512 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST.  [VoOL. XXXII 
doors and teach her what nature really is. An attempt to meet this 
need is to be made during the summer by the Rhode Island College 
of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, at Kingston, R. I., where a summer 
school of nature study will be held from July 5-19, provided forty 
applicants are enrolled before June 1. The program is rather ambi- 
tious for the short time allowed, as it includes physiography, botany, 
zoology, and horticulture. But as the work is to be chiefly in the 
field, if it is skillfully conducted, no doubt most teachers will be able 
to get from it considerable instruction and a great deal of inspiration 
for future work. 
October, 1898) to seek the ancestry of the vertebrates in Actino- 
trocha, it seems to us, is the most ingenious and the most improbable 
of any view yet advanced. It demands that the mouth of Actinotrocha 
becomes the vertebrate neurenteric canal, while the vent forms the 
vertebrate mouth. . 
New ‘*American Anthropologist.’? — It is with genuine pleasure 
that students of anthropology greet the new American Anthropologist, 
the first number of which appeared in March. ‘The new journal re- 
places the periodical that appeared under the same name for the last 
ten years. The change is most welcome and promising. The old 
American Anthropologist served a good purpose. It was the off- 
cial journal of the Washington Anthropological Society; it became 
the forum of smaller contributions to anthropology, and it stimulated 
and preserved many efforts of value, but its scope was too restricted. 
It was not a fair representative of the science of anthropology in 
this country, and could not keep up with its advancement. Thus 
it became evident that either the American Anthropologist had to 
undergo a radical change, or that a new, larger, more representative 
journal had to be established. 
The first practical efforts for the establishing of a new journal of 
anthropology were due to Dr. Franz Boas, of New York, and Pro- 
fessor Wm. J. McGee, of Washington, who were soon seconded by 
other anthropologists of prominence. Dr. Boas formulated a definite 
proposition and brought it before Section H of the American Asso- 
ciation for the Advancement of Science, at its winter meeting in 
Ithaca, in December, 1897. The proposition aimed rather at a met- 
amorphosis of the established journal than at beginning a new peri- 
odical, the change taking place with the consent and coöperation of 
the Washington Anthropological Society. Section H of the Ameri- 
