for the promotion of scientific research. Representatives of the scientific academies of the Allied Countries and the United States held a meeting last October in London. A Committee of Inquiry was appointed which met later in Paris and constituted itself as a temporary International Research Council with the object of becoming a Federation of National Councils. A permanent executive committee of five was named which is to have its seat in London. There are great possibilities for international coöperation in scientific research, the internationalization of great laboratories, the exchange of publications, and the preparation of bibliographies. Above all, the manifest spirit of coöperation will certainly prove a stimulus to scientific workers.

SCIENTISTS have recently called attention to the need of replacing German in certain classes of scientific literature with English. The prevalence of German as a scientific medium is exemplified by the fact that of the 286 journals listed in the International Catalogue of Scientific Literature under general biology, 169 are in German and only 49 in English. There has been a similar German conquest in the case of the yearly reviews and great compendiums of scientific advance. It is suggested that the collection and publication of scientific information might well fall among the activities of the National Academy of Sciences which has recently been requested by President Wilson in an Executive Order to take over and perpetuate the work of the National Research Council in the stimulation and formulation of "comprehensive projects of research," in the promotion of coöperation, and in the gathering and collating of "scientific and technical information at home and abroad, in coöperation with government and other agencies," and the rendering of "such information available to duly accredited persons."

A FITTING memorial to the memory of Theodore Roosevelt is the greatest of our national parks which is now being established in the Sierra Nevada as an extension of the old Sequoia Park. Along its eastern boundary runs the main ridge of the Sierra, crested at the south by Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the United States. Three rivers rise among the mountains of the new

park, the Kaweah, the Kern, and King's. It is said that Tehipite Valley, through which flows the middle fork of King's, excels Yosemite Cañon in grandeur. The former Sequoia Park with its giant Sequoias, the "big trees" of California, is drained by the Kaweah River. The Roosevelt National Park is to be preserved for the true lover of the out-ofdoors who may still lose himself on the long trails and snowy peaks in this heart of the American wilderness.

DURING the war and the excessive demand for coal, attention has been turned toward the Arctic, especially to the island of Spitzbergen where effort alone is required to create one of the chief coal-producing regions of the world. It is said that in 1918 the shipment to Scandinavian ports reached 100,000 tons. It has been known for some time that vast quantities (estimated as at least 4,000,000,000 tons) of good steam-coal are present in this Arctic land and a cargo was shipped to Europe as early as 1899. In later years American, British, and Swedish companies have mined more or less unsystematically and in 1912 it is said that one company alone shipped out about 40,000 tons. Iron ore in unknown quantity, as well as other mineral products, is also present, but exploitation is hampered, especially by the lack of definite political control in the island.

PRESIDENT WILSON, while on his visit to Europe, has been signally honored by the learned societies and universities of the Old World. The University of Paris took this occasion to confer their doctorate, honoris causa, before a distinguished gathering in the Sorbonne. In acknowledging the honor conferred upon him the President delivered a brief address contrasting especially the two systems of culture between which the war has been waged. "I agree," he said, "with the intimation which has been conveyed today, that the terrible war through which we have just passed has not been only a war between nations, but that it has been also a war between systems of culture; the one system the aggressive system, using science without conscience, stripping learning of its moral restraints, and using every faculty of the human mind to do wrong to the whole race; the other system reminiscent of the high traditions of men, reminiscent of all those struggles, some of them obscure, but

others clearly revealed to the historian, of men of indomitable spirit everywhere struggling toward the right, and seeking, above all things else, to be free. . . ."

The ancient universities of Italy also honored him on his brief trip to Rome and he was elected a member of the Accademia dei Lincei, the oldest existing scientific society in the world. The universities of Bologna, Rome, Padua, and Florence all sent deputations to bear their greetings and confer various degrees. In England the President was unable to stop at Oxford or Cambridge, but he had opportunity to meet many of the leading representatives of art, literature, and science at the state banquet tendered him at Buckingham Palace.

THE Construction of a connecting pathway across Central Park between the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History, proposed by Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, gives occasion to Mr. Lewis Mumford, in the Scientific Monthly, to discuss recent tendencies in these two museums. They have changed from mausoleums of ancient art and animal remains to educational institutions which respectively illustrate to their visitors the past history of man's handicraft and display the facts of natural science in such a way that the student will be instructed by their order and surroundings. The arts have grown up in response to natural social demands, therefore, artistic productions, to be rightly understood, must be taken, so far as possible, in their natural context and not viewed as unrelated fetishes for some manner of beauty worship.

The Metropolitan Museum, notably in the Swiss, the Georgian, and the Queen Anne rooms, is giving expression to this organic view of art with scenes that impress by their unity rather than confuse by their diversity and multiplicity. Similarly, the Natural History Museum is taking advantage of the artist's vision in the reconstruction of primitive life, in the arrangement of animal habitat groups, and in the general organization of its collections so as to tell a connected story of the natural history of the earth and its inhabitants. The landscape artist and the animal sculptor have been called upon to assist in laying out this panorama. The two museums are accordingly becoming complementary in their methods,

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the one borrowing from natural science an organic and social conception of art, while the other is recognizing the aid which the fine arts can lend to the study of nature and

man.

AMONG foreign honors bestowed upon Americans during 1918 may be noted the election of Colonel Henry S. Graves, of the United States Forest Service, to the Royal Scottish Arboricultural Society of Edinburgh, and the promotion of Dr. Alexis Carrel, of the Rockefeller Institute, to the rank of Commander of the Legion of Honor. Dr. Simon Flexner also received the title of Officer of the Legion of Honor and was elected a corresponding member of the Société des Hôpitaux.

DR. ALEŠ HRDLIČKA, curator of the Division of Physical Anthropology at the United States National Museum, was recently elected an honorary fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.

UNDER the heading "Notes from a Traveler in the Tropies," Major Frank M. Chapman writes in Bird Lore of casual observations on bird life along the route of his journey to South America for the Red Cross. The fall and winter seasons are not propitious for finding birds in our southern states or in Cuba, as the southern migrants have disappeared and the winter residents have not yet arrived from the north, but on the Isle of Pines, off the coast of Cuba, Major Chapman was entertained by many feathered hosts, including the Anis, a common species of Cuba, whose whining whistle is one of the very few really unpleasant bird notes. Dr. Chapman sailed from Havana to Colon to visit the Panama Red Cross and the extremely active Canal Zone Chapter. passing the Gatun Lake he noted that the dead trees, killed by flooding this great area, were disappearing and that this partly artificial body of water gives promise of becoming one of the most beautiful lakes of the tropies. Its charms are as yet undiscovered by the birds—except for a few brown pelicans, cormorants, and ducks-but its forested shores and rocky islands are certain to afford a future home for the tropical migrants.

In

THE Aëronautical Society of America, at its meeting January 9, elected Mr. Carl E. Akeley, of the American Museum, to life membership in recognition of his important invention of a camera especially designed for use in aeroplane work.

WE quote the following from El Palacio, the journal of the Museum of New Mexico: "Indian Commissioner Sells is giving emphatic praise to the part taken by the Indians in the war. Out of 33,000 eligibles for military duty, more than 6500 served under the flag in the Army, 1000 were in the Navy, and 500 were regularly engaged in other war work. More than 6000 of the enlistments were voluntary. Indians bought Liberty Bonds until now an equivalent of a $50 bond is held for every man, woman, and child of the Race."

AT THE annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, held in December in Baltimore, Dr. Clark Wissler was elected president of the Association and Dr. Pliny E. Goddard was reelected editor. A plan for a future permanent research body in connection with the National Research Council was considered and referred to Professors Franz Boas, Alfred M. Tozzer, and Dr. Aleš Hrdlička for definite formulation.

DR. H. J. SPINDEN, of the anthropology department of the American Museum, has just returned from an archæological and ethnological expedition to Central America and Colombia, where he acquired extensive collections of textiles, pottery, mesh bags, and other articles of aboriginal handicraft. In eastern Nicaragua he studied the social organization, arts, and ceremonies of the Sumu and Misskito Indians. He found these Indians still wearing the style of sleeveless cotton jacket, with designs of interwoven egrets' down, that Columbus described in the account of his fourth voyage. Archæological explorations were conducted in Honduras and Nicaragua. In the latter country he discovered heavily forested regions virtually devoid of population, although the archæological remains indicated that they were once inhabited by a relatively highly civilized people. Apparently more savage tribes have come in recent times from South America and forced out the indigenous population. In the republic of Colombia Dr.

Spinden examined the public and private collections of native artifacts, including golden vases and figurines from the Cauca River Valley which are the most beautiful of their kind to be found in the New World.

or

A BRONZE tablet, commemorating the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Lewis Henry Morgan, is now on exhibition in Memorial Hall of the American Museum. Lewis Henry Morgan was in many ways the "father of American anthropology." After publishing the League of the Ho-dé-no-sau-nee Iroquois, he became aware of the similarity between the Iroquois system of reckoning relationship and that found among the Ojibway. As a result of this comparison he made an extensive study embodied in Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Race, which is the pioneer work on primitive social organization. The general ornamentation of the tablet is representative of Indian wampum belts, one of which is a record of the famous Iroquois League. Morgan was adopted by the Seneca Tribe of the Iroquois in 1842. The commemorative tablet is to be sent to Wells College in Aurora, New York, Morgan's birthplace.

THE inauguration of The International Journal of American Linguistics under the editorship of Professor Franz Boas, of Columbia University, and Dr. Pliny E. Goddard, of the American Museum, with the cooperation of Professor Uhlenbeck, of Leiden, and Dr. W. Thalbitzer, of Copenhagen, fills a previously unoccupied field in anthropology. Two numbers of the new journal have already appeared, the first containing a general introduction by Professor Boas in which he sets forth the most pressing needs and problems of American linguistics.

MR. CLARENCE B. MOORE has added another monograph to his many publications on American archæology, giving the results of recent explorations in Florida and Alabama. The aborigines of this region originally practised the custom of "killing" or breaking a hole into the pottery which they buried with their dead in order that its soul might accompany its previous owner. So expensive a custom, however, was later re1 The Northwestern Florida Coast Revisited

(Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 2d Series, Vol. XVI, part 4, 1918).

fined into the use of cheap pottery manufactured especially for funeral purposes, with a hole already made in the bottom or even with genuine ornamental openwork. Inasmuch as the Indians of this neighborhood made their deposits of earthenware to the east of their burial mounds, Mr. Moore and his party were able to obtain large amounts of material, local searchers having contented themselves usually with digging a hole in the center of the mound.

THE Museo Nacional de Chile occupies a beautiful and spacious building constructed for the International Exposition in 1875, in the Jardin des Plantes or Quinta Normal, of the old Spanish city of Santiago. This city, with a population of 400,000, is one of the most beautiful of the world, and besides being the capital of Chile, is also the center of that country's culture and learning. In the Museum the departments of archæology, geology, botany, and zoology are represented by extensive native and exotic collections; and for printing the scientific contributions to Chilian natural history the Museum publishes a Boletin del Museo Nacional de Chile and a series of Anales. The institution had

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its inception in the work of the French naturalist, Claude Gay (author of the Historia fisica y politica de Chile, 24 volumes, Paris, 1843-51), who visited the country (1828-42) to study the natural history. It now fills a prominent place in Chile's educational and scientific progress. Dr. Eduardo Moore has been the director since 1910.

SECRETARY LANE, of the Department of the Interior, has announced the renaming of the national monument on Mount Desert Island, Maine, as Lafayette National Park. This reservation, formerly known as the Sieur de Monts National Monument, has been singled out to commemorate our ancient alliance with France. It was discovered and named by Champlain in 1604.

DR. SIMON FLEXNER, the renowned pathologist and director of the laboratories of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, was elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at their recent meeting in Baltimore. Dr. Flexner has been serving during the war as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Medical Corps.

NATURAL HISTORY Owes an apology to its readers that the index for 1918 is included with the January instead of the December number and that there has been delay in the issuance of these two numbers. Fortunately the February number is in press as the January number appears. Attention is called to what will prove the unusual interest of the March number, including articles descriptive of the total eclipse of the sun in June, 1918, by Professor S. A. Mitchell, director of the Leander McCormick Observatory of the University of Virginia, painting the solar corona, by the artist, Howard Russell Butler, with reproductions in color, the wild flowers of Greenland, by W. Elmer Ekblaw, of the Crocker Land Expedition and the University of Illinois, and the unknown jungle of Panama, by Lieutenant Colonel Whelen, of the United States Army.

CANADA is to be congratulated on possessing the second largest telescope in the world, recently installed in the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory near Victoria, British Columbia. Dr. J. S. Plaskett, director of the observatory, narrates the history of the construction of this gigantic seventytwo inch reflector in the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. The glass disk, cast and annealed by the St. Gobain Glass Co., Charleroi, Belgium, narrowly escaped a possible tragic ending, being shipped from Antwerp but one week before war was declared, in July, 1914. The cast was 73%1⁄2 inches in diameter and 13 inches thick, with a central hole about 6 inches in diameter. The rough mass weighed about 5000 pounds, but when finished it was reduced to 4340 pounds. The great and difficult task of giving the final polish to the mirror required nearly two years, but the result is a credit to Brashear Co., of Pittsburgh, in whose hands the work was, as the maximum deviation of the curve of the glass from theoretical perfection is but one eighth of a wave-length. The mounting of the telescope was constructed by the Warner and Swasey Company, of Cleveland. No difficulty was experienced in setting up the parts and the instrument was in use a week after the delivery of the mirror to Victoria.

THE National Association of Audubon Societies has issued a call to the nature lovers of America to erect a Roosevelt Memorial Fountain. Their announcement is in the

form of an appreciation of Roosevelt, bearing on the cover the legend: "He taught and practiced clean, straight sportsmanship, with a power that has caused thousands of men afield to walk in straighter paths."

THE work of the wardens engaged by the National Association of Audubon Societies to guard the Federal Bird Reservations, the egret colonies, and the breeding islands along the Atlantic Coast, has been affected in no way by the war. These wardens report that the egrets have fared better than the sea birds, which have had but an average year, many natural accidents destroying the eggs by thousands.

A NEW and crafty method of egret destruction has been reported. The hunter erects a canvas screen near the egret rookery. He then flashes a strong light into the rookery, which startles and bewilders the birds. As the stream of light is changed from the rookery to the white screen the victims follow and dash to their destruction against the canvas. It is said that this trick was suggested by the accidental killing of some birds in a similar way on the Florida coast, when a steamer's searchlight was turned alternately on an egret rookery and on the white canvas of a passing sailboat.

THE Brooklyn Museum has recently constructed and opened to exhibition a Desert Life Group which is one of the largest habitat exhibits ever conceived. It repre

sents what might be termed the "optimum life conditions of the North American Desert" as seen in spring in southwestern United States or northern Mexico. The dominant plants are, of course, giant cacti, around which are grouped models of the various smaller species of cactus and other desert plants collected near Tucson, Arizona. The animal representatives of the desert fauna were taken by Mr. Robert Cushman Murphy on a hunting trip to northern Lower California. Five specimens of pronghorn antelope are prominent in the right half of the group. The antelope might at one time have been taken in Arizona, but the species is now so far extinct that it can be found only in out of the way and inaccessible haunts. To the artists and modelers of the group there were presented unusual problems, particularly in the reproduction of the cacti, and the results are a brilliant tribute to their craftsmanship.