July 12, 1912] 



SCIENCE 



49 



twice daily, at seven o'clock, morning and 

 evening. The morning observations are tele- 

 graphed to St. Paul, where they enter a cir- 

 cuit reaching all important cities between 

 "Winnipeg, New York and "Washington. The 

 evening observations are reported monthly and 

 are used in the compilation of climatological 

 data. 



The production of anthracite in Pennsyl- 

 vania in 1911, according to a statement just 

 issued by Statistician E. "W. Parker, of the 

 United States Geological Survey, broke all 

 previous records, exceeding the previous maxi- 

 mum output in 1907 by 4,700,000 long tons. 

 The complete returns to the Survey show a 

 production in 1911 of 80,732,015 long tons, 

 valued at $174,852,843. This was an increase 

 over the 1910 output of 5,298,767 long tons in 

 quantity and $14,577,541 in value. In this 

 increased activity and augmented production 

 in 1911 the anthracite industry was in marked 

 contrast to the bituminous industry, which 

 showed decreases throughout most of the 

 mining regions. Moreover, in most of the 

 bituminous districts prices were generally 

 lower, whereas the average price of anthracite 

 in 1911 was 5 cents a ton higher than in 1910. 

 Prices for the domestic sizes remained the 

 same, but greater returns were received from 

 pea coal and the smaller sizes. The greater 

 production of anthracite in 1911 was probably 

 due to increased activity in anticipation of a 

 possible coal strike in April. However, the 

 extremely severe weather of the winter prac- 

 tically exhausted any accumulated coal before 

 ■ the termination of the three-year period of 

 wage agreements on March 31, 1912. It is an 

 interesting fact, showing the highly organized 

 condition of the anthracite industry — ^the so- 

 called coal trust — that whereas in former years 

 there was enormous mine waste in this in- 

 dustry, nowadays practically everything mined 

 is utilized. Formerly enormous quantities of 

 small coal and coal dust were thrown on to the 

 waste heap, but now such " waste " is sold as 

 it is mined, and the culm piles are being re- 

 worked. In 1911 the recovery from the culm 

 piles and the smaller sizes obtained from the 



freshly mined coal constituted over 40 per 

 cent, of the total quantity of anthracite 

 marketed. 



In the early part of the year 1911, while 

 engaged in the Smithsonian Biological Survey 

 of the Canal Zone, and the adjacent parts of 

 Panama, Mr. E. A. Goldman made a collec- 

 tion of 368 mammals. This collection, repre- 

 senting between 40 and 50 genera, includes 

 12 new species and sub-species, of which de- 

 scriptions have just been published by Mr. 

 Goldman (Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collec- 

 tions, No. 2073) in advance of the general 

 report on mammals of this region. Nine of 

 the new forms are from the Canal Zone, and 

 the others were collected by the author when he 

 was on a trip to the mountains near the head- 

 waters of the Chagres River, Panama, in 

 March, 1911. The new animals include : two 

 opossums from near Gatun; two squirrels, of 

 which one is known as a pigmy squirrel; four 

 rice-rats; a yoke-tooth rat, which was found 

 to be one of the most abundant rats in the 

 grassy clearings of the Canal Zone; three 

 spiny rats, including one known as an octo- 

 dont, and named after Colonel George W. 

 Goethals, U.S.A., chairman and chief engineer 

 of the Isthmian Canal Commission. Among 

 the birds collected by Mr. Goldman, while 

 engaged on this survey, there are two new 

 species of nun birds. These are described by 

 Mr. E. "W. Nelson, of the Department of 

 Agriculture, Biological Survey, in a pamphlet 

 published by the Smithsonian Institution, 

 which forms the seventh paper on the results 

 of this survey. 



The statistics of births and deaths in the 

 German empire during 1911 show for Prussia 

 an excess of births over deaths of 490,333, as 

 compared with 581,465 in 1910. In Bavaria, 

 where the returns have just been issued, the 

 excess of births over deaths was 73,656, as 

 compared with 84,682 in 1910. Thus the fall- 

 ing oS in the growth of the population in 

 Prussia and Bavaria together was more than 

 100,000. The Prussian ministry of the in- 

 terior has issued a rescript to the provincial 

 governors requiring them to obtain informa- 



