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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIX. No. 1005 



work in some specified field of geology. The 

 next prize will be awarded at the session in 

 Belgium in 1917 for the best work in petrog- 

 raphy giving new light on the general prob- 

 lems of the science. Two copies, at least, of 

 any work presented for the competition must 

 be sent to the general secretary of the last 

 congress, R. W. Brock, deputy minister of 

 mines, Ottawa, Canada, at least one year be- 

 fore the next session. 



The Christiania correspondent of the Lon- 

 don Times states that according to interviews 

 in the Norwegian papers, it looks doubtful 

 whether Captain Amundsen's expedition can 

 start in 1914. The Fram appears to be delayed 

 and must be at San Francisco at latest at the 

 beginning of July. If delayed Captain 

 Amundsen will use the time in order to prac- 

 tise his aviators and scientific staff. The 

 Fram will take three aeroplanes. The German 

 Antarctic explorer Captain Klchner has been 

 engaged to act as observer and photographer. 

 Dr. Nansen will next summer undertake an 

 oceanographie expedition with the Azores as 

 a central point. 



A JOINT meeting of the Association of Amer- 

 ican Geographers and the American Geograph- 

 ical Society is being held on Friday and Sat- 

 urday, April 3 and 4. The program is as fol- 

 lows: 



THE EVENING LECTUEE (ENGINEER'S HALL) 



L. A. Bauer : ' ' The General Magnetic Survey of 

 the Earth." 



feidat morning session (american geographical 

 society's building) 

 W. H. Hobbs: "Land Sculpturing in Arid Lands 

 with Observations from Northeastern Africa. ' ' 



FRIDAY afternoon SESSION (AMERICAN GEOGRAPH- 

 ICAL society's building) 

 T. Wayland Vaughan : ' ' The Platforms of Bar- 

 rier Coral Eeefs. " 



D. W. Johnson: "Botanical Phenomena and the 

 Problem of Coastal Subsidence." 



E. W. Shaw : ' ' Characteristics of the Mississippi 

 Delta in the Light of Comparative Studies of Some 

 Old-World Deltas." 



Oliver L. Fassig: "The Period of Safe Plant 

 Growth in Maryland and Delaware. ' ' 



SATURDAY MORNING SESSION (AMERICAN GEOGRAPH- 

 ICAL building) 



Frederick J. Turner: "Geographic Influences 

 in American Political History. ' ' 



J. Kussell Smith: "The Tree as a Factor in 

 Man's Adjustment to Hilly and Rocky Land." 



W. W. Atwood: "Over the San Juan Moun- 

 tains to the Ancient Cliff Dwellings of the Mesa 

 Verde. ' ' 



Collier Cobb: "The Forest of Sunburst: A 

 Study in Anthropo-geography. ' ' 



Spruce, abundant in the New England and 

 Lake States and in Canada, has heretofore 

 been the standard wood for making news print 

 paper and as long as there was a supply suffi- 

 cient to meet the needs of the paper industry 

 there was no reason to seek substitutes. But 

 heavy inroads have been made on the spruce 

 forests of the western part of the United States 

 in this day of great circulations and large 

 editions, especially of Sunday papers with 

 their many parts. On a rough estimate, a 

 newspaper with an average circulation of sixty 

 thousand copies and an average edition of 

 twenty pages, uses each day the product of 

 about four acres of forest. When this figure 

 is multiplied by the great number of news- 

 papers published in the United States, many of 

 them with much larger editions, and when this 

 is further multiplied by 365, because many 

 papers are issued every day of the year, it can 

 be seen that the drain upon the forests is 

 enormous. Foresters say that even under the 

 most approved methods known to their profes- 

 sion, it could scarcely be expected that spruce 

 would be able to hold its own, but would need 

 supplementing by other material. It is but 

 natural, therefore, that paper manufacturers 

 are looking for new sources of supply which will 

 furnish an abundance of wood pulp, at a price 

 which will not be prohibitive. Poplar and a 

 few other woods are used, but they do not go 

 very far. In the national forests there are 

 many woods considered inferior by lumber- 

 men. Yet they are available for purchase at 

 low rates and many of the timber stands are 

 readily accessible. The forest service, in its 

 desire to utilize to the best advantage all of 

 the resources of the federal timber holdings, 



