Five thousand eight hundred and thirty-eight associations are represented, in the reports of which five thousand five hundred and ninety-eight were local and two hundred and forty national. The total dues paid in on installment shares in force, plus the profits on the same, amount to $450,667,594. "A business represented by this great sum, conducted quietly, with little or no advertising, and, as stated, without the experienced banker in charge, shows that the American people, in their own ways, are quite competent to take care of their savings." Only thirty-five of the associations now in existence showed a net loss at the end of their last fiscal year, and this loss amounted to only $23,332. When an association disbands, no loss can occur, because its whole business consists of loans, mostly to their own shareholders. A disbanded association, therefore, simply returns to its members their own property. Full particulars are given of the associations by States and by individual associations.
A History of Higher Education in Iowa has been prepared by Prof. Leonard F. Parker, of Iowa College, as Circular of Information No. 1 7 of the United States Bureau of Education. There is much in the educational history of Iowa, as Commissioner Harris well says, which is instructive to all students and observers of educational progress, since within the limits of that State a noteworthy zeal has prevailed from the time of the earliest settlements in founding institutions of learning and in providing instruction for all classes of people. The narrative tells the story of the first schools in Iowa previous to 1838, Education during the Territorial Period, Early Education in the State, the Free-School System, Provisions for the Education of Teachers, the State Agricultural College, the State University, Private Secondary Schools, Denominational Colleges, Institutions no longer existing, the Higher Education of Women in Iowa, and Educational Auxiliaries.
In the Report on the Crustacea of the Order Stomatopoda (No. XXXII of the Scientific Results of Explorations by the United States Fish Commission Steamer Albatross) Dr. Robert P. Bigelow makes a classification of the Squilla family from a study of the specimens in the National Museum, the Fish Commission, and a private collection made by him in the Bimini Islands (Bahamas). These, he finds, represent thirty-four species distributed through five genera, of which fourteen are new. The collection of larvae was large, but unfortunately contained nothing like a complete series of stages of any one species. The changes of form between two stages are so great that almost no larva in the collection could be referred with certainly to its adult form.
In his paper on The Systematic Position of the Siphonaptera Prof. Alpheus S. Packard bases his opinions upon the work of Landois, Kraepelin, and Wagner, besides some work of his own. He believes that the fleas should be referred to an independent order, and not classed with the flies. He calls attention to the presence of a temporary larval structure in the dog flea (Pulex canis) that is, so far, unique among insects. This is an egg-shell burster. It is a thin vertical plate like the edge of a knife, situated on the median line, and so placed that the larva, by rubbing its head back and forth, would produce a slight split in the shell and cause it to burst asunder. In the larva just before hatching the plate is no more hard than the rest of the head; later it entirely disappears. While he places them nearer to the Diptera than to any other order, he calls attention to our very imperfect knowledge of their embryology, and states that the present assignment may be temporary.
From Volume XIII of the Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences it appears that in the year ending in February, 1894, eighty-one papers had been presented before the academy. The departments of science most largely represented in these papers were zoölogy, astronomy, geology, and paleontology, in the order named. This volume contains the report of the committee on the Audubon monument, with the speech of Prof. Thomas Eggleston presenting the monument to the corporation of Trinity Church, that of Dr. Morgan Dix accepting it, and the address of Daniel G. Elliot on the life and services of Audubon. Among the more extended papers of the volume are Observations on the Geology and Botany of Martha's Vineyard, by Arthur Hollick; The Ore Deposits at Franklin Furnace and Ogdensburg, N. J., by J. F. Kemp; The Intrusive Rocks
