" GEOGRAPHIC MISCELLANEA 125 



TiFE present membership of the Xational Geographic Society is 1,300 resi- 

 dent and 1,300 non-resident members. This is an increase of 1,000 since June 

 1, 1899, when the systematic effort to enlarge the work of the Society was begun. 



TiFK Constantinople correspondent of the London Times states that, as com- 

 pensation for the Bagdad railwa}' concession to Germany, Russia has demanded 

 of Ihe Ottoman Empire prior railway concessions in Asia Minor north of the 

 German line. 



Announckmext is made of the resignation of Mr John B. Hatcher from the 

 chair of assistant professor of geology in Princeton University, to accept tlie 

 curatorship of vertebrate paleontology at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburg, 

 Pennsylvania. 



Fro.m the fourth report of the International Commission on Glaciers it would 

 appear that out of 70 glaciers measured in the Swiss Alps, 12 are advancing, 

 while 55 are receding. In the eastern Alps the retreat of the glaciers is notice- 

 able, though not with the same rapidity as in the period from 1870 to 1890. 



The longitude of Maricopa, Arizona, has recently been determined by a U. S. 

 Coast and Geodetic Survey party. The initial station was El Paso, Texas. 

 Signals were exchanged on three successive nights, after which the observers 

 changed jjlaces and three more nights' observations were obtained, thus elim- 

 inating the efiect of jjersonal equation. 



Capt. George Owen Squier, of the Signal Office, War Department, contrib- 

 utes to a recent numbei- of The Independent a summary of the arguments in favor 

 of a United States Pacific cable. A map accompanying the article shows the 

 routes of the proposed United States Pacific cable, the route of the proposed 

 English Pacific cable, and also the proposed international cable spans. 



I.v a recent number of the Pnllifinder is a description of a set of five relief- 

 maps of the continent, prepared for the Paris Exposition by E. E. Howell, the 

 well-known relief-map expert. They are all on the same horizontal scale, one 

 inch to 120 miles, and average five feet square. The vertical scale is 1 to 500,000, 

 the deepest ocean depths being depressed about three-quarters of an incii. 



It is expected that the committee of judges appointed by the National (ieo- 

 graphic Society to award the prizes of $150.00 and $75.00 offered by the Society 

 for the best and second best essays submitted during 1899 relating to pre C(ilum- 

 bian discoveries and settlements of the Norsemen on the mainland of North 

 America will reach a decision in the near future, and the announcement of the 

 successful contestants will then be made. 



WfLUAM Henrv Gilder, an .Arctic explorer of the seventies and early eighties, 

 died in February at Morristown, New Jersey. In 1878 he joined the Franklin 

 search expedition, commanded by the late Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka, 

 U. S. A. While serving with this expedition from 1878 to 1880 he made a sledge 

 journey of over 3,250 miles in King William Land, probably tlie longest sledge 

 journey ever made in the Arctic regions. He has written the narrative of the 

 expedition in "Schwatka's Search." 



1h i)fcCiare\s .Umjdzliie for February is an interesting article by Mr Walter 

 Welhnan, entitled " The Race for the North Pole," a narrati(jn of his Arctic ex- 



