720 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIII. No. 854 



letics. Last year's list stood, for tiie same 

 subjects in the same order, 128, 391, 441, 452, 

 139, 406, 364, 195. History thus shows the 

 greatest advance, and it is a little surprising 

 to find Latin and Greek coming next. Least 

 popular is religion, and there may be a connec- 

 tion between this fact and the wide-spread 

 criticism of the status of religious instruction 

 in the German schools. 



New openings in these schools are not ap- 

 pearing as rapidly as was the case a few years 

 ago. For the last four years the numbers are 

 355, 323, 286 and 222. Thus the new posi- 

 tions created in 1910 were 133 fewer than in 

 1907. 



The higher schools for girls are, as was to 

 be expected, growing much more rapidly, even 

 though the feminist movement has not taken 

 hold of Germany as vigorously as it has seized 

 some other countries. In 1900 Prussia and 

 her cities were maintaining 104 girls' sec- 

 ondary schools. Last year the number had 

 reached 188, and it is now 225. It will be 

 seen that the rapid increase in the number of 

 these schools is a very recent affair. Twelve 

 of the girls' schools are in charge of lady 

 directors. 



There are fifteen regular German secondary 

 schools in other countries, located in Antwerp, 

 Barcelona, Brussels, Belgrano near Buenos- 

 Ayres, Buenos-Ayres itself, Bukharest, Cairo, 

 Constantinople, Genoa, Madrid, Milan, Mex- 

 ico, Rio de Janeiro, Rome and Tsingtau. 

 Twenty-nine directors and instructors with 

 regular positions in Prussia are at work for 

 the year as exchange teachers or lecturers in 

 other countries. 



EoY Temple House 



EDWIN E. HOWELL 



On Easter Sunday Edwin Eugene Howell 

 died at his home in Washington. Geologists, 

 physiographers and educators of our country 

 thereby lost an efficient and appreciated ally. 



In the year 1861 the late Henry A. Ward, 

 then professor of geology in the University of 

 Eochester, erected on the college campus a 

 building which he called Cosmos HaU and 

 which was devoted to the assemblage and 



preparation of scientific material for museums 

 of natural history. The establishment thus 

 instituted grew and developed, and it still 

 flourishes. Its work was performed largely 

 by young men of congenial tastes, who there 

 acquired the practical experience which com- 

 mended them later to the trustees of larger 

 responsibilities. It thus served incidentally 

 as a training school in the natural sciences 

 and especially in certain branches connected 

 with museums. Among its graduates are Fred- 

 eric A. Lucas, curator in chief of the Brooklyn 

 Institute Museums; William T. Hornaday, 

 director of the New York Zoological Park; 

 F. C. Baker, curator of the Chicago Academy 

 of Sciences; William M. Wheeler, professor of 

 economic entomology at Harvard University; 

 and Henry L. Ward, director of the Mil- 

 waukee Public Museum; and in addition to 

 these the writer, who ranks himself somewhat 

 proudly as senior alumnus. This was How- 

 ell's school, his real school despite the fact 

 that the biographies mention only the country 

 schools of his native county and the Univer- 

 sity of Rochester, which recognized certain 

 special studies by making him a master of 

 arts. He entered it in 1865, at the age of 21, 

 and took his diploma — so to speak — in 18Y2. 

 For two years he was a geologist of the 

 Wheeler Survey and then for a year held a 

 similar position in the Powell Survey, his 

 work consisting of geologic reconnaissance in 

 Utah, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico. 

 Then, having become satisfied that this occu- 

 pation was not the one for which he was best 

 fitted, he resigned his position and returned to 

 the Rochester Museum, becoming a partner 

 where he had before been an assistant. A few 

 years later he removed to Washington, where 

 he established " The Microcosm," an institu- 

 tion somewhat similar to Ward's Cosmos Hall 

 but devoted more particularly to geologic ma- 

 terial and subjects. The modeling of relief 

 maps, in which work he was a pioneer — if not 

 the pioneer — for the United States, soon be- 

 came a specialty; and his monument, for a 

 generation at least, will consist in the plastic 

 representations of physiography, topography 

 and geologic structure which adorn the halls 



