116 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIV. No. 342. 



with fires, lumbering, grazing, tree-planting, 

 stream flow and erosion. 



The Chief of the Division of Kecords is Mr. 

 Otto J. J. Luebkert. It takes charge of all 

 office and routine matters, and also has custody 

 of the library of literature bearing on forestry, 

 and of a unique collection of photographs, 

 which is continually being added to, illustrating 

 forest conditions all over the United States. 



The result of the work of the Division has 

 been to turn practical forestry in the United 

 States from a doubtful experiment into an as- 

 sured success. Special studies of some of the 

 most important trees, commercially, have been 

 made, from which can be calculated their prob- 

 able future yield. Cheap methods of harvest- 

 ing the present lumber crop without injuring 

 the productivity of the forest have been put in 

 operation. Such concerns as the Great North- 

 ern Paper Company and the Deering Harves- 

 ter Company have been led to undertake con- 

 servative management of their forest proper- 

 ties. Meanwhile, the work of tree-planting, 

 particularly in the almost treeless Western 

 States of the plains, has been furthered ; the 

 relation of the forest to the volume of streams, 

 erosion, evaporation and irrigation have been 

 studied ; matters connected with irrigation and 

 water supply have been investigated ; hopeful 

 progress has been made in the direction of 

 regulating grazing in the Western reserves in a 

 manner fair both to the important interests of 

 cattle and sheep owners and to those who look 

 to the reserves as a source of continuous supply 

 of wood and water ; and studies of forest fires 

 were conducted with a view of reducing the 

 great yearly loss from this source, a loss which 

 has been estimated at $50,000,000. 



Field work is to go on this summer in 17 

 States. There are in all 179 persons en- 

 gaged in the work of the Bureau. Of this 

 number 81 are student assistants — young men, 

 largely college students, who expect to enter 

 forestry as a profession, and who serve during 

 the summer on small pay for the sal^e of the 

 experience gained. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 

 Professor Eudolp Virchow has been ap- 

 pointed a Knight, with the right to vote, of the 



Prussian Order ' Pour le Merite ' for Science 

 and Art. 



Trinity College has conferred the honorary 

 degree of M.S. on Mr. John H. Sage, secretary 

 of the American Ornithologists' Union. 



Captain Scott and the other ofiicers and the 

 members of the scientific staff of the British 

 National Antarctic Expedition were entertained 

 at a farewell dinner by the Savage Club, on 

 July 6. 



The annual dinner of the Royal Institute of 

 Public Health will take place on July 24, in 

 London, when the Harben Gold Medal of the 

 Institute will be conferred on Professor E. 

 Koch, of Berlin. Lord Lister, Lord Strath- 

 cona, Professor Brouardel and other guests 

 will be present. 



F. W. Dyson, chief astronomer at the Green- 

 wich Observatory, arrived at San Francisco on 

 June 8, after having observed the total eclipse 

 of the sun in Sumatra. He visited the Lick 

 Observatory on the ninth, and intends to in- 

 spect other American observatories before his 

 return to England. 



Dr. Theo. Gill, after having attended the 

 ninth jubilee of Glasgow University as a repre- 

 sentative of the Smithsonian Institution and the 

 National Academy of Sciences, is at present on 

 the continent, where he will visit scientific 

 institutions, including the Zoological Station at 

 Naples. 



Professor William Osler, of the Johns 

 Hopkins University, and Dr. Edward G. Jane- 

 way, of the University and Bellevue Hospital 

 Medical College, are among the delegates who 

 will attend the Congress of Tuberculosis to be 

 held in London next week. 



Mr. F. H. Newell, in charge of the hydro- 

 graphic work of the U. S. Geological Survey, 

 and Mr, GifFord Pinchot, chief of the Bureau of 

 Forestry, left Washington on July 11 for the 

 West, having in view, among other things, the 

 investigation of the forests and water supply of 

 eastern Oregon. Mr. H. Gannett, of the U. S. 

 Geological Survey, is already in Oregon inspect- 

 ing the work of the various parties surveying 

 the forests. 



The Secretary of Agriculture has recently 



