The

per acre if the sparrows are included. total number of species observed was 38, and the number of birds identified was 4,257. Fifty-nine per cent. of the individuals seen were bronzed grackles, 13.3 per cent. were English sparrows, 12.5 per cent. were cowbirds, 2.5 per cent. were mourning-doves, and 2.3 per cent. were meadow-larks. Nearly 90 per cent. of all the birds on the farm thus belonged to these five species, and to them was due virtually all the impression which was being made by birds on the plant and insect life of this tract.

THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF

AMERICANISTS.

WE have already called attention to the fact that the fifteenth International Congress of Americanists will be held at Quebec from September 10 to 16 of next year. The regulations adopted by the committee of organization are as follows:

Papers will be listed on receipt of title.

Papers will not be assigned a place on the preliminary daily program unless an abstract has been received, as required by the rules and regulations of the congress.

Papers to be read will be arranged according to subject-matter, in a number of divisions corresponding to those of the general program; and papers belonging to the same division will be presented, so far as feasible, on the same day.

Papers in each division will take precedence in the order of the receipt of abstracts.

Authors who intend to submit more than one paper to the congress are requested to designate the paper they desire to read first. The rest of their papers will be placed at the end of the preliminary program of the respective divisions.

In order to insure the prompt publication of the proceedings of the congress, the committee recommends to the congress to set the latest date for the receipt of completed manuscripts and of notes of discussions, October 1, 1906.

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. BRIGADIER GENERAL A. W. GREELY, chief of the U. S. Signal Service, has been elected the first president of the Explorers' Club, an organization recently founded in New York City.

PROFESSOR EMIL FISCHER, of Berlin, has been elected an honorary member of the Society of German Chemists.

PROFESSOR ROBERT KOCH, who has been at Amaris in West Usambara and at Uganda to complete his researches on trypanosomes and sleeping sickness, expected to reach Berlin on October 23.

DR. FORREST SHREVE, Bruce fellow in the Johns Hopkins University, sailed for Jamaica on October 13, to spend a year in physiological and ecological work at the Cinchona station of the New York Botanical Garden.

DR. R. M. WENLEY, professor of philosophy in the University of Michigan, has leave of absence for the year, which he is spending in Scotland.

PROFESSOR A. B. STEVENS, who has been studying in Switzerland for two years, has returned to the University of Michigan and will continue his researches upon the composition of poison ivy.

MISS FANNY COOK GATES, who has been engaged in research work in the Cavendish laboratory since last April, has resumed her duties as head of the physics department in the Woman's College of Baltimore.

DR. G. R. HOLDEN and Dr. H. M. Little, respectively resident gynecologist and obstetrician of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, have resigned, and Dr. Stephen Rushmore and Dr. F. C. Goldsborough succeed them. Dr. Little will take charge of a department in the hospital connected with McGill University, Canada.

DR. J. C. R. LAFLAME, formerly rector of Laval University and president of the Royal Society of Canada, has been appointed by the International Waterways Commission as geological expert to make a report upon the recession of the Canadian side of Niagara Falls.

BARON K. TAKAKI, of Tokyo, has accepted an invitation to deliver the Cartwright lectures on surgery in Columbia University. Surgeon-General Takaki will sail for America towards the end of December.

6

AMONG the lectures to be given before the Royal Institution of London during the current session are the following: 'The Origin of the Elephant,' Professor E. Ray Lankester, F.R.S.; Submarines,' Sir W. H. White, K.C.B., F.R.S.; Geographical Botany interpreted by Direct Response to the Conditions of Life,' Rev. George Henslow; 'The Upper Nile,' Sir Charles Eliot, K.C.M.G.; 'Variation in Man and Woman,' Professor Karl Pearson, F.R.S.; Our Atmosphere and its Wonders,' Professor Vivian B. Lewes.

THE Traill-Taylor memorial lecture of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain was delivered at the New Gallery, Regent Street, London, on October 24 by Mr. Chap-. man Jones, F.I.C., F.C.S. The subject was Photography, the Servant of Science.'

Ar the meeting of the Institution of Civil Engineers on November 7, Sir Alexander R. Binnie, the president, will deliver an inaugural address, and the presentation will take place of the council's awards.

BEFORE the Pupil's Physical Society of Guy's Hospital, on October 12, Dr. William Osler, the regius professor of medicine of Oxford University, delivered an address upon 'Sir Thomas Browne,' who was born on October 19, 1605.

DR. SYLVESTER DWIGHT JUDD, formerly assistant biologist in the U. S. Department cf Agriculture and professor of biology in Georgetown University, committed suicide on October 22, two weeks after his discharge from the insane asylum. Dr. Judd, who was thirty-four years of age, graduated from Harvard University in 1894. He had made valuable contributions to economic ornithology.

The annual meeting of the American Physiological Society will be held at the University. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, December 27 and 28.

THE twenty-third annual congress of the American Ornithologists' Union will be held at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, beginning on the evening of Monday, November 13. The evening session will be for the election of officers and members, and for the transaction of routine busi

ness.

Tuesday and the following days will

be for the presentation and discussion of scientific papers, and will be open to the public.

THE tenth International Geological Congress will meet in the City of Mexico at the beginning of September, 1906. Extended excursions have already been arranged to precede and follow the congress.

AT a joint meeting of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society, held on October 19 at Burlington House, the following reports were presented on the subject of the total eclipse of the sun on August 30: 'Preliminary Account of the Observations made at Sfax, Tunisia,' by Sir William Christie, the astronomer royal; 'Preliminary Report of the Observations made at Guelma, Algeria,' by Mr. H. F. Newall; 'Report of the Eclipse Expedition to Pineda de la Sierra, Spain,' by Mr. J. Evershed; and 'Expedition to Aswan,' by Professor H. H. Turner. A report was also presented by Professor H. L. Callendar, F.R.S.

FRANCE, following the example of England, Germany and other countries, has decided to create an Order of Merit. The new decoration is intended for Frenchmen who shall have distinguished themselves at home or abroad, but whose services would not entitle them to the Legion of Honor. There are to be three grades-chevalier, officer and commander-and the ribbon is to be dark blue. The new order is intended to take the place of the medals and decorations now conferred for special services.

By the will of the late Benjamin P. Davis, a civil engineer of New York City, $250,000 is bequeathed for public purposes, including $50,000 to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, $50,000 to the Phillips Exeter Academy of New Hampshire and $25,000 to the American Museum of Natural History.

THE Royal College of Surgeons has presented to the medical department of Cambridge University a number of portrait engravings of eminent physicians and surgeons of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

THE valuable collection of succulent plants made during his travels abroad by the late

Rev. H. G. Torre, of Norton Curlieu, Warwickshire, has been presented to the Royal Botanic Society. It comprises some 1,600 specimens of the most ornamental of the class, such as agaves, aloes, echeverias, crassulas The rockery in and mesembryanthemums. the large conservatory has been reconstructed for their accommodation and display.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. THE late George W. Catt, a civil engineer, has bequeathed his engineering books and half the residuary interest in his estate, which in all is estimated at $110,000, to the Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts.

THE trustees of Smith College, at a meeting in Northampton on October 20, voted to use the money donated by Mr. John D. Rockefeller for the erection of an assembly hall and a dormitory. The college register shows the freshman class to be the largest in the history of the college, having 404 members, an increase of 46 over that of last year.

THE statement of the president of the University of Chicago for the quarter ending September 1 contains the following report of receipts and expenditures during the past eight years:

THE first Servian University was opened on October 15 by the king in presence of the crown prince, the members of the ministry, invited guests and Servian delegates.

MR. ELLSWORTH GAGE LANCASTER has been installed as president of Olivet (Michigan) College.

THE chair of philosophy in Miami University, which was from 1888 to 1905 in charge of Dr. R. B. C. Johnson, now at Princeton, has been filled by the appointment of Elmer E. Powell, Ph.D. (Bonn).

DR. ARTHUR GRAHAM HALL, formerly instructor in mathematics at the University of Michigan and associate professor of mathematics at the University of Illinois, has accepted the professorship of mathematics in Miami University resigned by Edward P. Thompson.

PROFESSOR WALTER M. BOEHM will have charge of the work in physics at Cornell College, Mount Vernon, Ia., during the coming year, Dr. A. Collin having been granted a leave of absence. Mr. Boehm is a graduate of the State University of Iowa, where for three years he served as assistant in physics.

DR. OSCAR VEBLEN, of the University of Chicago, has been appointed preceptor in mathematics in Princeton University.

DR. WILLIAM FOSTER, JR., has been advanced to an assistant professorship of chemistry in Princeton University.

branches of engineering, I could do no more than repeat a number of platitudes, which you know at least as well as I do. You would probably have fallen asleep before I was half finished, and it would be the best thing you could do. I think, then, that it will be better to select one branch, a branch on which comparatively little has been written, which has, I understand, a special interest for South Africa, and which has occupied the best years of my life in India, southern Europe, central, Asia and Egypt-I mean the science of irrigation. My subject is water-living, life-giving water. It can surely never be a dry subject; but we all know that with the best text to preach on the preacher may be as dry as dust.

IRRIGATION: WHAT IT MEANS.

Irrigation may be defined as the artificial application of water to land for the purposes of agriculture. It is, then, precisely the opposite of drainage, which is the artificial removal of water from lands which have become saturated, to the detriment of agriculture. A drain, like a river, goes on increasing as affluents join it. An irrigation channel goes on diminishing as water is drawn off it. Later on I shall show you how good irrigation should always be ac-, companied by drainage.

In lands where there is abundant rainfall, and where it falls at the right season of the year for the crop which it is intended to raise, there is evidently no need of irrigation. But it often happens that the soil and the climate are adapted for the cultivation of a more valuable crop than that which is actually raised, because the rain does not fall just when it is wanted, and there we must take to artificial measures.

In other lands there is so little rain that it is practically valueless for agriculture, and there are but two alternatives-irrigation or desert. It is in countries like these

that irrigation has its highest triumph; nor are such lands always to be pitied or despised. The rainfall in Cairo is on an average 1.4 inch per annum, yet lands purely agricultural are sold in the neighborhood as high as £150 an acre.

This denotes a fertility perhaps unequaled in the case of any cultivation depending on rain alone, and this in spite of the fact that the Egyptian cultivator is in many respects very backward. The explanation is not far to seek. All rivers in flood carry along much more than water. Some carry alluvial matter. Some carry

fine sand. Generally the deposit is a mixture of the two. I have never heard of any river that approached the Nile in the fertilizing nature of the matter borne on its annual floods; with the result that the plains of Egypt have gone on through all ages, with the very minimum of help from foreign manures, yielding magnificent crops and never losing their fertility. Other rivers bring down little but barren sand, and any means of keeping it off the fields should be employed.

PRIMITIVE MEANS OF IRRIGATION.

The earliest and simplest form of irrigation is effected by raising water from a lake, river or well, and pouring it over the land. The water may be raised by any mechanical power, from the brawny arms of the peasant to the newest pattern of pump. The earliest Egyptian sculptures show water being raised by a bucket attached to one end of a long pole, turning on an axis with a heavy counterpoise at the other end. In Egypt this is termed a shadoof, and to this day, all along the Nile banks, from morning to night, brownskinned peasants may be seen watering their fields in precisely this way. Tier above tier they ply their work so as to raise water fifteen or sixteen feet on to their land. By this simple contrivance it