74 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol,. XXIX. No. 732 



Dr. Eenkst Hamy, professor of anthropol- 

 ogy in the Natural History Museum, Paris, 

 died on November 18, at the age of sixty-six 

 years. 



Lord Eosse bequeathed £1,000 to Trinity 

 College, Dublin, for the science schools. His 

 telescope and scientific instruments are left to 

 his oldest son, with £2,000 for their upkeep. 



A CORRESPONDENT Writes to the London 

 Times that the Nizam of Haidarabad has es- 

 tablished a well-equipped astronomical obser- 

 vatory in his dominions. The foundation of 

 the observatory owes its origin, to the pre- 

 sentation by the late Haidarabad noble, Nawab 

 Zaffer Jung Bahadur, F.E.A.S., of two large 

 telescopes, but it is evident from the equip- 

 ment of the observatory, from the selection of 

 its director, and from the working program 

 which has been drawn up, that his Highness 

 intends to go far beyond the original intention 

 of the donor, Nawab Zaffer Jung. The equip- 

 ment includes, besides the purely astronomical 

 and meteorological instruments, a very com- 

 plete photographic department and extensive 

 workshops fitted with modern tools and ap- 

 pliances for both wood and metal working. 

 The program of the observatory is both com- 

 prehensive and ambitious. 



By the President's order the Secretary of 

 the Interior has withdrawn from entry all the 

 public lands, embracing about 6,500 acres 

 in the petroleum and natural gas field 

 in northwestern Louisiana known as the 

 Caddo oil field. This action is taken pending 

 a careful geologic investigation by the U. S. 

 Geological Survey with a view to preventing 

 a waste of natural gas that has been estimated 

 at Y5,000,000 cubic feet a day, or more than 

 one twentieth of the amount of this fuel use- 

 fully consumed in the United States. 



President Eoosevelt has signed a procla- 

 mation setting aside and naming the Ocala 

 National Forest in Marion County, in eastern 

 Florida, the first created east of the Missis- 

 sippi Eiver, and another proclamation creating 

 the Dakota National Forest in Billings County, 

 North Dakota. The two proclamations add 

 two more states to the list of those wherein 

 land will be put under scientific forest admin- 



istration. There are now nineteen states, and 

 Alaska, having national forests. Before the 

 creation of the Ocala, in Florida, the two for- 

 ests in Arkansas, the Ozark and the Arkansas, 

 were the easternmost national forests. Prac- 

 tically all the other national forests are in the 

 Eocky Mountain and the Pacific coast states. 

 The Florida forest has an area of 201,480 

 acres, of which about one fourth has been 

 taken up under various land laws. It covers 

 a plateau between the St. John's and Ochla- 

 waha rivers and at no point is an elevation 

 exceeding 150 feet above sea level obtained. 

 The area is by nature better fitted for the 

 production of forest growth than for any other 

 purpose. Nearly all of the area, however, 

 seems particularly well adapted to the growth 

 of sand pine which is even now replacing the 

 less valuable species, and with protection from 

 fire almost the entire area will in time un- 

 doubtedly be covered with a dense stand of 

 this species. The long-leaf pine, a much 

 more valuable commercial tree than the sand 

 pine, appears rather sparsely in this forest 

 and is confined principally to the lower flat 

 lands along the streams on the borders of the 

 forest. The new Dakota national forest con- 

 sists of 14,080 acres in the Bad Lands region. 

 Its creation is important, for it means that an 

 experimental field for forest planting has been 

 secured in North Dakota, the least forested 

 state in the union, having only one per cent, 

 of tree growth. The Forest Service expects 

 to establish forest nurseries with the hope that 

 in time to come the area may be reforested by 

 artificial means. This feature is expected to 

 prove a very good object lesson to the settlers, 

 who it is hoped will in turn plant windbreaks 

 around their farms. 



The relation between the increasing use of 

 cement and the diminishing timber supply in 

 the United States has been the subject of some 

 correspondence between the Geological Survey 

 and the Forest Service at Washington. In a 

 letter to the forester, the director of the survey 

 took occasion to quote from a statement of a 

 large Philadelphia firm to the effect that it 

 would be difficult to estimate what the addi- 

 tional drain on the lumber supply would have 



