G FJXUL U'llIC MISCELLA XEA 423 



0>r August 2ii General Lord Kitchener formally opened for traffic the 

 bridge, built by American engineers, across the Atbara near its conflu- 

 ence with the Nile. Trains can now be run to within 75 miles of Khar- 

 tum, and before the end of the present year the whistle of the locomo- 

 tive will be heard at the capital of the Sudan itself. Mr Cecil J. Rhodes 

 has the utmost confidence in the completion of the proposed railway from 

 the Cape to Cairo within ten years, and, in view of the energy displayed 

 in the construction of the 700 miles that have been built since the project 

 began to be seriously considered, there is little doubt that the completion 

 of a line of railway across the Dark Continent will be one of the early 

 achievements of the coming century. 



Various sites within a radius of 25 miles of Washington are being ex- 

 amined by parties under Dr Bauer's direction for the determination of 

 the best location for the Coast and Geodetic Survey Observatory. The 

 examinations thus far made have disclosed some interesting regional dis- 

 turbances, especially in the vicinity of Gaithersburg. In order to deter- 

 mine what influence such regional disturbances have upon the variations 

 of the earth's magnetism, such as, for example, the diurnal variation or 

 the secular variation, it is proposed to mount a sensitive Eschenhagen 

 dedinetograph at Gaithersburg, with the aid of which the variations of 

 the most sensitive of the magnetic elements — the declination — will be 

 continuously and automatically recorded. 



The election of Hon. John Giffoi'd, of Princeton, N. J., to a Chair of 

 Forestry in Cornell University, a department recently established at that 

 institution, is in line with the growing realization throughout the United 

 States of the necessity of the study and solution of the forest problems of 

 the country. Mr Gifford was the founder and the first editor of The 

 Foretier (then the Neiv Jersey Forester), the official organ of the American 

 Forestry Association, which is doing so much to promote the protection 

 and care of the American forests. Last year Cornell University acquired 

 30,000 acres of woodland in the Adirondacks for the exclusive use of her 

 forestry department. Over a million small trees, it is stated, have been 

 planted in different sections of this tract, and several seed beds have also 

 been laid out. 



The Division of Forestry of the U. S. Department of Agriculture has 

 recently issued a handsome little bulletin (No. 26), entitled " Notes on the 

 Forest Conditions of Porto Rico," by Robert T. Hill, of the U. S. Geo- 

 logical Survey. The bulletin embraces the results of observations made 

 during a rapid reconnaissance through the military department of Puerto 

 Rico by Mr Hill in January, L899, and contains not only a clear statement 

 of the forest resources of Puerto Rico, but also such succinct descriptions 

 of the physical features of the island as are necessary to an understand- 

 ing of its forest problems. In the study and description of the native 

 woods Mr Hill was assisted by G. B. Suiworth, Dendrologist of the Divis- 

 ion of Forestry. Fifteen of the. woods are reproduced by a process by 

 which tlif impressions are made directly from the woods themselves, a 

 process designed by S. J. Kiibel and here used, it is believed, for the 

 first time. An excellent feature of the bulletin is an admirable relief map 

 of the island compiled by Mr Hill. 



