As to the superiority of the Columbia River salmon, there is no doubt that the quinnat salmon average larger and fatter in the Columbia than in the Sacramento and in Puget Sound. The difference in the canned fish is, however, probably hardly appreciable. The canned salmon from the Columbia, however, bring a better price in the market than those from elsewhere. The canners there generally have had a high regard for the reputation of the river, and have avoided canning fall fish or species other than the quinnat. In the Frazer's River the blue-back is largely canned, and its flesh being a little more watery and perhaps paler, is graded below the quinnat. On Puget Sound various species are canned; in fact, everything with red flesh. The best canners on the Sacramento apparently take equal care with their product with those of the Columbia, but they depend largely on the somewhat inferior fall run. There are, however, sometimes salmon canned in San Francisco, which have been in the city markets, and for some reason remaining unsold, have been sent to the canners; such salmon are unfit for food, and canning them should be prohibited. The fact that the hump-back salmon runs only on alternate years in Puget Sound (1875, 1877, 1879, etc.) is well attested and at present unexplained. Stray individuals only are taken in other years. This species has a distinct "run," in the United States, only in Puget Sound, although individuals (called "lost salmon") are occasionally taken in the Columbia and in the Sacramento.--_American Naturalist._ * * * * * THE RELATION BETWEEN ELECTRICITY AND LIGHT. [Footnote: A lecture by Dr. O. J. Lodge, delivered at the London Institution on December 16, 1880.] Ever since the subject on which I have the honor to speak to you to-night was arranged, I have been astonished at my own audacity in proposing to deal in the course of sixty minutes with a subject so gigantic and so profound that a course of sixty lectures would be quite inadequate for its thorough and exhaustive treatment. I must indeed confine myself carefully to some few of the typical and most salient points in the relation between electricity and light, and I must economize time by plunging at once into the middle of the matter without further preliminaries.