two citizens on the sinking-fund board, from 1871 to 1885, and as a sinking-fund commissioner until 1890, a continuous service of twenty years. He was treasurer of Tufts College from 1886 until his death, and thus rendered most valuable service. In 1857 he was a representative to the General Court. Mr. Talbot rendered valuable financial service to the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, and the New England Historic Genealogical Society. He was also a member of the Society of Mayflower Descendants, the Universalist Club, and the Boston Club; a trustee of the Home Savings Bank of Boston, a founder of the Stoughton Historical Society, and Treasurer of the Evergreen Cemetery Association of Stoughton. In 1901 Tufts College conferred upon him the degree of A.M. Mr. Talbot was a member of the Board of Trustees of Tufts College from 1868. He died February 3, 1904, at the advanced age of eightynine. Jan. 14, 1867, Mr. Talbot married Calista A. Clement. They had one child, Bessie, who died at Dresden, Germany, at the age of fourteen. Mrs. Talbot, left a widow, survived her husband but one month. in For an excellent biographical account of Mr. Talbot we are debted to Hosea Starr Ballou in the Tufts College Graduate for April, 1904. Another sketch appeared in the Tufts Weekly for February 11, 1904. Samuel W. Mendum, '85. STARLIGHT AND LAMPLIGHT The fever flush of dying day Was fading from the west, As, wearied with the toilsome way, The stars, that paled before the sun, Flashed in their places one by one, Those distant suns were set on high Alas! how limited and small These human powers of mine In presence of the Lord of all, Omnipotent, divine. But lo! beneath the breezy heights The dwellers of the vale, Godlike, had placed their lesser lights As stars of the celestial arc In constellations glow, The flickering flames flashed through the dark. Enough! to gathering dews and damp I left the lone hill crest, And rested not until my lamp Was burning with the rest. George F. Morton, '99 TUFTS COLLEGE STUDIES Ten years ago the Trustees of the College set aside the interest of a part of the Olmstead fund for the publication of the results of investigations carried on in the College in the various departments of natural history. During these ten years eight numbers of the scientific series have been published, and these are now united in a volume of 443 pages, illustrated with 21 plates and 31 figures in the text. The volume includes 18 separate articles, all but one zoological, which have been contributed by instructors and students in the Barnum Museum. A brief summary of these papers is given below. George A. Arnold, '92, studied the nerves given off from the brain of a strange South American toad. The results, while of considerable scientific interest, do not permit of any summary. The paper by Miss Julia B. Platt, with those which followed it upon the same subject, has called forth a great deal of discussion. Up to the time of the publication of this paper it had been thought that all of the skeletal parts of the vertebrates were derived from the middle germ layer, which in turn had its origin in the inner layer. Miss Platt pointed out that in certain amphibians the evidence was in favor of the view that the skeleton of the head came, at least in part, from the skin. Miss Platt's results were discussed at length in two sessions of the German Anatomical Congress, men like the veteran Kölliker and Goronowitsch supporting her contentions. It may be said that the questions she thus raised, among the most fundamental of morphology, have not been finally settled. For many years Professor Kingsley devoted considerable attention to the animals like the lobster, spider, grasshopper, etc., studying their structure and development, and publishing several papers upon them. The conclusions to which he came are summarised in his paper, "The Classification of the Arthropoda," in which previous views are reviewed and his own ideas are advocated. The paper is often quoted in foreign scientific literature. It has long been known that spiders breathe by means of peculiar air sacs, the so-called lungs. Mr. O. L. Simmons, a graduate student in 1893-94, undertook the study of the development of these lungs, and showed that in their early stages they were formed as folds on the external abdominal appendages, and that later the appendages were drawn into the abdomen, carrying the lungs with them. The bearings of these facts were important, since they showed that, as had been suspected on theoretical grounds, the lungs of spiders were to be compared with the gills of the horse-shoe crab, a thesis which played an important part in the paper of Professor Kingsley, just mentioned. In the wing of the bird there are but three fingers present. The question has been, how shall these be numbered to compare with the fingers of the human hand? The usual way was to call them 1,2, and 3; but Mr. Hurst of England thought he had evidence to show that they were really 3, 4, and 5. Dr. Virgil L. Leighton, '94, sought to solve the problem by studying the development in the tern. He found that in the embryo there was a fourth finger on the little-finger side, which later disappeared. This shows conclusively that Hurst's contention cannot be true, and that the numbers must be 1, 2, and 3, or 2, 3, and 4. Dr. Leighton farther adduces arguments (he has no absolute evidence) to show that the numeration 2, 3, and 4 is the most probable. The paper of F. C. Kenyon (Ph.D., '95) deals with a peculiar group of animals allied to the centipedes and galley worms. These animals, first discovered by Sir John Lubbock (now Lord Avebury), were called Pauropoda on account of the small number of feet which they possessed. There had long been a dispute concerning their classification. Therefore Dr. Kenyon studied their anatomy, working out in great detail the structure of the digestive, nervous, and reproductive systems. From the evidence thus obtained he showed that they were not a distinct group, as had been maintained; that they had little in common with the centipedes, but that they were merely aberrant galley worms, a view which was confirmed a year later by a Russian student, Schmidt. The paper by Guy M. Winslow (A. B.,'95, Ph.D.,'98) on the early stages of the skulls of the lower or fish-like vertebrates, was an attempt to see how far these structures could be used in settling questions of relationship. Among other features of the paper Dr. Winslow pointed out that, so far as the structures of the early skull were concerned, the Amphibia could not be regarded as descended from the lung fishes (Dipnoi), but that the latter group holds a unique position. Incidentally it may be remarked that Dr. Winslow's models have been reproduced to illustrate the early history of the skull in the display collections of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and that shortly a similar series will be mounted for the Barnum Museum. He points diverse, He traces what he In a paper on the ear-bones Professor Kingsley takes up the history of these structures in a series of vertebrates. out that the views of preceding writers were very almost equalling in number the number of students. the development in several groups, and points out regards as the resemblances. He also shows that such an apparently unimportant question has great bearings upon the ancestry of the mammals, and of man, and that his results support the view that the mammals have descended from the Amphibia rather than from the Reptilia as has been held by many. The eye in the shark has six muscles, arranged almost exactly as the six in the eye of man. Several previous writers had |