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." The last Congress made an appropriation of $18,000 for an Entomological Commission, and for once the Government has made a perfectly satisfactory series of appointments. Prof. C. V. Riley, the distinguished and experienced State entomologist of Missouri, is the chief of the commission, while Prof. Cyrus Thomas, State Entomologist of Illinois, one of the most noted American authorities, and Dr. A. S. Packard, author of several works on insect and other morphology, are its other members. They will have their headquarters at Dr. Hayden's office, in Washington, and also a Western office in St. Louis. In the division of work Prof. Riley takes the country east of the Rocky mountains and south of the forty-eighth parallel, Prof. Thomas has Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, and East Wyoming, and Dr. Packard the remainder of the country west of these two areas. The object of the commission may be stated to be the discovery of the best means of lessening the ravages of insects upon American crops; but to learn this it will be necessary to study not only the life histories of the grasshopper and Colorado beetle, but also their climatic and geographical relations. The damage done by insects probably amounts to some scores of millions yearly, and it has long been apparent that one of the next services demanded of scientific men would be efficient aid and direction in the warfare of man against his smallest foes in the animal world. In the early history of a country, it is possible to provide against these losses by cultivating an excess of land, but when population becomes concentrated it is necessary to avoid the loss. The destructiveness of insects has never attracted so much attention as within the last half century, which is also notable as a period of extraordinary increase in the population of the civilized portions of the world. Now that the welfare of a great empire has been seriously threatened by the operations of one insect, and several States in our own country have been so overrun with another insect that both the States concerned and the general Government have been compelled to modify their laws in order to afford relief to