54 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. 
the manuscript and the appearance of the printed page, the editors 
have thought it best to drop the department of **News" which has 
long been a feature in this journal. This step is taken the more 
willingly since our contemporary, Science, covers the same field in so 
able a manner, and with its weekly issue can present items of news 
far more promptly than we are able to. 
The notices of appointments, retirements, and deaths have been 
approximately complete ever since the journal passed into its present 
control. This feature will be retained, not as a matter of news but 
as a matter of record, and will be presented every three months with 
the endeavor to have this record as nearly complete as may be. 
Another feature which will form part of the record, and which 
appears for the first time in the present number, is the record 
of gifts to what may be termed educational institutions, including 
colleges, technical schools, libraries, and the like. In our present 
record, which includes eleven months of the year 1900, we note the 
gifts of over $16,000,000 to these purposes. Scattered through the - 
pages of a weekly or monthly journal these items make but little 
impression on the reader, but gathered at intervals of six months or 
a year they are ample evidence of the generosity of our wealthy 
people and of those who are classed among the “well-to-do.” In 
contrast with this liberality of the moneyed classes of America stands 
the parsimony of the same classes in the Old World. Gifts of a 
similar character there are rare. An instance comes before us as we 
write. During the past year Brown University raised over one million 
dollars and in this way secured an additional gift of a quarter of a 
million more. During two years past the University of Cambridge, 
one of the two great universities of England, has been trying to 
increase its funds, both for endowment and for new buildings, and 
in spite of constant efforts it has been able to raise but a little over 
three hundred thousand dollars (£62,500). 
