274 THE NA TUNE-STUD Y RE VIE IV [3 . 9 _ DBC ., IW 



School-Gardens in the District of Columbia. At the last session of Con- 

 gress an appropriation of $1,000 was made for the purpose of continuing 

 I and extending the school-garden work which has been carried on for a num- 

 Iber of years in a cooperative way by the public schools and this Depart - 

 |ment. Beginning four years ago with a few gardens on the Department 

 ^grounds and a little improvement work around a single school, the move- 

 ment has grown until this year 700 children have gardens on the Depart- 

 ment grounds, 124 school buildings in the District have gardens, and 

 1 1 60,000 packets of seeds have been sold for home gardens. [Experiment 

 Station Record.] 



Forest Policy in France. France has under way a far-sighted forest 

 policy which will require two centuries before the work reaches its greatest 

 efficiency. The plan covers the reforestation of vast tracts of denuded land 

 and the work is in the hands of 4,000 trained foresters in the pay of the 

 Republic and a large number of men employed by the communal govern- 

 ments. 



Nearly a century ago the forests of France were vanishing as are those in 

 the United States today, but the depletion had gone even farther than it 

 has yet gone in America. The French people commenced protecting and 

 restoring the wooded areas and have stuck to the task ever since. The 

 work is slow, but in 200 years the existing damaged forests will be recon- 

 stituted, and all the waste spaces will be replanted to the point of proper 

 proportion to insure the conservation of the water supply, and to furnish 

 the timber and wood required by the population. 



The area of the National Forests of the United States exceeds twenty-fold 

 the National and communal forests of France, but the problems are the 

 same. France has been longer at the work and when it began its forests 

 were in a worse condition than ours are now, but not worse than our pri- 

 vately owned forests will be if present methods continue. [Notes from a 

 Press Bulletin, U. S. Forest Service.] 



Effects of radium on plants. C. S. Gager, of the New York Botanical 

 Gardens, has shown that the rays of radium and other radioactive sub- 

 stances act as a stimulus to germination and growth, and further experi- 

 ments by the author warrant a similar conclusion with respect to other 

 plant activities, such as respiration, starch making, geotropic response, etc. 

 The growth of plants watered with radioactive water may be accelerated 

 or retarded, the results varying not only with the degree of radioactivity 

 but also with the species of plant employed. When pollen or ovules were 

 exposed before pollination, or when exposure was made after fertilization 

 of the egg, plants growing from the resulting seeds were found to vary pro- 

 foundly from the parent plants. Whether these variations are capable of 

 transmission is yet to be determined. [Science.] 



Science and Poetry — a Protest. The advisability of correlating litera- 

 ture and science in the schools was at one time a much-debated educa- 

 tional question. The writer has heard seriously advocated before a 

 state science teachers' association the advantage of always having the 

 zoology class read 'The Chambered Nautilus' when studying the Mollusca, 



