794 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXII. No. 831 



colleges, universities and normal schools of 

 the state. The program consisted of three 

 general sessions and twelve section meetings. 

 At the general session on Friday afternoon an 

 address was given by Professor E. C. Elliot, 

 of the University of Wisconsin, on " Needed 

 readjustments in the high school curricu- 

 lum"; on Saturday Professor George B. 

 Alton, state high school Inspector for Minne- 

 sota, spoke on " State aid to high schools in 

 Minnesota and how it works." This high 

 school conference is a working conference. 

 Its purpose is working out year by year and 

 through a series of years a well defined plan. 

 The first conference of the series was held in 

 February, 1905, with an attendance of sev- 

 enty-five. The two succeeding sessions had 

 fewer than one hundred; the fourth confer- 

 ence, two hundred ; • the fifth, four hundred ; 

 the sixth, six hundred ; and the present nearly 

 eight hundred. The first conference had but 

 three groups or sections — those for the study 

 of English, biology and the physical sciences. 

 The present conference included, besides the 

 general sessions, twelve distinct sections. 



Dr. G. B. Gordon, director of the Univer- 

 sity of Pennsylvania Museum, has arranged 

 a series of lectures on the " History of Man- 

 kind," which wiU be given on Saturday after- 

 noons. The arrangements so far made are as 

 follows: December 3, Dr. George Grant Mac- 

 Curdy, of Tale, "The Antiquity of Man in 

 Europe " ; January 7, F. F. Ogilvie, of Cairo, 

 Egypt, " The Pyramids of Gizeh " ; January 

 14, Dr. Alfred M. Tozzer, of Harvard, "Pic- 

 ture Writing and the Beginnings of the 

 Alphabet " ; January 21, Miss Edith H. Hall, 

 of Mt. Holyoke College, " Ancient Crete and 

 the Pre-Greek Civilization of the ^gean " ; 

 January 28, Dr. Albert Lecoq, director of the 

 German expedition to Turkestan, " The An- 

 cient Civilization of Turkestan " ; February 

 4, Dr. W. Max Miiller, " The Ancient Egyp- 

 tians"; February 18, Miss Stone, of the Brit- 

 ish School at Athens, " The Ancient Greeks 

 and their Mythology"; February 25, Miss 

 Stone, " The Acropolis of Athens " ; March 4, 

 Dr. Edward Sapir, ethnologist in charge of 

 the Geological Survey of Canada, " The 



Origin of Spoken Languages"; March 11, 

 Dr. Franz Boas, of Columbia, " Environment 

 as a Cause of Variations in Man's Physical 

 Structure " ; March 18, Dr. A. A. Golden- 

 weiser, of Columbia, " The Institution of 

 Totemism." 



A COURSE of six popular lectures on Natural 

 History and Travel are being given in the Ar- 

 senal Auditorium, Springfield, 111., on Friday 

 evenings at eight o'clock under the auspices 

 of the Illinois State Museum of Natural His- 

 tory as follows : 



November 1 1 — " How the Earth is known to be' 

 Millions of Years Old," Wm. M. Davis, Ph.D.,, 

 professor of geology, Harvard University, Boston. 



November 18 — " An Ascent of Mt. Blanc," A. R, 

 Crook, Ph.D., curator of the Illinois State Mu- 

 seum, Springfield. 



November 25 — " Botanizing in the Tropics," 

 William Trelease, LL.D., director of the Missouri 

 Botanical Garden, St. Louis. 



December 2 — " Big Game of Alaska," Wilfred 

 H. Osgood, assistant curator of mammalogy and 

 ornithology, Field Museum, Chicago. 



December 9 — " Photographic Revelations in 

 Astronomy," Edward E. Barnard, LL.D., professor 

 of practical astronomy, Chicago, and astronomer 

 of the Yerkes Observatory. 



December 16 — " Yellowstone National Park," 

 Charles Trua:s, Truax, Greene and Company, Chi- 

 cago. 



The Journal Officiel has published the sta- 

 tistics of the population of France for the first 

 six months of 1910. The results, quoted in the 

 Journal of the American Medical Association, 

 are less unfavorable than those of the corre- 

 sponding six months of the previous year. 

 While in the first six months of 1909 an excess 

 of 28,203 deaths was recorded, during the first 

 six months of 1910 there was an excess of 

 21,189 births. The births have not increased 

 appreciably. The birth-rate still remains low : 

 399,669 in 1910 in place of 398,710 in 1909. 

 But the deaths have decreased considerably: 

 378,480 instead of 426,913. As for marriages, 

 their number has remained stationary : 156,761 

 in place of 156,258 ; and the divorces continue 

 to increase: 6,383 against 6,148. As for the 

 Department of Seine, during the first six 

 months of the present year, 37,319 births, 38,- 



