While nobody is likely to stake out a few thousand acres of glacier for a farm, an Hungarian botanist, Dr. Ersebet Kol, has made first-hand studies of the conditions under which the minute plant organism could live and multiply, including the acidity of the ice. Concerning the Columbia glacier, one of the largest in the Alaska ice-fields, Dr. Kol reported to the Smithsonian Institution: “When I stepped on the ice, I saw for the first time a phenomenon to be seen only on coastal glaciers. The surface of the ice was covered for miles and miles with light brownish-purple algal vegetation called ice-bloom. This effect is produced by immense quantities of minute plants called Ancyclonema, a characteristic plant of the permanent ice. It can never be found elsewhere, even on permanent snow. It belongs to the green algae first found on the coast glaciers of Greenland. Since that time, the microorganism has been found in several localities in Europe, and I have found it occasionally on the glaciers of the interior but never in sufficient quantities to form the ice-bloom of the coastal glaciers. “Here I had an opportunity of studying another striking phenomenon of the permanent snow regions of Alaska—colored snow, especially red snow. Above Valdez, around the Thompson Pass, the snowfields glitter with a reddish color in the beginning of August. The snow was red not only on the surface, but also to a depth of several inches and even in one place to a depth of two feet, caused by the presence of millions of tiny plants, Chlamydomonas nivalis. The snow on Thompson Pass looks as though it has been sprinkled with red pepper, differing in this respect from the red of other snowfields, which is usually a light raspberry red.” _Poison Arrow Frogs_ There is a green frog, about the size of a half dollar, that is one of the most virulently poisonous creatures on earth—but only after it has been roasted alive. It is common at the Smithsonian Institution’s tropical wild life preserve in the Panama Canal Zone. When living it is quite harmless, at least to human beings although some believe it can poison other frogs. When it is roasted over a slow fire, however, a toxin is exuded from its skin which is a potent nerve and respiratory poison. It once was used by the Choco Indians to poison the arrows with which they hunted game and Spaniards. The poison arrow frog is a delicate creature which is confined to a narrow temperature range and probably never has reached the United States alive. A ground and tree-dwelling animal, it is quite elusive.