August 20, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



239 



grant system of the Board of Education have 

 not helped agricultural education; money 

 from the latter source, indeed, goes to the 

 relief of the rates. British agriculture, he 

 pointed out, receives much leas money than the 

 amount granted in foreign countries, a result 

 due to the absence of agreement and coordi- 

 nation between the Board of Education and 

 the Board of Agriculture. Earl Carrington, 

 in reply, stated that an understanding had that 

 morning been arrived at by the two boards 

 as to the general lines of their future policy. 

 There will be direct cooperation in regard to 

 educational work, and in particular with the 

 view of improving and extending specialized 

 agricultural instruction. An inter-depart- 

 mental committee of officers of the two boards 

 will consider the questions that may arise as 

 to the correlation of work and of grants. 

 Everything is working harmoniously between 

 the two departments. Lord Belper strongly 

 urged that any arrangement between the two 

 boards should follow the recommendation of 

 the Agi-icultural Education Committee that 

 agricultural education provided by colleges, 

 farm institutes and winter schools should be 

 under the direction of the Board of Agricul- 

 ture, while agricultural instruction given at 

 evening classes connected with elementary 

 schools should be under the Board of Educa- 

 tion. The Marquis of Lansdowne empha- 

 sized the great importance of the subject. 

 Quoting Sir Horace Plunkett's dictum, that 

 what is wanted in these days is not merely 

 economic holdings, but an economic system 

 and an economic man to carry it out, he went 

 on to say that we can not get the economic 

 man to carry out the economic system unless 

 the government takes some pains to give him 

 a proper education. 



Fbom her state forests France derives an 

 armual income of approximately five million 

 dollars, or $1.75 per acre. Eighteen per cent. 

 of the entire area of the country, or 23,500,000 

 acres is forest land. Approximately six mil- 

 lion acres are managed by the state, the annual 

 cost of management being ninety-five cents 

 per acre. The great achievement of France 

 in forestry has been the establishment of pro- 



tective forests where much destruction has 

 been caused by floods. Toward the close of 

 the eighteenth century about 2,500,000 acres 

 comprised in the Department of the Landes 

 were little more than shifting sand dunes and 

 disease-breeding marshes. This section is now 

 one of the richest, most productive and health- 

 ful in France. This change has been brought 

 about by the intelligent cultivation of pine 

 forests. Immense forests now cover the coun- 

 try, the sand dunes and marshes have long 

 since disappeared, and the wood, charcoal, tur- 

 pentine, rosin and kindred industries have 

 brought prosperity to the department, which 

 was formerly the most barren and miasmatic 

 in France. The climate is now mild and 

 balmy, the great change being wrought by the 

 forests. The thin layer of clay beneath the 

 sandy surface, formerly impervious to water, 

 has been so pierced by the roots of the pine 

 that there is now thorough drainage to the 

 spongy earth below. The manufacture of 

 rosin, tar, turpentine, pitch, pyroligneous acid 

 and wood vinegar is conducted about the same 

 as in Georgia and the Carolinas. The trees 

 destined for " short life " are bled as soon as 

 they axe big enough to stand bleeding, when 

 they have a circumference of a foot or fifteen 

 inches, the sapping of young trees being the 

 only production of a new forest for a time, 

 and when the " thinning out " time comes they 

 are " bled to death," and the timber used 

 largely for pit props, the English demand 

 guaranteeing a steady and profitable market. 

 The " standing trees," those giving promise of 

 most vigor, are never tapped until they are 

 about three feet in circimiference. When 

 these have reached the age of fifty or sixty 

 years they are cut down, and utilized for tele- 

 graph poles and railway ties. To prevent the 

 spread of forest fires, wide trenches are dug 

 about limited areas, and the space kept clear. 

 The Society of Anthropology, Paris, has 

 celebrated, in the great amphitheater of the 

 College of Medicine, the fiftieth anniversary 

 of its foundation. M. Bayet, director of 

 higher education at the Ministry of Public 

 Instruction, presided, and a great number of 



