and reed-like as seen at a distance, show distinctly, to the nearer view, the nodes at which, in other species of the genus, broad, flaunting leaves are developed, and at each of these leaf-nodes the careful observer detects a pair of minute, awl-shaped appendages which are technically the leaves of this anomalous Asclepiad of the desert.

On passing forth from the mountain gorge to the open plain, the eye is greeted by an assemblage of such strange-looking vegetable forms as command the wondering attention of all travelers, whether scientists or not. Among these the cacti are the most conspicuous; some of them globose or cylindrical, resembling so many enormous melons set up on end, having prickly sides and bearing flowers and fruits at the top. Others are more like orchard trees, with smoothish trunks and well-rounded heads of branches bending under a load of pear-shaped fruits.

One of these cacti (Opuntia bigelowi Engelm.) is, in its general aspect, doubtless a more forbidding thing than any "thorn" or "thistle" which the ancestral fugitives from Eden ever met with in oriental wilds. If the reader wishes to form a definite and tolerably correct idea of this plant's appearance, let him imagine a post four or five feet high and as many inches thick, putting forth, from its upper extremity, a half dozen clumsy arms or branches of the size and shape of ordinary ball-clubs, the trunk and club-shaped branches all so thickly beset with long, needle-like, glistening spines, that the spines are actually the only part of the plant visible. With such a horrid growth as this the grand knolls and lower slopes of all the hills are covered.

Extremely odd looking and not more odd than beautiful is the small tree locally known by its Mexican name ocotilla (Fouquiera splendens Engelm.). It grows to the height of from eight to twelve feet, and in outline is quite precisely fan-shaped. To show how this may be, let me describe more particularly its mode of growth. The proper trunk, usually ten or twelve inches in diameter, is not more than a foot and a-half high. At just a few inches above the surface of the sands this trunk abruptly separates into a dozen or more distinct and almost branchless stems. These simple stems rising to the height of eight or ten feet, gradually diverge from one another, giving to the whole shrub the outline of a spread fan. Each separate stem is clothed throughout with short gray thorns and small dark-green leaves,

and terminates in a spike a foot long of bright-scarlet, trumpetshaped flowers. This splendid oddity flourishes in great abundance in many places.

The stems are not so thickly armed with thorns but that a man may handle them if he will seize them circumspectly with his fingers, and being very hard and durable, as well as of a convenient size, they are much employed for fencing purposes about the stage stations and upon the ranches adjoining the desert. Give a skillful Mexican ocotilla poles and plenty of raw hide thongs, and he requires neither nail nor hammer to construct a line of fence which for combined strength, neatness and durability fairly rivals the best work of that kind done in our land of saw mills and nail factories. As a tree or shrub of strange peculiar beauty, the cultivators will vainly desire to add this to their list of varieties, unless their art can reproduce the parched and sterile gravel heaps and the dry, withering atmosphere which it finds congenial. Those who have ever experienced anything of a naturalist's enthusiasm will readily believe that the writer, in passing amid these and other unmentioned objects of thrilling interest, hardly felt the intensity of the mid-day heat, nor realized how much he was suffering from thirst until, at two o'clock, almost before he had thought of such a place or wished it near, he found himself but a few rods away from the station of Coyote Wells. This is the westernmost stopping place on the desert, only twelve miles out from the base of the mountains. The place derives its name from the fact that here the Coyotes, long before ever white men had passed this way, smelled water near the surface, and pawed in the sands until they reached it. These wells of the Coyotes having been suitably excavated and curbed up, supply the best water that has been found on all the breadth of the desert; the other wells being more or less strongly impregnated with offensive salts or alkalies. Having reached the shade of an adobe wall, I gladly took refuge from the heat, and for something less than an hour, did little but drink water. Dinner was then announced, after which I sought again the shade outside, rested, and studied for another hour the rugged outline of a mountain range which broke the level of the plain some ten miles to the northward. The station keeper was going to remove thither some day to settle and dig gold; plenty of the precious metal there; no doubt about it. Only a few years ago a white man and a negro had gone there to dwell to

gether and amass each his fortune. A late party of prospectors passing that way had found the white man's bones whitening among the sun-burnt rocks. The conclusion was that the negro had murdered his partner and absconded with the accumulated gains of both. And with many such cheerful and edifying bits of history do they seek to beguile the time which weary travelers spend at these desolate halting places in the wilderness.

EDITORS' TABLE.

EDITORS: A. S. PACKARD, JR., AND E. D. COPE.

Whenever an institution accepts a bequest designed to assist impecunious but worthy students in the acquisition of some useful kind of knowledge, such as natural history, its obligations to itself, the donor and beneficiaries of the gift, are plainly that it must, under the direction of a competent committee, see that the donated funds are applied to the objects for which they were given. Such bequests render the institutions accepting them, charitable, and if in addition the bequest is for the purpose of enabling any particular class of persons to acquire a specific kind of knowledge, the institution becomes educational in the same sense that any special school is considered to be such. Under no ordinary circumstances can the governing body in charge of such a trust, neglect the duty of ascertaining whether the persons directly in charge of the incumbent beneficiaries, do their duty, and whether the beneficiaries themselves are competent persons who are making the proper progress under the proper discipline. Otherwise there is room for maladministration under unauthorized authority; or, the beneficiaries with no direction, under no discipline or instruction, fritter away their time in fruitless effort, at a period of life when they can ill afford to lose it.

The Academy of Natural Sciences, of Philadelphia, some years ago accepted a trust of this kind. Mr. A. E. Jessup's children, out of dutiful regard for their father's wishes, gave the society a sum in trust, the income of which was designed for the benefit of impecunious young men who desired to devote the whole of their time and energies to the pursuit of natural science. The desire to give a sum of money for such a purpose in a man like Mr. Jessup was a natural one, which probably took its rise in the recollection

of his own early struggles for knowledge, when he, too, was poor. He wished that the money he had verbally bequeathed should be used for the support of poor young men only, who would devote the whole of their time to study. Have Mr. Jessup's wishes been fully complied with in the administration of the benefits of the fund?

It has been argued that inasmuch as the Academy afforded the facilities for study in its library and collections, that all Jessup beneficiaries should in return spend a certain number of hours each day at work for the Academy. This is now the rule. But, as it has been claimed time and time again that the Academy is a charitable institution, it does not seem to be in keeping with this claim to ask Jessup scholars to devote a part of their time to labor in order to pay the Academy for the privilege of studying in its building, especially when the work they are frequently expected to perform has no interest to them or no scientific bearing whatever. The character of some of the work at which Jessup scholars have been employed, may be gathered from the following statements of facts: In one case a beneficiary was put to washing shells to prepare them for a specialist; another was employed at brushing and dusting off the collection of stuffed birds; on another occasion one of them was set to work by the librarian to copy the titles of books in the library for compilation of catalogues, properly the duty of the librarian himself, for which he is employed and paid. It has become the rule to make the Jessup scholars take the place of the janitors at the door once or twice a week, to sell the tickets which admit strangers to the museum of the Academy. It is hard to make a mental distinction in these cases between the supposed duties of a janitor and a Jessup scholar of the Academy. For months at a time Jessup scholars were employed in packing, hoisting, moving and unpacking cases, specimens, books and lumber during the time when the library and museum were being removed to the new building, in company with other laborers, yet it was considered that this was a part of the curriculum of study for which they could properly receive pay from the Jessup fund. The president of the Academy has had his official correspondence copied in duplicate by a Jessup scholar on various occasions. Besides these abuses, the recording secretary was in the habit of having his weekly reports of the meetings of the Academy copied in duplicate by one of them for the daily press, and the corresponding secretary has the blanks acknowledging donations filled up by one of these scholars. They are also frequently used as messengers by the secretary, president and curators. They have become, in short, a species of men-of-all-work, useful to everybody about the institution, with no definite knowledge of their relation to the fund from whence they derive an income just sufficient, with close economy, to support themselves. These persons then are virtually employés of

the Academy, paid from the income of a bequest designed to foster free scholarships. Suppose the various scholarships in America and the fellowships in English universities were tenable only upon condition that a certain amount of manual labor was performed; would it be at all likely that Prof. Clerk-Maxwells or Sir Wm. Thomsons would be the results of the system?

A matter which also deserves notice is the custom of assigning to Jessup students the work of arranging and labeling_the collections of which they possess no previous knowledge. This plan is in principle beneficial to the student, and its originators rightly comprehended the benefits to be derived from a systematic study of any given group of animals. But it is obviously improper to entrust the determination of a collection for scientific study to inexperienced persons, who are, moreover, sometimes careless, or quite indifferent about the accuracy of determinations. This plan is also objectionable on account of the fact that the training of a young naturalist in this way restricts him to a comparatively small group, so that he is quite unfitted to begin work as a teacher from a lack of comprehensiveness and the originality consequent upon a system of more general work. A broader preliminary training should be required of a person who applies for the benefits of this fund, all of which would redound to the credit of both the individual scholars and the Academy in after years. His knowledge of the elements of biological science should be as full as possible, so that he would not be afterwards compelled to go back and begin at the ground principles of his science, in order to underpin, as it were, his own mental super

structure.

In order to realize the abolition of what is manifestly wrong, as indicated in the foregoing recital, it is much to be desired that a living interest should be taken in the welfare of the Jessup scholars and scholarships, by members of the Academy, who by reason of their scientific attainments and experience as educators are abundantly able to do so. The apathy which allows the present condition to continue, is wrong, because the opportunities for the nurture of young men, who may become eminent naturalists, in the Academy might be made as good as anywhere in the United States. It remains the duty of the governing body of the Academy to appoint some naturalist who shall see that some sort of plan of study is followed by each student, and define and plan some specific courses of preliminary training in biology which would qualify the student to begin independent and original studies for himself, in which he might distinguish himself and reflect credit upon the institution which fostered him. The realization of some such method of training could readily be effected by the adoption of the scheme of professorships or curatorships which has elicited such an amount of silly animosity.