456 



SCIENCE. 



[X. S. Vol. XXI. Xo. 534. 



The writer has for the last thirty years 

 been associated with the sanitarians of 

 London, the hygienists of Paris and in a 

 general way with physicians taking partic- 

 ular interest in the prevention of disease, 

 and it has occurred to him that a good pur- 

 pose would be served if an institute were 

 founded in this country for the special 

 study of blood poisoning, particularly as 

 regards the first step of infection. The 

 physiological, chemical and physical com- 

 position of normal blood is pretty well 

 known, but the immediate phenomena 

 which obtain before the appearance of 

 morbid symptoms do not seem to have been 

 studied to any very considerable degree. 



The main object of such an institute for 

 the study of the different phases of blood 

 poisoning, their cycle and variety, should 

 be to find out and indicate the means to 

 prevent the infection in each case. 



Sociological Features of the National Irri- 

 gation Movement. Guy Elliott Mit- 

 chell, Secretary of the National Irri- 

 gation Association, Washington. 

 No question before the public to-day 

 presents more interesting sociological 

 phases than does the national irrigation 

 question in America, not only through the 

 great number of homes to be created by 

 artificially watering desert wastes but 

 through the far-reaching effect of the work- 

 ing out of a great government irrigation 

 policy and the general education of the 

 American people on the advantages of this 

 practise both west and east. 



The social side of irrigation can be de- 

 scribed in the single clause— irrigation sub- 

 divides and resubdivides lands into small 

 home tracts. 



Irrigated communities average the small- 

 est farms in the world. The most highly 

 developed portion of the west contains 

 thousands of five and ten-acre farms from 

 which men are making comfortable livings. 



The social conditions of some of the most 

 intensely irrigated tracts are perhaps the 

 most nearly perfect of those of any com- 

 munities in the world. 



Now the effect of the great government 

 irrigation work, which is being pushed 

 rapidly forward, will be to create a west- 

 ern empire of new homes and at the same 

 time, incidentally, thoroughly to educate 

 the people of the entire country on the sub- 

 ject of irrigation. The consequence will be 

 that irrigation practises will finally en- 

 thrall the eastern farmer. The facts as 

 they exist in European countries show that 

 irrigation can be practised with great profit 

 even on land which has sufficient rainfall 

 to grow paying crops. Irrigation is a crop 

 insurer, besides producing double yields, 

 and when it is applied to eastern farm 

 lands the same conditions will result which 

 are found in the arid region — the farms 

 will be divided into smaller and better 

 tilled tracts. 



Along with the prosecution of the gov- 

 ernment irrigation policy and its great 

 agricultural educational features will come 

 the establishment of rural colonies through- 

 out the entire country, home-acres for fac- 

 tory employees, making them to an ex- 

 tent independent of their daily wage, and 

 the gradual trend of the city congestion 

 back to the land as the primal source of all 

 wealth. Working along with this policy 

 of intensive farming and high cultivation 

 is a recognized movement to engraft a prac- 

 tical agricultural education, nature study 

 and handicraft work, upon our common 

 school system so that men and women of 

 coming generations will both want and 

 strive to own a home on a piece of land 

 and when they secure it will know how^ to 

 make it productive and attractive. 



STATISTICAL SESSION. 



Beef Prices. Fred C. Croxton, U. S, 

 Bureau of Labor. 



