hygienic results are noticeable. Although more than a thousand deaths occurred in Savannah, not one case of yellow fever reached the city of New York by water. Two or three cases of sickness from vessels occurred in that city and Brooklyn; but though these were said to be yellow fever, their subsequent history did not sustain the supposition. They were probably a form of malarial fever which so nearly resembles the more dreaded disease that time is required to distinguish between them. Two cases of real yellow fever reached the city by rail, but all others were stopped at quarantine, which contained patients from January to the latter part of October, excepting one month—May. In all, sixty were treated there, most of whom were supposed to have yellow fever; but of these only thirty-nine really had that disease, the remainder having the peculiar form of malarial fever before spoken of. These results sustain the intelligent action of the quarantine officers who have stripped off the terrors which once hung about the name quarantine, and still do in so many parts of the world and of our own country.
THE "GRASSHOPPER COMMISSION."