THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. 



221 



the soy bean plants produced root 

 tubercles abundantly, indicating that 

 they were drawing their nitrogen from 

 the air. Local soil which had once been 

 inoculated and produced a crop of soy 

 beans was found to be suitable mate- 

 rial for inoculating other soils; and a 

 practical method for treating large 

 fields has been worked out and tested 

 through several seasons. The result is 

 especially important as the soy bean is 

 well suited to a wide range of country, 

 and aside from being a valuable forage 

 crop its growth materially enriches the 

 soil. 



The recent announcements of the 

 census bureau, which have been widely 

 circulated in the daily press, throw light 

 on a sociological question often dis- 

 cussed. It has been said that the 

 course of population is toward the great 

 cities, that the metropolis is swallowing 

 up the county centers and small cities. 

 A recent prophet of the future made the 

 England of his fiction a single great city 

 with the rest of the country as its farm 

 and garden. Some alarm has been 

 caused lest this supposed tendency to 

 centralization of population prove disas- 

 trous to nervous health and moral wel- 

 fare. It now appears that such a ten- 

 dency does not exist. For the eighty- 

 one small cities, those of from 25,000 to 

 50,000, have increased during the last 

 decade practically as fast as the nineteen 

 great cities of over 200,000, namely, 

 about 32 per cent. New York, it is true, 

 has increased 37.8 per cent. The rate 

 of increase of the cities above 25,000 is 

 about 11 per cent, higher than that of 

 the country at large, but there is no 

 cause for sociologists to lament this dif- 

 ference. The inhabitants of the hundred 

 and twenty cities under 100,000 have in 

 many ways a superior intellectual and 

 moral environment. They are freed 

 from the petty annoyances of rural life, 

 its isolation from broadening institu- 

 tions and its emptiness of appeal to am- 

 bition, without losing outdoor freedom 

 or the chance of participation in com- 

 munity life. They enjoy the good 



schools, libraries, entertainments, the 

 municipal improvements, the services of 

 superior professional men, etc., of great 

 cities, without suffering from metropol- 

 itan restrictions, abuses and vices. The 

 small city is in a measure the golden 

 mean among dwelling-places. It would 

 be interesting to observe on a large 

 scale the magnitude of another great 

 movement in population, that connect- 

 ed with the growth of suburbs. The 

 natural supposition is that the rate of 

 increase of the suburbs has been very 

 much above the average even of the 

 cities. In so far as the nature of our 

 surroundings determines our make-up, 

 such new conditions as we have in sub- 

 urban life are of vital interest to the 

 student of human nature. 



The growth of interest in forestry, 

 one of the youngest of the applied sci- 

 ences, is attested by the establishment 

 this year of the Yale Forest School, 

 which confers the degree of Master of 

 Forestry on graduates who have obtained 

 the bachelor's degree elsewhere. At the 

 opening of the school there were regis- 

 tered seven regular students, besides 

 seventeen from other departments of 

 the University. The residence of the 

 late Professor O. C. Marsh is used 

 as a school building. Lecture- 

 rooms, a library, a laboratory and an 

 herbarium room have been furnished 

 with such equipment as has been 

 found necessary for the present re- 

 quirements of the school. A considera- 

 ble amount of museum material has al- 

 ready been acquired and is being class- 

 ified and arranged as rapidly as possible. 

 The grounds about the building, ten 

 acres in extent, are already covered with 

 a great variety of trees and shrubs, both 

 native and foreign, and it is the inten- 

 tion to plant a considerable number of 

 varieties which are not represented. A 

 forest nursery will be established on the 

 grounds, but the regular forest plant- 

 ing will be done on waste land on the 

 outskirts of New Haven. The New Ha- 

 ven Water Company has offered to the 

 school the use of several hundred acres 



