NOTES. 1139 



Economics of Farm Management. — The first part of a Syllabus of Lectures on 

 Agricultural Economics, l)y Dr. Henry C. Taylor, of the University of Wisconsin, 

 has Ijeeu received. This first ])art is devoted to t\a economics of farm management, 

 and is based u^wn a course of lectures delivered by the author during llie past winter 

 to the second-year short-course students in the college of agric-ulture. Following 

 the introductory, there are chapters on crops and field systems — European and 

 American, intensity of culture, productivity, the size of farms, prices of agricultural 

 products, distribution of gross returns, the price of land, land tenure in the United 

 States, means of acquiring land ownership, and the renting of land. ~" The writer 

 makes no pretensions of having presented here a complete outline of the subject. 

 The needs of the students and the material Avhich the author had in hand deter- 

 mined the character of the course of lectures. Practically all of the time has l>een 

 given to private agricultural economics, liecause the subjects included under this 

 head are of more immediate interest to the farmer. The author hopes to find time 

 to work this subject out much more completely in the near future." 



Miscellaneous. — Elwood Mead, in charge of irrigation investigations of this 

 Department, has gone to Italy for the purpose of making a study of the methods of 

 distributing and using Avater in that country, and the kinds and value of crops grown 

 by irrigation. The annual rainfall in Italy being nearly 40 inches makes irrigation 

 a matter of choice rather than of necessity, and gives the results a significance to 

 irrigators in the easteria part of the United States which irrigation in arid countries 

 like Egypt does not have. ]\Ir. Mead will spend a month or more in the valley of 

 the Po studying the irrigation systems in Lombardy and Piedmont. He will ascer- 

 tain, if possible, how rivers are controlled, either by the State or by private interests, 

 and will gather statistics of the prices paid for water, the amounts used, the way in 

 which it is aijplied to crops, and the differences in products, yields, and value on 

 irrigated and unirrigated laud. In connection with his trij:> Mr. ]\Iead will make 

 briefer observations of irrigation in Switzerland and possibly southern France and 

 Spain. If his time permits hcAvill in(iuire into what is being done in the aj^plication 

 of power to farm Avork, in the pumping of water and in irrigation and drainage, and 

 what the agricultural experiment stations are doing to determine the efliciency of 

 agricultural machinery. 



Prof. AV. O. Atwater, in charge of nutrition investigations of this Office, has gone 

 to Europe, where he will spend the summer and fall in studying the progress of 

 investigations on human nutrition in the leading laboratories and other institutions 

 of England, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Germany, and, ])erhaps, 

 Denmark and Sweden. He expects to return about the end of November. 



Gifford Pinchot, Chief of the Bureau of Forestry of this Department, has been 

 elected professor of forestry in the Yale Forest School. This appointment will make 

 no change in his relation to the Bureau of Forestry, and will but slightly increase 

 the work he has been doing for the school in the past. He will deliver a short 

 course of lectures at New Haven during the first two weeks of November. 



Prof. William H. Brewer has resigned the professorship of agriculture at the Shef- 

 field Scientific School, Yale University, and has been appointed professor emeritus. 

 The university conferred the degree of LL. D. upon him at the recent commencement. 



Luther Burbank, of Santa Rosa, Cal., was awarded a gold medal by the Cali- 

 fornia Academy of Sciences on the recent occasion of the celebration of its semi- 

 centennial anniversary. This was the highest honor conferred by the academy, and 

 was awarded to Mr. Burbank for "meritorious work in developing new forms of 

 plant life." 



Prof. Thomas F. Hunt has received the degree of Doctor of Agriculture from the 

 University of Illinois. 



28297— No. 11— U3 8 



