May 22, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



757 



placing and transfer of the mentally excep- 

 tional children in the public schools. The ac- 

 tual supervision of the work in the special 

 dasses will be done by a special supervisor 

 working under the direction of the clinic. St. 

 Louis has already segregated about 500 pupils 

 in special classes, and it is expected that the 

 number wiU now rapidly be increased to at 

 least 1,000. Each child will be given a psycho- 

 logical, sociological, pedagogical, hereditary 

 and medical examination. It is expected that 

 a staff of assistants commensurate with the 

 growing needs of the clinic will gradually be 

 organized, and that, eventually, the clinic or- 

 ganization will include a bureau of vocational 

 guidance. The clinic aims to serve as an edu- 

 cational, social and vocational clearing house 

 for the community. The St. Louis authorities 

 have carefully studied the situation and be- 

 lieve they have effected the best form of or- 

 ganization, linking the clinic, on the one hand, 

 ■with the training school for teachers, and, on 

 the other hand, making it an integral part of 

 the educational division, with supervisory 

 control of the special classes. 



Almost every conceivable use to which land 

 may be put is represented in the permits re- 

 ported by the forest service for special pro- 

 jects on the national forests. Some of the 

 uses shown range, alphabetically, from apiary 

 through brickyard, cannery, cemetery, church, 

 cranberry marsh, fox ranch, marine railway, 

 rifle range and turpentine still, to wharf and 

 whaling station. There are 15,000 permits in 

 force for such special uses, which are dis- 

 tributed geographically from Alaska to the 

 Mexican line, and east to Florida. This figure 

 does not include any of the 27,000 permits in 

 force for grazing cattle and sheep on the for- 

 ests ; nor the 6,000 transactions for the sale of 

 timber, and the more than 38,000 permits 

 issued last year for the free use of timber by 

 settlers, miners and others in developing their 

 homesteads and claims; nor the nearly 300 

 permits for water power development. Cali- 

 fornia led all the national forest states in the 

 number of these special use permits, followed 

 by Arizona, Colorado, Montana and New 

 Mexico in the order named. The largest 

 single class of permits was for special pas- 



tures or corrals, to be used for lambing 

 grounds, shearing pens, and the like. Next 

 came rights of way for conduits, ditches 

 and flumes, practically all of these being 

 free. Various agricultural permits come 

 third, telephone lines fourth with more 

 than a thousand permits for 6,500 miles 

 of line, and drift fences for the control of 

 grazing animals, fifth. In both of these latter 

 classes, too, practically all of the permits are 

 free. Eeservoirs for which more than 600 free 

 permits were issued for the occupation of more 

 than 100,000 acres come sixth. The rest of the 

 uses are not classified though there are a large 

 number of apiaries, camps, summer hotels and 

 schools. The use of the government's lands 

 for schools is given free ; for hotels a charge is 

 made. The principle which governs the charge 

 is based, according to the forest service, on 

 whether or not the use of the land is sought by 

 the permittee for a commercial purpose. If it 

 is the intent of the user to make money from 

 a resource which belongs to the whole people, 

 the service holds that he should give a rea- 

 sonable return for that use. If, on the other 

 hand, farmers want to use government land 

 for their own telephone lines, irrigation works 

 and schools, the government gives them that 

 use without cost. 



Interest attaches to the study of the fossil 

 floras of the Arctic regions, for they indicate 

 climatic conditions very unlike those now ex- 

 isting there. In place of the present almost 

 perpetually frozen soil which supports but a 

 handful of depauperate plants, the conditions 

 from at least late Paleozoic to middle Ceno- 

 zoie geologic time made possible at least dur- 

 ing certain periods, an abundant and luxuriant 

 vegetation, consisting of ferns and palm-like 

 plants that could grow only in a mild and 

 probably frostless climate. Although these 

 lands are now so inhospitable, and hence but 

 rarely visited, an astonishing amount of infor- 

 mation concerning their fossil floras has been 

 accumulated, and to this knowledge Alaska 

 has contributed its full quota, says F. H. 

 Knowlton, a paleontologist of the United 

 States Geological Survey, in a short paper on 

 the "Jurassic Flora of Cape Lisburne," just 

 published as Part D of Professional Paper 85. 



