
22 
closed with a kermess. Receipts were in the neighborhood of 
10,000 francs ($2,000). (Revue Horticole, Sept. 16, 1918 
Translated from the French.) 
Professor George I*rancis Atkinson, since 1896 professor of 
botany in Cornell University, and for several years botanist of* 
the Experiment Station, died suddenly in Tacoma, Washington, 
about- November 14, 1918. Professor Atkinson went to the 
Pacific coast in continuation of his extensive studies in fleshy 
fungi, and his last letter from there indicated that he was making 
excellent progress on the monograph. Professor Atkinson was 
one of the botanists who honored the Brooklyn Botanic Garden 
by his presence, and by contributing a paper to our scientific 
program, on the occasion of the dedication of our buildings in 
April, 1917. His paper, presented on that occasion, appears as 
the first article in volume I of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden 
Memoirs. As his colleagues at Cornell state, in announcing his 
death to his former students: ‘One of the greatest botanists of 
the country has passed to his reward, and his former students 
and contemporaries, as well as the coming generations of botanists. 
have lost heavily in the early passing of Professor Atkinson, 
for the years that seemed ahead of him promised to be his most 
fruitful and pleasantest.” 
Large Returns From Intensive Agriculture —lIn an article on 
“ Adaptations of crops to soil” (Science Conspectus, Boston, Vol. 
IV, No. 2), Prof. George E. Stone gives the following informa- 
tion, which is of special interest now, in connection with the wide- 
spread interest in gardening and increase of food-production: 
“The vast areas of fertile soil in the West, when planted to 
cereals, return about $20 per acre, while our market garden soils 
return from $500 to $2,500 per acre. One square rod of green- 
house lettuce gives larger returns than one acre of wheat, and 
sometimes as much as two acres. A crop of tomatoes fetching 
$9,000 has been taken from less than three-quarters of an acre 
of glass within five mile of Boston, and one-tenth of an acre of 
greenhouse cucumbers in one case returned $3,500, which is at 
the rate of $35,000 per acre. Other instances might be given of 
