SCIENCE 



Friday, December 10, 1909 

 coxtents 



The Food Supply of the Future: Peofessob 

 H. P. Abmsby 817 



A Defence of Sanity: Professor Frederic 

 S. Lee 823 



Anton Dolim, Founder and Director of the 

 Naples Aquarium: Db. Stewart Paton .. 833 



The PaJeontological Society of America 835 



The American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science 836 



The Convocation Week Meetings of Scientific 

 Societies 837 



Scientific Notes and News 838 



University and Educational News 840 



Discussion and Correspondence : — 



International Language: Dr. W. J. Spill- 

 maw, Kabl F. BkELLEBMAN. College Soli- 

 darity: F. M. Pebby 841 



Quotations : — 

 Secondary Education in Agriculture in the 

 United States 848 



Scientific Books: — 



Richards's Experimentelle Untersuchungen 

 iiber Atomgeicichte : Dr. F. W. Clabke. 

 Johannsen's Elemente der Exakten Erblich- 

 keitslehre: Pbofessob Chas. B. Davenpobt 850 



Special Articles: — 



The Action of Radium Salts on Rubies: 

 Pbofessor Chas. Baskebville. Demon- 

 stration of Electrical Oscillations: Db. 

 Walteb G. Cady 853 



Societies and Academies: — 



The American Philosophical Society. The 

 Biological Society of Washington: M. C. 

 Maesh. Northeastern Section of the Amer- 

 ican Chemical Society: K. L. Mark 755 



MS.S. iDteoded for publication and books, etc, Intended for 

 review should be sent to the Editor of Scibbce, Garrison-on- 

 Uudson. N. Y. 



THE FOOD SUPPLY OF THE FUTURE' 



Prom various sources we have heard of 

 late warnings of a deficiency in the food 

 supply of the future population of the 

 United States. 



Thus President James J. Hill in his ad- 

 dress before the Bankers' Association, and 

 more elaborately in his recent article in 

 The World's Work, sets forth in striking 

 terms the growth of our population and the 

 present limits of wheat production and 

 pi-edicts a shoi-tage of not less than 400,- 

 000,000 bushels by the middle of the pres- 

 ent century unless radical improvements 

 in the prevailing methods of farming are 

 speedily inaugurated. 



Davenport, in his address at the dedica- 

 tion of Agricultural Hall at the University 

 of Maine, calculates that if the rate of in- 

 crease of population in the past one hun- 

 dred years be maintained, the end of the 

 twentieth century will see us with a popu- 

 lation of twelve hundred millions, and 

 emphasizes the fact that the agriculture 

 of the future must be enormously produc- 

 tive in order to feed these teeming mil- 

 lions. He says: 



The conditions that have just been discussed 

 will not be temporary and transient; they will be 

 enduring, yes. permanent, and they must be met 

 by a permanent agriculture — a thing the world 

 has never yet succeeded in establishing. No race 

 has ever yet learned to feed itself except at the 

 expense of the fertility of its own or some other 

 country. Other races have come up against this 

 problem and have gone down under it. . . . 



There is to be, in the very near future, a 

 struggle for land and the food it will produce 



' Presidential address delivered before the Amer- 

 ican Society of Animal Nutrition at Chicago, Ills., 

 November 27. 1000. 



