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Mona Island Declared a Forest Reserve

'N connection with Dr. Lobeck's mention of Mona Island in his article on the physiography of Porto Rico (page 523), American naturalists will be grateful to know that Mr. E. M. Bruner, forester of Porto Rico, has taken the steps to have Mona declared a forest reserve, and that his efforts have been rewarded with success. On December 22, 1919, Mona Island and Monito (an islet three and one half miles northwest of Mona) were declared an Insular Forest by proclamation of the gov ernor. This insures the preservation of the highly interesting natural conditions, especially by preventing the indiscriminate cutting of the scanty timber for charcoal.

Mona Island is situated in Mona Passage, halfway between Porto Rico and Santo Domingo. It consists of a nearly flat tableland of limestone averaging about two hundred feet in height, with a sheer sea cliff on the north and east, where it is subject to the most continuous wave action, and a terrace of flat sandy soil at the base of the scarcely

less precipitous cliff on the south. Partly successful attempts to grow corn and cotton are being made on this terrace, and coconuts and bananas grow along the base of the cliff where the soil is moister and where there is an occasional spring.

The very unusual native vegetation of the table-land is practically untouched, however, and in its adaptation to extremes of aridity and sterility presents habitat conditions which can scarcely be duplicated in either Porto Rico or Santo Domingo.

Most interesting of the animals on Mona is the large rock iguana (Cyclura stejnegeri), which, it is to be hoped, will continue to exist there now that its habitat will be preserved. The inaccessibility of the island affords it the necessary protection from man, its only other enemies being the dogs which are used to hunt the wild goats, pigs, and cattle. The rock iguanas are extinct in Porto Rico, although their bones are found in caves, and the related species in Santo Domingo appears to be on the verge of extinction also.-K. P. SCHMIDT.

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Destruction of Yellowstone Park Elk

HE Yellowstone Park herd of elk has been driven from the park ranges

this winter by the unusually severe snow storms and as a consequence from 6000 to 7000 head have been slaughtered by hunters in the state of Montana. A News Bulletin from the National Parks Association tells of this wild-life disaster which for pure blood lust recalls the last days of the buffalo.

This Yellowstone Park herd of about 30,000 elk is a genuine remnant of the wild life of former days and not a product of stocking the Park, but in its present restricted range it usually requires some assistance through at least a part of the winter.

The animals have become almost fearless of men because of their long residence in the sanctuary of a national park, and consequently the herd could easily be approached. Hunters killed them in many instances by firing volleys into the bands and shipped out carcasses by the carload. The state of Wyoming has established game

preserves along the park boundary to protect the elk, but Montana has not only refused to act likewise but has even this year extended the open season from October 15 to December 24. Those animals which escaped the hunters now face starvation on the snow-covered grazing grounds.

The southern herd has been saved with funds provided through the activity of Dr. E. W. Nelson, chief of the Biological Survey, but, even with the diversion of next spring's road improvement money for additional hay, sufficient forage cannot be procured. Congress has been asked for an appropriation but in the present crises of national and international affairs action is likely to be slow. Meantime the National Parks Association is receiving contributions for a fund for the rescue of the elk. It is also preparing to bring pressure to bear on the legislature of Montana, in order in the future to protect the southern herd along the park boundary, and to permit it to recuperate.

The forty-sixth star was affixed to the Roosevelt Flag by school
children in front of the courthouse at Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The
flag traveled by boy scout runners throughout New York State and
received its quota of stars at the hands of children in the various
schools along its way. The last of the stars was placed by little girls
of the public school at Sagamore Hill where Colonel Roosevelt always
played Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. Boys from the public school
at Oyster Bay bore the finished emblem to Roosevelt's grave on the
sixty-first anniversary of his birth and it was finally laid over the
mound of flowers by Mr. Samuel Abbott, of the Roosevelt Memorial
Committee, who had supervised the journey from the beginning

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Courtesy of Underwood & Underwood

Notes

NATURAL HISTORY greatly regrets that owing to the printers' strike in New York City no numbers of the magazine were issued during October, November, and December. The present number, dated December, covers these issues and closes the publication of the 1919 volume. Also, it is regretted that, because of the extraordinary present cost of material and labor, a change of policy is necessary in the issuance of NATURAL HISTORY. Announcement has already been made to readers of the magazine that during 1920 it will be issued as a bimonthly, in six numbers (instead of eight as heretofore), appearing about the first of February, April, June, August, October, and December. It is hoped that by this plan the same standard of quality can be maintained notwithstanding the increased cost of production.

A LEAGUE of the Red Cross societies of Great Britain, the United States, France, Italy, and Japan has been founded with headquarters in Geneva. This new Red Cross organization plans to function as an agency for relieving national and international disasters. It has also projected the formation of an international bureau for coördinating sanitation and knowledge of sanitation and the prevention of disease throughout the world. In this capacity it has already been called upon for help by the Supreme Economic Council in Paris. Lieutenant General Sir David Henderson, K. C. B., is director general of the league, and Henry P. Davison, a trustee and treasurer of the American Museum of Natural History and formerly chairman of the War Council of the American Red Cross, is chairman of the board of governors. Dr. Richard P. Strong, professor of tropical medicine at Harvard University, has charge of the medical and public health activities of the league.

SIR WILLIAM OSLER, regius professor of medicine at Oxford University, died on December 29 in his seventy-first year. But a few months previously on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, two volumes of medical essays, contributed by distinguished British and American colleagues and former

colleagues, were presented to Sir William. The presentation was made at the Royal Society of Medicine (London). Sir William was a Canadian by birth and held his first professorship at McGill University, but, as he remarked, the list of contributors to the volumes in his honor recalls a "vagrant career. . . . Toronto, Montreal, London, Berlin, and Vienna as a student; Montreal, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Oxford as a teacher." He was honorary professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University at the time of his death.

DR. ABRAHAM JACOBI, physician and teacher, died on July 10, 1919. He came to this country from Germany in 1853, after having suffered imprisonment from the Prussian government as a result of his participation in the Revolution of 1848. In New York he started a modest practice and in 1857 began lecturing in the College of Physicians and Surgeons on the diseases of children. Later he taught in Bellevue Hospital College and the University of New York and became clinical professor of pediatrics in Columbia University in 1870, retiring as professor emeritus in 1899 after nearly half a century of instructional work. His contribution to the literature of children's diseases was large and includes a number of very important treatises.

ONE of the most conspicuous phases of recent work of the Rockefeller Foundation, which was established in 1913 "to promote the well-being of mankind throughout the world," has been an educational and medical campaign against tuberculosis in France. By spectacular methods of advertising, the propaganda was carried far and wide over the country and many dispensaries and laboratories were established. In the United States the Foundation has demonstrated in two states that it is possible and profitable to get rid of malaria, either by destroying the malarial mosquitoes or, where this is impossible, by curing the human "carriers" of the disease. In the case of yellow fever, an attack has been made against the strongholds of the disease in Guatemala, and an expedition was sent to Ecuador for the collection of important information. The

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The King and Queen of Belgium, during the recent visit of their Majesties to this country, honored New York City by planting a tree in Central Park-a European beech. In the photograph taken at the time, the King in the uniform of a Lieutenant General can be seen standing just back of her Majesty. The King and Queen were greeted in the park by 30,000 New York school children before the tree planting

campaign previously begun against the hookworm has been continued, and the infection surveys were completed in São Paulo, Brazil, in Jamaica, and in Guam, while new work was started in Queensland, Australia, and in Minas Geraes, Brazil. The China Medical Board of the Rockefeller Foundation is constructing thirteen buildings for the Peking Union Medical College. Thirty-two instructors have been appointed on the medical faculty, and laboratory facilities are now. ready. Since 1914 the large fund of $22,444,815 has been distributed among recognized agencies for special war service in camp and community welfare, medical research and relief, and humanitarian aid for Armenia, Syria, Belgium, France, Poland, Serbia, and Turkey. Plans for public health and medical education have been laid on broad international lines, and a new School of Hygiene and Public Health has been opened in connection with Johns Hopkins University. The Rockefeller Foundation fortunately has received a large share of the Christmas Day gift by John D. Rockefeller of $100,000,000 for public health and education throughout the world.

A GOLD medal has been presented to Dr. M. E. Conner, chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation Commission to Guayaquil, at a special meeting of the Guayaquil municipality, in recognition of his services and success in stamping out yellow fever in that region.

THE Rockefeller Foundation has established a division of medical education to which Dr. Richard M. Pearce, professor of research medicine in the University of Pennsylvania and member of the medical advisory board to the War Council of the American Red Cross, has been appointed director.

THREE trees were planted by distinguished visitors to New York City last fall in the "Honor Grove" of Central Park where the English elm, set out in 1860 by the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, still stands. On the afternoon of September 9, General Pershing, while attending a gathering in the park of 35,000 school children, put the first earth around the roots of a pin oak as a memorial to the men who lost their lives in the World War. A month later, on October 3, after addressing a similar gathering of school children, the King

NOTES

and Queen of Belgium planted a European beech, and on November 21 the Prince of Wales set out an elm near the tree which his grandfather planted more than half a century before.

THEIR Majesties the King and Queen of Belgium, the Crown Prince, and their party visited the American Museum of Natural History on the afternoon of Saturday, October 4, and were received by Professor William K. Gregory and other members of the scientific staff present. The royal party visited several of the halls and viewed important exhibits, expressing a cordial interest in the Museum's work.

ON November 6 Nature celebrated its fiftieth anniversary with a Jubilee Number. The issue is occupied, for the most part, with retrospects by noted British scientists of fifty years' progress in various fields of learning, and an appreciation by Dr. H. Deslandres, vice president of the Academy of Sciences of Paris, of the founder and editor, Sir Norman Lockyer, who still continues his astronomical investigations at fourscore and three years. Fifty years have seen vast changes in science and scientific education in England, and of these changes Nature has been the

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faithful weekly chronicle. Sir Norman, in his "Valedictory Memories," records the encouragement in starting the weekly he received from various men of the past generation, including Mr. Alexander Macmillan, Sir Joseph Hooker, Huxley, and Tyndall. This was ten years after the appearance of Darwin's Origin of Species and at about the time when science began to take its first hold in public education in Great Britain.

A NEW magazine, the Scientific American Monthly, will succeed the Scientific American Supplement, which was established in 1876. This monthly will be devoted to current events in pure science and technology. It will officially represent the National Research Council by a special department and keep the public informed of the Council's activities. A particularly important feature of the new magazine, as it was of its predecessor, is the publication of translations of complete texts of significant articles appearing in foreign scientific magazines.

THE University of Paris has presented to the universities of the Allied countries a medal commemorating the achievements in the World War of the men of the respective institutions.

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"Honor Grove" in Central Park, New York City, where General Pershing and three royal guests of the city have planted trees, lies along the east side of the Middle Drive between the Drive and the Mall.

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