May 1, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



643 



Investigators "who are prepared to carry on 

 researches in morphology or physiology. 



A SERIES of water-color plant studies painted 

 by the late traveler and artist, Miss Adelia 

 Gates, and presented to the Smithsonian Insti- 

 tution by her niece. Miss Eleanor Lewis, of 

 Yellow Springs, Ohio, is now exhibited in the 

 new building of the F. S. National Museum. 

 The subjects treated embrace a wide range of 

 foreign and domestic plants painted by the 

 artist in this country and abroad. Some addi- 

 tions have recently been made to the original 

 deposit by the donor who has endeavored to 

 bring together all the flower studies made by 

 Miss Gates, many of which were widely dis- 

 tributed by her prior to her death. With these 

 additions, the collection now numbers some 

 600 paintings. 



We learn from Nature that a collection of 

 rock specimens of considerable historic inter- 

 est has been presented to the department of 

 minerals of the British Natural History Mu- 

 seum. The specimens in question were col- 

 lected in Arctic North America by Sir John 

 Richardson, who accompanied Sir John 

 Franklin's Arctic expeditions of 1819-1827. 

 They have since that time been kept in the 

 museum of the Eoyal Naval Hospital at 

 Haslar, but inasmuch as the fossils collected in 

 the same Arctic expeditions are in the Na- 

 tional Museum at South Kensington, it was 

 felt to be in the fitness of things that the 

 rocks should be also preserved there. An 

 application was accordingly made to the Lords 

 of the Admiralty to sanction the transfer of 

 the specimens. 



From June 23 to 30 there will be held in 

 London, as we learn from the London Times, 

 the third annual International Congress on 

 Tropical Agriculture, promoted by 1' Associa- 

 tion Scientifique Internationale d' Agronomic 

 Coloniale et Tropicale. This society was 

 formed with the idea of helping associations 

 formed in tropical colonies for the develop- 

 ment of their agriculture to study in common 

 fundamental problems connected with the suc- 

 cessful growing of important natural tropical 

 products, such as rubber, tea, coffee, cocoa. 



tobacco, cocoanut oil, cotton, jute, sisal hemp 

 and cinchona. The value of the results ex- 

 pected from the congress may be gauged by 

 the fact that on the organizing committee 

 practically every tropical colony in the British 

 Empire is represented by its principal agri- 

 cultural officer. Official notifications are 

 being sent out by the British Foreign Office 

 and the Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres in 

 Paris to the governments of all countries 

 possessing tropical colonies inviting them to 

 appoint official delegates. The congress is to 

 meet at the Imperial Institute, South Ken- 

 sington, and among the subjects suggested for 

 papers and discussion are: Technical educa- 

 tion and research, labor organization and 

 supply, rubber production, development of 

 cotton-growing, fiber production, agricultural 

 credit banks, agriculture in arid regions, trop- 

 ical hygiene and preventive medicine, plant 

 diseases and pests, and so forth. Numerous 

 papers on these and kindred subjects have 

 been promised by well-known experts. Pro- 

 fessor Wynham K. Dunstan is the chairman 

 of committee, and Dr. T. A. Henry and Mr. 

 H. Brown, of the Imperial Institute, are the 

 honorary secretaries. 



Two models which show how the govern- 

 ment sells its timber have just been prepared 

 in Washington, for display at the forest pro- 

 ducts exposition, to be held in Chicago, April 

 30 to May 9, and in New York, May 20 to 30. 

 These models represent an acre of western 

 yellow pine land in a national forest of the 

 southwest before and after logging. In the 

 model showing the stand before the lumber- 

 man goes into it the trees range from those 

 only a few years old to large, overmature, stag- 

 headed individuals more than ready for the 

 axe. In the second model the mature trees 

 and all others larger than a certain diameter 

 have been cut down and made into logs and 

 cord-wood. In this, as in all government 

 sales, the stumps are cut low to avoid unneces- 

 sary waste, logs are taken to a small diameter 

 well up into the tree, and such material as is 

 not fit for lumber is converted into cordwood. 

 Together, the models show the care which the 

 government requires of lumbermen in felling 



