often allowed to be considered as the proper atmosphere in which zoological scientific workers should be reared, and their investigations conducted. Prof. Fritsch's station consists of a movable building, which was presented to the Committee by a friend, and cost £70. "With its internal fittings, it now has a value of £200; yet everything is very humble, and the want of better instruments strongly felt. The annual working expenses of three investigators amount to £40, their work itself being given freely." Nevertheless they have just finished the examination of two lakes in the Böhmerwald, and the station has been transferred to Podiebrad, in the middle of Bohemia, for the investigation of the river Elbe.
It is to be hoped, as the Professor remarks, that it may soon be known that our "wealthy country has done her duty for fresh-water biology."
A series of bibliographies of representative American naturalists was long ago commenced in the Bulletins of the United States National Museum. The series was naturally limited to the work of naturalists living and working in America, but one exception has been made in favour of Dr. P.L. Sclater, "the Secretary of the Zoological Society of London, who has confined his work for the most part to American ornithology, and whose contributions to the systematic ornithology of the American Continent have far exceeded in extent those of anyone working in this country." Thus writes Mr. G. Brown Goode in the introduction to "The Published Writings of Philip Lutley Sclater, 1844-1896," issued at Washington, 1896. This small volume contains a portrait, biographical sketch, and a chronological catalogue of all papers and notes published. There are 1287 bibliographical references.
We have received the Sixty-third Annual Report of the York School Natural History, Literary, and Polytechnic Society for 1896. This institution seems to be in a fairly flourishing condition, and one of the most interesting items in the Report is the following:—"Last spring a number of boys kept fresh-water aquaria in the botanical room. In these the habits of newts, snails, fishes, and minute crustaceans were studied, some of the latter being drawn as viewed through the microscope." This is the training for the naturalists of the next generation—to observe the habits of live animals is as important as dissecting the bodies of dead ones; both studies are necessary, but there seems sometimes a danger of the first being somewhat neglected.
