NEWS. 
Tue RoyaLt ACADEmy of Sciences of Berlin offers a prize of ‘J 2000 
for a memoir on the origin and characteristics of the varieties of grain during 
the last twenty years. The manuscript, which may be written in German 
Latin, French, English or Italian, must be sent to the Bureau of the Academy 
(Universitatsstrasse 8, Berlin NW., before Dec. 31, 1898, with name of the 
writer in sealed envelope. The work must be based upon special experi- 
ments and observations. 
Tue Hopt are one of those interesting tribes which remain as relics in 
the desert and cafion region of the southwest. Compelled to utilize every- 
thing organic that is available, in the paucity of animals they have made a 
surprisingly complete use of their scanty vegetation. Mr. Walton Hough 
has made a collection of the Hopi plants, which have been named by Dr. J. 
N. Rose and published, with their native names and uses, in the American 
Anthropologist for February. It is estimated that there are not over 150 
indigenous species in the Hopi environment, northeastern Arizona, but Mr. 
lough’s collection reveals the fact that about 140 of these are used in agri- 
.culture and forage, arts, architecture, domestic life, dress and adornment, 
folk lore, food, medicine, and religion. 
THE PROCLAMATION of President Cleveland setting apart thirteen new 
forest reserves, representing an area of more than twenty-one million acres 
_is noteworthy. This increases the total reserve forest land in the West 10 
‘thirty-nine million acres. e quote from Garden and Forest in stating that 
the new reserves include all the central portion of the Black Hills of South 
Dakota, the Big Horn mountain range in Wyoming, the Jackson lake country 
south of the National Said in Wyoming, all the Rocky mountains of northern 
Montana, a orest region in northern Idaho, the principal part of the : 
Bitter ‘foot 5 ssanaray region in Montana and ‘Idaho, the Cascade mountains 
_ of northern and southern Washington, the Sierra summits of California north 
of the Yosemite National Park, the San Jacinto mountains in southern Cali- e 
nngigs oe the Uintah mountains in northern Utah. The selection of these 
i appointed by the National A Academy : : 
of Sciences. ‘Since the ‘goannas strenuous objections have been made 
_ by intere © that it is difficult to tell whether it will ere 
P26 eee 
- indicated. 
