574 
will be located near Honolulu on a govern- 
ment reservation originally set apart by 
the provisional government for the use of an 
experiment station. Itis intended to make 
the work there supplementary to that of 
the experiment station which has been 
maintained by the Hawaiian sugar plant- 
ers, and attention will be given to other 
field crops and the development of animal 
industry and horticulture. Jared G. 
Smith, recently in charge of the Section of 
Seed and Plant Introduction of this depart- 
ment, has been placed in charge of the 
Hawaii station, and will take up the 
work there about the middle of April. 
Fifty thousand dollars was appropriated to 
continue the irrigation investigations, and 
$20,000 for nutrition investigations, the 
latter being an increase of $2,500. 
The Division of Statistics receives $156,- 
160, the same as last year, the Division of 
Entomology $36,200, and the Division of 
Biological Survey $32,800. The fund for 
publications is increased by $50,000 for 
farmers’ bulletins and a small amount for 
distribution, making the total for the Divi- 
sion of Publications $198,020 aside from 
the general printing fund, $110,000. Other 
appropriations are as follows: seeds, $250,- 
000, exclusive of the $20,000 mentioned 
for seed and plant introduction, an in- 
crease of $100,000 ; library, $16,000 ; pub- 
lic-road inquiries, $20,000, an increase of 
$6,000; investigating the production of 
domestic sugar, $5,000; Arlington farm, 
$10,000 ; office of the Secretary, $71,670; 
Division of Accounts, $18,900; Museum, 
$2,260, and contingent expenses, $37,000. 
The grand total, including the regular ap- 
propriations for the experiment stations, is 
$4,582,420, an increase of $558,920 over 
last year. 
An important item of the appropriation 
act is the authorization of the Secretary of 
Agriculture to submit plans and recommen- 
dations for a fireproof agricultural building, 
SCIENCE. 
[N. S. Vou. XIII No. 328. 
to be erected on the grounds of the Depart- 
ment, and appropriating $5,000 for the 
preparation of such plans. The Depart- 
ment long since outgrew its original ac- 
comodations, and for years has been badly 
cramped for room. The present main 
building has been condemned as unsafe, 
and from the nature of its construction the 
risk of fire has always to be met. Besides 
erecting a number of small buildings, which 
are mere temporary makeshifts, it has been 
necessary to rent several residences in the 
neighborhood and adapt them to laboratory 
and office purposes. Laboratory buildings 
for the Division of Chemistry and the Bu- 
reau of Animal Industry have been spe- 
cially erected by private parties and rented 
to the Department. The amount now paid 
for rental for these buildings, together with 
the additional expense required for watch- 
men, aggregates about $10,000 annually. 
The position to which the Department has 
now attained, the demands of its work, and 
the safety of its library records and collec- 
tions, make a modern agricultural build- 
ing a practical necessity if not an impera- 
tive need. E. W. ALLEN. 
THE REDUCTION TO ABSURDITY OF THE 
ORDINARY TREATMENT OF THE 
SYLLOGISN. 
TuE traditional treatment of the syllogism 
errs both by redundancy and by’ insuffi- 
ciency—that is to say, the validity of the 
syllogism can be tested by a far simpler 
method of procedure, and, on the other hand, 
the ordinary method fails of applica- 
tion to a vast number of pairs of proposi- 
tions which are nevertheless the premises 
of a valid syllogism. In the first and second 
moods of the first figure the syllogism is in 
what may be called its primitive form—it 
is doubtless the only form in which it is 
used by children and savages ; but there is 
another form, in which negative modes of 
expression are given free play, which is far 
