the buildings at Cinchona relinquished by the government of Jamaica have been rented for a tropical botanical laboratory.

THE daily papers state that large crowds are visiting the American Museum of Natural History, New York, to see the specimen of radium there on exhibition, which was presented by Mr. Edward D. Adams.

THE Chemical Laboratory of the University Modena, including a scientific library containing 15,000 works, has been destroyed by fire.

THE Farmers' National Congress will hold its twenty-third annual session at Niagara Falls, beginning on September 22. Among the general addresses of scientific interest on the program are: 'Infectious and Contagious Diseases of Farm Animals and their effect on American Agriculture,' Dr. D. E. Salmon, Washington, D. C.; Insect Pests of Plants and their effect on American Agriculture,' Professor F. M. Webster, Urbana, Ill.

THE British Journal of Education states that the council of the Royal Geographical Society has at the request of the London School Board and the Oxford and Cambridge School Examinations Board drawn up syllabuses as guides to instruction in geography in elementary and in secondary schools. The elementary suggestions were drafted by the late Mr. T. G. Rooper, H.M.I.S., and, after his death, they were revised by Mr. G. G. Chisholm, M.A., B.Sc. The secondary were drafted by Mr. H. J. Mackinder.

THE British Government has appointed a commission to inquire into the alleged physical deterioration of the lower classes, with Mr. Almeric W. Fitzroy, clerk of the privy council, as chairman.

THE daily papers state that the legacy of M. de Pierrecourt, who left his money to the city of Rouen for the purpose of founding a family of giants, with a view to the physical regeneration of the human race, has been before the Council of State in Paris. An arrangement has been arrived at by which the city of Rouen undertakes to apply a sum of 800,000f. out of the testator's estate to the

foundation of a useful institution, and to pay over the rest of the estate to M. de Pierrecourt's heirs.

CASES of illness including four deaths have occurred at Marseilles which are attributed to the plague, while in northern Mexico there is an outbreak of yellow fever, which is now being investigated by the Health Department of Texas.

THE U. S. Geological Survey has established seven new river stations and renewed four of the five old stations in North Dakota, so that eleven stations are now in operation in this state. The stations in the eastern part of the state have been established to determine the amount of water power available and for other general purposes. In the western part of the state, which is semi-arid, the stations have been established to determine the amount of water available for irrigation. This region has no large rivers except the Missouri, which has only a small fall, not so great as most irrigation canals. It is not probable, therefore, that this stream can be used for irrigation purposes until a later time, when the land shall have become more valuable. A thorough examination is being made of all the streams and the lands in North Dakota west of the Missouri River with a view to irrigation projects. If any project appears to be favorable, detailed surveys and estimates may be made, and, if the project is then found feasible, it will be recommended for construction. An examination is also being made of the cheap and abundant lignite resources of the state in the hope that lignite can be utilized for fuel in pumping water for irrigation in certain localities, where long canals would be impracticable.

THE London correspondent of the Journal of the American Medical Association calls attention to the statistics of the birth rate in Australia, recently collected by Mr. Coglan. The fall in the birth rate in Australia and New Zealand taken together is such that there are annually fewer births by nearly 20,000 than would have occurred if the rates prevailing as late as ten years ago had been maintained. New South Wales furnishes a stri

king example. In 1887 there were in this state 112,247 married women under the age of 45; in 1901 there were 149,247, yet the number of children born was about the same in each year. The legitimate birth rate per 10,000 married women under the age of 45 is 239; in 1891 it was 276. A curious fact is that the decline occurs in every class, among people of every shade of opinion, except among women of Irish birth, who exhibit no decline. But as the proportion of women of Irish birth is fast decreasing that element in maintenance of the birth rate will soon disappear. Large as is the area of the Australian continent Mr. Coghlan thinks it is impossible that its people will become truly great under the conditions affecting the increase of population which now exist. Immigration has practically ceased to be an important factor, the maintenance and increase of the population depending on the birth rate alone-a rate seriously diminished and still diminishing.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS.

PROFESSOR F. D. TUCKER, principal of the school of agriculture of the University of Minnesota, has been elected and has entered upon his duties as president of Memorial University, Mason City, Ia. This institution was founded about two years ago as a memorial to the Grand Army of the Republic. One building, the College of Arts, costing $100,000, has already been erected and will be occupied during the coming year.

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, Reading, has received towards the cost of the new buildings £10,000 from Lady Wantage, widow of Lord Wantage, who was president of the college from 1896 to 1901; £10,000 from Mr. W. G. Palmer, M.P.; and a third £10,000 from three other contributors.

THE Leeds Corporation technical instruction sub-committee, with the approval of the finance committee, has decided in the event of a charter being granted to the Yorkshire College, to give £4,000 a year towards the University funds, in addition to the

£1,550 granted from the residue of the local taxation.

DR. BURTON D. MYERS, assistant in anatomy at the Johns Hopkins University, has an appointment as instructor in anatomy in the Indiana State University.

DR. C. H. GORDON, until recently superintendent of schools at Lincoln, Nebr., and instructor in geology and geography in the University of Nebraska, has been appointed acting-professor of geology in the University of Washington to take charge of the work of Professor Henry Landes, who has been granted a year's leave of absence for study in the University of Chicago.

THE following is a list of appointments in the scientific departments of the University of Maine for the coming year: H. S. Boardman, B.C.E. and C.E., University of Maine, professor of civil engineering; W. N. Spring, B.A. and M.F., Yale, professor of forestry; W. D. Hurd, B.S., Michigan Agricultural College, professor of agriculture; A. W. Cole, B.S., Worcester Polytechnic Institute, instructor in shop-work; H. P. Hamlin, B.C.E., University of Maine, instructor in civil engineering; G. T. Davis, B.A., and J. B. Reed, B.A., of the University of Michigan, instructors in chemistry; E. H. Bowen, A.B., Colgate, tutor in physics; P. D. Simpson, B.S., University of Maine, tutor in civil engineering; R. M. Connor, B.S., University of Maine, tutor in mathematics; Edith M. Patch, A.B., University of Minnesota, entomologist in the experiment station; S. C. Dinsmore, B.S., University of Maine, assistant chemist in the experiment station.

PROFESSOR AUTHENRIETH, of Freiburg, has been called to a professorship of chemistry in the University of Greifswald; Dr. KrigarMenzel, docent in physics in the University of Berlin, has been appointed acting professor in the Technical Institute at Charlottenberg; Dr. Armin Tschermak, docent in physiology and assistant in the Physiological Institute of the University of Halle, has been promoted to a professorship, and Dr. Wilhelm Küster has been appointed professor of chemistry in the Veterinary School at Stuttgart.

for hoping that the improvement in the position of science in this country which we owe to the one will also be the care of his successor, who has honored the Association by accepting the unanimous nomination of your council to be your President next year, an acceptance which adds a new lustre to this chair.

On this we may congratulate ourselves all the more because I think, although it is not generally recognized, that the century into which we have now well entered may be more momentous than any which has preceded it, and that the present history of the world is being so largely moulded by the influence of brainpower, which in these modern days has to do with natural as well as human forces and laws, that statesmen and politicians will have in the future to pay more regard to education and science, as empirebuilders and empire-guarders, than they have paid in the past.

The nineteenth century will ever be known as the one in which the influences of science were first fully realized in civilized communities; the scientific progress was so gigantic that it seems rash to predict that any of its successors can be more important in the life of any nation.

Disraeli, in 1873, referring to the progress up to that year, spoke as follows: "How much has happened in these fifty years-a period more remarkable than any, I will venture to say, in the annals of mankind. I am not thinking of the rise and fall of Empires, the change of dynasties, the establishment of Governments. I am thinking of those revolutions of science which have had much more effect than any political causes, which have changed the position and prospects of mankind more than all the conquests and all the codes and all the legislators that ever lived."*

* Nature, November 27, 1873, Vol. IX., p. 71.

The progress of science, indeed, brings in many considerations which are momentous in relation to the life of any limited community-any one nation. One of these considerations to which attention is now being greatly drawn is that a relative decline in national wealth derived from industries must follow relative neglect of scientific education.

It was the late Prince Consort who first emphasized this when he came here fresh from the University of Bonn. Hence the 'Prince Consort's Committee,' which led to the foundation of the College of Chemistry and afterwards of the Science and Art Department. From that time to this the warnings of our men of science have become louder and more urgent in each succeeding year. But this is not all; the commercial output of one country in one century as compared with another is not alone in question; the acquirement of the scientific spirit and a knowledge and utilization of the forces of Nature are very much further reaching in their effects on the progress and decline of nations than is generally imagined.

Britain in the middle of the last century was certainly the country which gained most by the advent of science, for she was then in full possession of those material gifts of Nature, coal and iron, the combined winning and utilization of which, in the production of machinery and in other ways, soon made her the richest country in the world, the seat and throne of invention and manufacture, as Mr. Carnegie has called her. Being the great producers and exporters of all kinds of manufactured goods, we became eventually, with our iron ships, the great carriers, and hence the supremacy of our mercantile marine and our present command of the sea.

The most fundamental change wrought by the early applications of science was in

Hence the first great effect of the general progress of science was relatively to diminish the initial supremacy of Britain due to the first use of material resources, which indeed was the real source of our national wealth and place among the nations.

The unfortunate thing was that, while the foundations of our superiority depending upon our material resources were being thus sapped by a cause which was beyond our control, our statesmen and our universities were blind leaders of the blind, and our other asset, our mental resources, which was within our control, was culpably neglected.

So little did the bulk of our statesmen know of the part science was playing in the modern world and of the real basis of the nation's activities, that they imagined political and fiscal problems to be the only matters of importance. Nor, indeed, are we very much better off to-day. In the important discussions recently raised by Mr. Chamberlain, next to nothing has been said of the effect of the progress of science on prices. The whole course of the modern world is attributed to the presence or absence of taxes on certain commodities in certain countries. The fact that the great fall in the price of food-stuffs in England did not come till some thirty or forty years after the removal of the corn duty between

1847 and 1849 gives them no pause; for them new inventions, railways and steamships are negligible quantities; the vast increase in the world's wealth in free trade and protected countries alike comes merely according to them in response to some political shibboleth.

We now know, from what has occurred in other States, that if our Ministers had been more wise and our universities more numerous and efficient, our mental resources would have been developed by improve. ments in educational method, by the introduction of science into schools, and, more important than all the rest, by the teaching of science by experiment, observation and research, and not from books. It is because this was not done that we have fallen behind other nations in properly applying science to industry, so that our applications of science to industry are relatively less important than they were. But this is by no means all; we have lacked the strengthening of the national life produced by fostering the scientific spirit among all classes, and along all lines of the nation's activity; many of the responsible authorities know little and care less about science; we have not learned that it is the duty of a State to organize its forces as carefully for peace as for war; that universities and other teaching centres are as important as battleships or big battalions; are, in fact, essential parts of a modern State's machinery, and as such to be equally aided and as efficiently organized to secure its future well being.

Now the objects of the British Association as laid down by its founders seventytwo years ago are "To give a stronger impulse and a more systematic direction to scientific inquiry-to promote the intercourse of those who cultivate science in different parts of the British Empire with one another and with foreign philosophers-to obtain a more general attention to the ob