PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OP WASHINGTON. 25 



the "Educable" division of the latter, and with those constituting 

 the order Primates and the suborder Anthropoidea. After the 

 elimination of those forms whose structure was thus shown to be 

 successively removed from his, he contrasted man in a final term 

 with the apes, and expressed his conviction that there exist no 

 structural (morphological) characters which would be admitted 

 to possess more than family value, were we able to divest our- 

 selves of personal and psychological prejudices, and asserted that 

 such was the view of the majority of the most approved students 

 of the mammals. Man's relations might be exhibited in a quasi- 

 genealogical table by a stem from the same common branch as 

 the higher apes, and if the doctrine of evolution is accepted at 

 all, such a table would express for the believer therein the fact 

 of a derivation of man and the" highest apes from the same com- 

 mon and specialized stock. 



Iiji Meeting. May 21, 1811. 



The President in the Chair. 



Dr. T. Antisell exhibited, on the part of the Department of 

 Agriculture, a vial of dust charged with organic matter from 

 Bitliz, Armenia. 



Mr. W. H. Dall presented a paper 



ON THE relative VALUE OP ALASKA TO THE UNITED STATES, AS 

 COMPARED WITH THAT OF OTHER TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS. 



■( This article xoas published in full under the title "Is Alaska a Paying Invest- 

 ment?" in Harpers' New Monthly Magazine, vol. xliv., pp. 

 252-257, January, 1872.) 



(abstract.) 



After submitting estimates of the cost and value of Texas, 

 Florida, and New Mexico (including Arizona^ and showing that 

 the direct taxes paid into the Treasury of the United States can- 

 not be taken as an index of the value to the community at large 

 of any given region, Mr. Dall gave the following statement of 

 items as the data on which to found an estimate of the present 

 value of the productions of Alaska. 



