March 13, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



431 



of federal jurisdiction over railways and 

 waterways, which carry diseases from one 

 state to another, and showed that such juris- 

 diction would have prevented the Chicago- 

 St. Louis controversy over the drainage canal. 

 Mr. Edward T. Devine made a stirring speech, 

 bringing home to the audience what a reduc- 

 tion in the death-rate means in the concrete 

 experience of the individual. The elimina- 

 tion of deaths from tuberculosis, even if the 

 same number of deaths were added to the 

 mortality from other diseases coming later in 

 life, would lengthen the average life by twelve 

 years. In the summer of 1906 Professor J. P. 

 Norton, of Yale, read a paper before the 

 Economic Section of the American Associa- 

 tion for the Advancement of Science, on the 

 " Economic Advisability of a National Organ- 

 ization of Health," which excited much in- 

 terest and resulted in the formation of the 

 Committee of One Hundred. This committee 

 was first formally organized on April 18, 1907. 

 Its officers at present are: President, Irving 

 Fisher; secretary, Edward T. Devine; treas- 

 urer. Title Guarantee and Trust Company; 

 vice-presidents, the Rev. Lyman Abbott, Miss 

 Jane Addams, Dr. Felix Adler, President 

 James B. Angell, the Hon. Joseph H. Choate, 

 President Charles W. Eliot, Archbishop Ire- 

 land, the Hon. Ben B. Lindsey, Mr. John 

 Mitchell, Dr. William H. Welch. In the fol- 

 lowing month (May, 1907) President Roose- 

 velt sent the committee a letter of indorse- 

 ment in which he said: 



Our national health is physically our greatest 

 national asset. To prevent any possible deteriora- 

 tion of the American stock should be a national 

 ambition. We can not too strongly insist on the 

 necessity of proper ideals for the family, for 

 simple living, and for those habits and tastes 

 ■which produce vigor and make men capable of 

 strenuous service for their country. The preserva- 

 tion of national vigor should be a matter of 

 patriotism. I can most cordially commend the 

 endeavors of your committee to bring these mat- 

 ters prominently before the public. 



There are now about six thousand five hun- 

 dred persons on the various mailing lists of 

 the Committee of One Hundred. The Amer- 

 ican Health League, the national society affili- 



ated with the Committee of One Hundred, is 

 growing with amazing rapidity — a fact sig- 

 nificant of the popular interest in the move- 

 ment. Every member of congress has been 

 written to, and a large number have expressed 

 their willingness to advocate health measures. 

 The first legislative measure will be one to 

 authorize the President to redistribute the 

 existing scientific and health bureaus of the 

 government. The recent unfortunate experi- 

 ence with the present arrangement of bureaus 

 in the navy is only one of many instances of 

 lack of cooperation and coordination. It is 

 not anticipated that these existing bureaus 

 will oppose a rearrangement. On the con- 

 trary, it is known that most of them favor it, 

 especially as, after the redistribution, their 

 powers and appropriations, as well as their 

 efficiency, will be increased. The committee 

 has received the indorsement of the American 

 Medical Association and of a number of other 

 organizations engaged in the work of human 

 betterment, including the American Associa- 

 tion for the Advancement of Science itself, 

 which at its recent meeting voted that here- 

 after the committee should represent not only 

 the Economic Section in which it originated, 

 but the entire association. — The Ouilooh. 



BOTANICAL NOTES 



A STUDY OF PHILIPPINE WOODS 



In the Philippine Journal of Science for 

 October, 1907, Mr. F. W. Foxworthy publishes 

 an interesting and very valuable paper on the 

 structure, physical and chemical properties, 

 uses, durability and botanical classification of 

 the commercial woods of the Philippine 

 Islands. The paper opens with a general and 

 technical discussion of the gross morphology, 

 the minute anatomy, color, odor, weight, sea- 

 soning, durability and uses, and this is fol- 

 lowed by a key to the commercial woods, based 

 upon structural characters of the woods them- 

 selves, and supplemented by photographic 

 plates of fifty-five kinds. The names given 

 are those which are used on the islands, and 

 the kinds are arranged in the alphabetical 

 order of the most widely used of these names. 

 Thus the native name is given first, then are 

 given in succession, the scientific name (with 



