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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVIII. No. 714 



Wales (the skeleton of an Indian elephant 

 from Mysore) ; the Hon. W. Eothschild (a 

 mounted specimen of a bull of the Alaskan 

 elk) ; and Mr. Boyd Alexander, in the name 

 of the Alexander-Gosling expedition (the skin 

 and skull of a male Okapi, and portions of the 

 skin of two other individuals of the same 

 species, obtained by him during his recent 

 journey from Nigeria to the Nile). 



As a result of a recent conference between 

 representatives of the War Department and 

 the Forest Service, looking toward the practise 

 of forestry on timberlands on military reser- 

 vations, the Forest Service has received re- 

 quests from Fort Mead, South Dakota, and 

 Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, for an examina- 

 tion of the forests at those posts. The service 

 win suggest a plan of management in each 

 of these instances, as well as for other posts 

 from which similar requests are received. 

 Military reservations which have been exam- 

 ined and reported upon in the past are those 

 at West Point, New York; Fort Wingate, 

 New Mexico; the Rock Island Arsenal, Illi- 

 nois, and the Picatinny Arsenal, New Jersey. 

 The forest at West Point, for which the For- 

 est Service made a working plan in 1903, is 

 supplying the post with part of the needed 

 cordwood, lumber, hurdle poles, tan bark and 

 other forest products. Similar plans are in 

 preparation for the forests of Rock Island and 

 Picatinny Arsenals. 



The results of the French scientific mission 

 to the Congo for the study of the sleeping 

 sickness, recounted in the Depeche Ooloniale 

 Illnstree, are abstracted in the London Times, 

 according to which that mission, under the 

 charge of Dr. Gustave Martin, did not get 

 seriously to work before June of last year. 

 It has had to struggle against the inertia and 

 often the ill-will of the natives. In the region 

 of the Upper Ubangi and the basin of the 

 Gribingi and the Shari they found only 

 isolated eases. On the other hand, in the im- 

 mense country of the Middle Congo, the 

 Sanga, and the Ubangi up to the sea there are 

 no points where the plague has not exercised 

 its ravages, devastating entire villages. The 

 members of the mission have personally visited 



the caravan routes from Brazzaville to Loango 

 up to Buanza, Madingu, and the mountainous 

 region between the copper zone of Minduli and 

 the former political post of Manganga, the 

 Upper Alima, the Lower Sanga, part of the 

 valley of the Congo, and the Upper Ubangi as 

 far as Fort de Possel and Bessu. As a gen- 

 eral result of their observations it is evident, 

 says the present report, that no diagnosis of 

 the sleeping sickness is certain without the 

 revelation of the presence in the organism 

 of the trypanosome. The best microscopic 

 method of discovering the presence of the 

 microbe is a problem which has absorbed the 

 attention of the mission. By the mere micro- 

 scopic examination of the blood 258 natives 

 were found harboring the microbe and twenty 

 Europeans were discovered to be infected. 

 The director of the laboratory department of 

 the Pasteur Institute, M. Mesnil, says, indeed, 

 in his report on the preliminary studies of the 

 French mission, that minute examination of 

 the blood of all Europeans who have spent 

 some time in the tsetse zones is an operation 

 that ought not to be neglected. No vaccine 

 nor serum avails to cure the sleeping sickness. 

 The future belongs to chemical therapeutics, 

 and the atoxyl treatment is the only one 

 which, according to this authority, gives gen- 

 erally good results. This remedy was first 

 employed by Mr. Thomas in 1905 at the Liver- 

 pool School of Tropical Medicine, although 

 the action of arsenical compounds in animal 

 trjrpanosomiases had already been recognized 

 by numerous investigators. At the same time 

 certain inconveniences, already noted at Liver- 

 pool, in the use of atoxyl alone are confirmed 

 by the French mission. The French mission, 

 aided by the government and the geographical 

 societies, proposes a certain number of prac- 

 tical preventive measures. A sum of 250,- 

 OOOf. is now being solicited to continue the 

 work already begun and to place France on 

 an equality with the other powers in the 

 struggle against this terrible plague. 



Nature quotes from the Comptes rendus of 

 the Paris Academy of Sciences for June 29 

 the report of the committee appointed to con- 

 sider the distribution of the Bonaparte fund 



