lies, not in the system, perhaps, which may be good enough considered as an end, but in the personal training of those who have had these systems in charge. I think it true that educational methods and dicta are among the very last, if we except theology, to yield to the demands imposed by changing environment. To one cultured along the lines fashionable a decade ago, it becomes a difficult task to change methods and opinions that are the outgrowth of such discipline. The maintenance of courses of study that are either largely classical or mathematical means simply a system based upon methods in vogue long since. A compromise is noted, however, in those schools in which a so-called scientific course is provided; from this concessisn it is easy to pass to those schools whose work is largely along the lines imposed by physical science.

,,

This modification whether it be forced or natural is immaterial reflects the tendencies of the thought of the day. On all sides, and in all manner of ways, increased attention is being given to physical science. The reason is not past finding out it lies close at hand. Science enters into the home, social and mercantile life of the world to a degree never before known in the history of mind. It has builded upon a foundation broadly and well laid, because laid primarily with a just appreciation of the physical necessities of man. Those who now toil, and no longer with unrequited labor, in the laboratories of the world have felt and still feel the impetus due to the appreciation. Not a law of life, not a condition in the physical environment of men, not a pest that may destroy his stores or his comfort, not a product of land, sea or air, but somewhere some one is busy working out details, deducing laws, formulating results, suggesting utilities. The world is en rapport with works of this sort, and it is by no means uninformed as to their value. A new law of light, a new application of electric force, a new fact in chemistry, a new method of locomotion, these all are heralded as to an expectant community. The world waits for facts such us these, the world expects them.

The question turns now on the manner in, and the extent to which this tendency is to be recognized in the high school curriculum. It does not need a prophet's vision, nor a sage's wisdom to give the answer. It will be answered on the lines that have reference to the circumstances, duties, and work of life. It were idle to stem the tide even were it desirable. It is not a counter-argument that the term "practical tendency " is accepted at its narrowest meaningthat of bare and specific preparation for professional or business pursuits. But if even such illogical answers should be made, the fact still remains that the high school is the poor man's college. It furnishes the highest education which the major portion of the young men and women of a community can obtain. Who, then, shall say that it should not prepare, not alone for right living, which is solely a subordinate and moral aspect of the question, but for successful business living? Why should not the studies pursued have discipline as a means and utility as an end? We do not believe a thoughtful, intelligent answer can be negative. We ask, then, a modification of the traditional curriculum and the institution better perhaps to say substitution — of one which has as a prominent feature the culture of today. The time has passed when one ignorant of the laws of health and the gross anatomy of the person, ignorant of the chemistry of cookery and the laws of ventillation, ignorant of the dynamics of physical nature and unlearned as well as unskilled in the manipulations of the laboratory, may pose as a cultured man, though his knowledge of wonderful

tongues and skill in rhetorical or literary art be never so great. "What can you do?" not "what do you know?" is the question of the hour, and the high school of to-day and of the future will be compelled to answer the question. Will it do it completely? Not as at present constituted, nor, if like the barrister, it be bound by the law of precedents, will it ever intelligently answer it.

Relation to University Requirements.

To this phase of the subject attention will be but briefly directed. The high school does not exist for the college or the university; it is an end in itself. Its original institution did not contemplate its relations to these institutions as a gymnasium, but appears to have resulted from the more universal methods of gradation of school work. In cities it was learned that the time required to master the elementary studies could be much shortened by rigid system and rigid enforcement of its necessary provisions. Following this it was discovered that students might complete their school life at too early an age. Additional studies were introduced, and finally a system involving a secondary education, formerly confined to private academies and seminaries, became a part of the public school scheme; the high school became a fact.

There can be no question that popular education did not contemplate the establishment of the high school. To many, and to us, its legal right to exist is questionable. However that may be, the high school has come to stay. It has the support and sympathy of the liberally educated classes, and is not unappreciated by the less fortunate grades in society. So that the problem of its curriculum must be worked out in view of the interest these two classes of society evidence in general education.

At the end of the scheme of public instruction stands the university. Most, if not all, of the States recognize this relationship, and the curriculum of the secondary or high school is devised to conform to it. We think wisely. Recently, in this city, Des Moines, a convention of schoolmasters discussed this, or a nearly related matter, and the opinion at that time expressed evidenced a condition of belief far from unanimity as to the requirements presented by the university authorities. But the university is right in high requirements; right in insisting that secondary instruction be confined to secondary schools; right in assuming that its educational forces are to be exerted along the highest possible lines. Particularly is this true of the requirements in physical science. The proper prosecution of original research, which is certainly a university prerogative, the best presentment of modern scientific thought and method, which is the aim of university education, cannot be realized when its instructors are burdened with quasi-elementary work. So, back upon the high school must fall the work of elementary instruction in physical science. This the university demands, and this the high school must do. Now, in the appointment of the various courses leading to degrees in the universities, it is noticeable, if decade he compared with decade, that more and more are scientific subjects occupying the fore-ground. More time to science, fewer subjects; more stringent requirements, greater opportunity for elections, these are the rule in the modern university and these must be understood and appreciated on the part of the high school. There are few good colleges and no universities of standing which do not now demand at least a year in physics and a year of botany. In most others biological subjects are held as essential, and not a few require a fairly

complete course in physical geography of all high school subjects the most difficult and the one most commonly poorly taught. Certain universities, as Harvard and Michigan, require elementary chemistry; others entirely omit it, because in it students are too often poorly prepared. Said a university professor of chemistry to me, not long ago, "I prefer my students to come to me with no chemistry. I find they too often come with matter and methods to be unlearned." Now, this must be remedied in the chemistry work of the high school; the "indictment must be quashed ;" the fault must be corrected by proper instructions and skilled methods. Without appliances, that is to say, without laboratory facilities, radical and valuable revolution is impossible. Physical science in the high school must be experimental. Without multiplying words, then, it may be stated that the high school must give, to those who ask it, preparation for entrance into university work. It must adapt its science curriculum to the requirements of the standard college or university. For long years these higher institutions compelled certain and definite work in language and mathematics, they compel that work, with little or no modification to-day. Why cannot they, equally well, compel proper science preparation? We believe they can; we think they will.

There will not be, in the nature of things there cannot be, a set limit to science requirements in the universities. As the tables of the various laboratories, physical, chemical, physiological and biological, become over-taxed, up go the requirements. The standards of entrance are being steadily raised, especially in Indiana University, Michigan University, Cornell, Yale, Harvard, and Leland Stanford, Jr., Universities, as fast as the high and other secondary schools will admit cf it. So there is no goal; no end; the high school will ever need to keep close watch on university matters and determine its own work accordingly. Our own State university proposes to the high school to occupy advanced ground in this very matter; to gain and hold the confidence of the university, on the one hand, to meet a legitimate demand for more complete preparation in science on the other, the high school course must be materially modified.

THE FEEDING OF HORSES.

BULLETIN NO. 13 of the Agricultural Experiment Station of Utah has been received. This bulletin reports the results of a feeding trial of horses by the director, J. W. Sanborn. It reports the result of a trial in a direction that the American Experiment Station literature is almost silent upon, viz., feeding horses hay and grain mixed, and feeding cut against

whole hay to horses.

It is a common belief with horsemen that when grain, especially meal, and more especially such meal as corn meal, is fed to horses alone or mixed with hay, it tends to compact in the stomach and produce indigestion. It is believed that it so far compacts that the gastric juices do not have free access to the mass of it. Furthermore, it is believed to be subject more to the washing influence of heavy drinking. In the latter respect it is known that the horse's stomach is very small, and that grain is liable to be washed out of it, as the stomach necessarily overflows with water.

As usual, the writer fed two lots of horses for nearly three months, one lot with hay and grain mixed, and the other lot with hay and grain fed separately. At the end of this period the food was reversed, and the horses were fed some two months more. It would be unnecessary to quote the

figures of lengthy trial.

Suffice it to say that it was found

that horses, as in the case of cattle and pigs, showed no disadvantage by the division of the grain and hay into separate feeds over feeding hay mixed with grain. Indeed, in this trial he found a disadvantage for the horses on the hay and grain mixed, they not maintaining their weight as well. The author ascribed this result to the fact that the timothy hay when cut fine, with its sharp solid ends, irritated and made sore the mouths of the horses, and possibly induced too rapid eating, as when the hay and grain were moist they would be more likely to eat more rapidly than when fed dry. As this trial is in accord with trials with ruminants and with the pig, it would seem quite probable that the old and persistent argument in favor of mixing hay and grain is not sound.

The second trial reported in this bulletin covered feeding of cut against whole hay to horses. This trial also covered two periods in which the foods were reversed with the sets, in order to determine whether any change of weights found was due to the individualism of the horses, or whether it was due to the system of feeding. The two periods covered from August 10 to December 31. As in the other case, we will not review the tabulated data that accompany the bulletin. This trial was very decisively in favor of the cut clover for the four months and a half covered by this period. The food fed was clover, and the author points out the fact that clover hay and lucerne, unlike timothy hay, do not present sharp, solid, cutting edges. The results are decisive, and in accordance with those of a trial made by the Indiana Experiment Station with cattle. Director Sanborn points out the fact that these trials, covering nearly a year's time with four horses, showed that horses consume practically the same amount of food that cattle do when high fed, and make it somewhat clear that horses make as economical use of hay and grain as do cattle, and he calls attention to the fact that the practice of charging more for pasturage of horses, where grooming is not involved, is not well founded. He also shows that less food was eaten during the hot months than during the cooler months, and particularly that the horses ate less grain during the hot months than during the cooler months. The trial seems to show also that a rather large ration of grain for work-horses is an economical one.

NOTES AND NEWS.

THE idea of flower-farming for perfumes seems to be exciting a good deal of interest in New South Wales, as many inquiries on the subject have lately been submitted to the Agricultural

Department. There are at present in the colony no means of illustrating the practical operations of this industry, but the Agricultural Gazette of New South Wales hopes that this deficiency will soon be supplied by the institution of experimental plots on one or more of the experimental farms. The Gazette points out that in scent farms large quantities of waste material from nurseries, gardens, orchards, and ordinary farms might be profitably utilized, while occupation would be found for some who are unfit for hard, manual labor. A Government perfume farm was lately established at Dunolly, in Victoria, and this promises to be remarkably successful.

At the meeting of the Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria on March 14, as we learn from Nature, Professor Baldwin Spencer, the president, gave an interesting account of a trip he had made to Queensland in search of Cerato lus. Special interest attaches to this form, since it is the Australian representative of a small group of animals (the Dipnoi) which is intermediate between the fishes and the amphibia. Ceratodus has its home in the Mary and Burnett Rivers in Queensland, whilst its ally, Lepidosiren, is found in the Amazon, and another relative, Protopterus, flourishes

in the waters of tropical Africa. Although unsuccessful in obtaining the eggs of Ceratodus, owing to the early season, Professor Spencer was able, from a careful study of the surroundings under which the animal lives, to infer that its lung is of as great a service to it during the wet as during the dry season a theory in direct opposition to the generally accepted one that the lung functions principally during the dry season, when the animal is inhabiting a mud-cocoon within the dry bed of the river.

-A second attempt is to be made to build an observatory at the top of Mont Blanc. As the workmen who tunnelled last year through the snow just below the summit did not come upon rock, M. Janssen has decided that the building shall be erected on the frozen snow. A wooden cabin was put up, as an experiment, at the end of last summer, and in January and early in the spring it was found that no movement had occurred. According to the Lucerne correspondent of the London Times, the observatory is to be a wooden building 8 metres long and 4 metres wide, and consisting of two floors, each with two rooms. The lower floor, which is to be embedded in the snow, will be placed at the disposition of climbers and guides, and the upper floor reserved for the purposes of the observatory. The roof, which is to be almost flat, will be furnished with a balustrade, running round it, together with a cupola for observations. The whole building will rest upon six powerful screw-jacks, so that the equilibrium may be restored if there be any displacement of the snow foundations. The building is now being made in Paris, and will shortly be brought in sections to Chamounix. The transport of the building from Chamounix to the summit of Mont Blanc and its erection there have been intrusted to the charge of two capable guides Frederick Payot and Jules Bossonay.

- Dr. J. Hann laid before the Academy of Sciences at Vienna, on May 5, says Nuture, another of those elaborate investigations for which he is so well known, entitled "Further Researches into the Daily Oscillations of the Barometer." The first section of the work deals with a thorough analysis of the barometric oscillations on mountain summits and in valleys, for different seasons, for which he has calculated the daily harmonic constituents, and given a full description of the phenomena, showing how the amplitude of the single daily oscillation first decreases with increasing altitude, and then increases again with a higher elevation. The epochs of the phases are reversed at about 6,000 feet above sea-level as compared with those on the plains. The minimum on the summits occurs about 6 A.M., and in the valleys between 3 and 4 P.M. The double daily oscillation shows, in relation to its amplitude on the summits, nearly the normal decrease, in proportion to the decreasing pressure, but the epochs of the phases exhibit a retardation on the summits, of as much as one or two hours. In the tropics, however, this retardation is very small. He then endeavors to show that these modifications of the daily barometric range on mountain summits are generally explained by the differences of temperature in the lower strata of air. In connection with this part of the subject, he considers that even the differences in the daily oscillations at Greenwich and Kew are mostly explained by the different altitudes of the two stations and by the fact that Greenwich is on an open hill. In the second section he has computed the harmonic constants for a large number of stations not contained in his former treatise of a similar nature, including some valuable observations supplied by the Brazilian Telegraph Administration, and others at various remote parts of the globe.

— The last meeting of the Royal Meteorological Society for the present session was held on Wednesday evening, June 15. A paper on "English Climatology, 1881-1890" was read by Mr. F. C. Bayard. This is a discussion of the results of the climatological observations made at the society's stations, and printed in the Meteorological Record for the ten years, 1881-1890. The instruments at these stations have all been verified, and are exposed under similar conditions, the thermometers being mounted in a Stevenson screen, with their bulbs four feet above the ground. The stations are regularly inspected and the instruments tested by the assistant secretary. The stations now number about eighty, but there were only fifty-two which had com

plete results for the ten years in question. The author has discussed the results from these stations and given the monthly and yearly means of temperature, humidity, cloud, and rainfall. His general conclusions are: (1) With respect to mean temperature the sea-coast stations are warm in winter and cool in summer, whilst the inland stations are cold in summer and hot in winter. (2) At all stations the maximum temperature occurs in July or August, and the minimum in December or January. (3) Relative humidity is lowest at the sea-coast stations and highest at the inland ones. (4) The south-western district seems the most cloudy in winter, spring, and autumn, and the southern district the least cloudy in the summer months, and the sea-coast stations are, as a rule, less cloudy than the inland ones. (5) Rainfall is smallest in April, and, as a rule, greatest in November, and it increases from east to west. "The Mean Temperature of the air on each day of the year at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, on the average of the fifty years, 1841 to 1890" was presented by Mr. W. Ellis, F.R.A.S The values given in this paper are derived from eye observations from 1841 to 1848, and from the photographic records from 1849 to 1890. The mean annual temperature is 49.5°. The lowest winter temperature, 37.2°, occurs on January 12, and the highest summer temperature, 63.8°, on July 15. The average temperature of the year is reached in spring on May 2, and in autumn on October 18. The interval during which the temperature is above the average is 169 days, the interval during which it is below the average being 196 days. - The Todas, inhabiting the Nilgiri plateau, says Nature, are not dying out gradually, as has long been supposed. The last census figures show that they have increased by no less than 10 per cent during the last ten years, there being now nearly eight hundred of them altogether.

- In a recent number of the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society there is an interesting note on the little insectivora, Tupaia javanensis. It is very common in Singapore, and especially in the Botanic Gardens, where it may be often seen running about among the trees. It is easily mistaken for the common little squirrel (Sciurus hippurus), of which it has much the appearance. When alarmed it quickly darts up the trunk of the nearest tree, but it is a poor climber, and never seems to go high up like the squirrel. Besides these points of resemblance, it appears to be largely frugivorous. It was found that the seeds sown in boxes were constantly being dug up and devoured by some animal, and traps baited with pieces of cocoa-nut or banana were set, and a number of tupaias were caught. These being put into a cage appear to live very comfortably upon bananas, pine-apple, rice, and other such things; refusing meat. The Rev. T. G. Wood, in his "Natural History,” states that T. ferruginea is said to feed on beetles, but to vary its diet with certain fruits. The common species at Singapore seems to be almost entirely frugivorous, though its teeth are those of a typical insecti

vora.

-The Mississippi Valley Medical Association will hold its eighteenth annual session at Cincinnati, Oct. 12-14, 1892. An excellent programme, containing the best names in the valley and covering the entire field of medicine, will be presented. An address on Surgery will be delivered by Dr. Hunter McGuire of Richmond, Va., President of the American Medical Association. An address on Medicine will be made by Dr. Hobart Amory Hare, Professor of Therapeutics and Clinical Medicine, Jefferson Medical College. Philadelphia. The social as well as the scientific part of the meeting will be of the highest order. The Mississippi Valley Medical Association possesses one great advantage over similar bodies, in that its organic law is such that nothing can be discussed during the sessions save and except science. All ethical matters are referred, together with all extraordinary business, to appropriate committees - their decisions are final and are accepted without discussion. The constitution and by-laws are comprehensive and at the same time simple. Precious time is not allowed the demagogue or the medical legislator. The officers of the Pan-American Medical Congress will hold a conference at the same time and place. E. S. McKee, M.D., Cincinnati, is the secretary.

Communications will be welcomed from any quarter. Abstracts of scientific papers are solicited, and one hundred copies of the issue containing such will be mailed the author on request in advance. Rejected manuscripts will be returned to the authors only when the requisite amount of postage accompanies the manuscript. Whatever is intended for insertion must be authenticated by the name and address of the writer; not necessarily for publication, but as a guaranty of good faith. We do not hold ourselves responsible for any view or opinions expressed in the communications of our correspondents. Attention is called to the "Wants" column. It is invaluable to those who use it in soliciting information or seeking new positions. The name and address of applicants should be given in full. so that answers will go direct to them. The "Exchange column is likewise open.

For Advertising Rates apply to HENRY F. TAYLOR, 47 Lafayette Place, New York.

THE DE LAINCEL FUND FOR THE STUDY OF THE MAYA LANGUAGE AND ITS GRAPHIC SYSTEM.

BY WM. M. AUGNEY.

THE de Laincel Fund, so-named, after a relative, by a gentleman of Philadelphia, now residing in Mexico, who contributes handsomely to its support, has for its object a thorough study of the graphic system of the ancient Mayas, by collecting vocabularies of that language and its dialects, and obtaining reliable artistic reproductions, by means of photographs, of the ancient cities and mural inscriptions of Central America, also photographing and copying ancient manuscripts or other material which will be of service to students in this special field of research.

The work will be carried on under the direction of an advisory committee, to be chosen from among ethnologists who are authorities upon, and students of, the Maya language, its paleography and art.

The exploration of the fund will be carried on under the direction of Dr. Hilborne T. Cresson of Philadelphia, well known as an ethnologist in America and Europe. The result of his researches have at times been published by the Peabody Museum, where for the past five years he has been a special assistant, working under the direction of Professor F. W. Putnam of Harvard University. Dr. Cresson's artistic training at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, in the ateliers of the sculptor Alexander Dumont, and the painter J. Leon Gerome (his works having been exposed in the Salon of 1877), joined to that of an accomplished French and Spanish scholar, especially capacitates him for this line of research. He has also for some years past been studying the Maya language under the direction of so distinguished an authority as Professor Daniel G. Brinton, and a good basis has thus been obtained for future research.

The de Laincel Fund will act in conjunction with some of our leading American institutions, yet to be determined upon, or independently, as its patron may deem best. The work will be carried on during the healthy season in the south, adopting the plan already pursued by other exploring

Now that the great work of Dr. E. W. Middendorf on the Peruvian languages has been brought to a conclusion by the publication of the sixth and last volume, that on the Muchik (or Chimu or Yunca) tongue, the high value of this contribution to American ethnology should be urged on the scientific world.

Dr. Middendorf is a medical man who practised his profession many years ago in various parts of Peru, making a study of the native dialects his favorite recreation. He thus became practically familiar with them as living tongues, and backed up that knowledge by an acquaintance with such literature as they possessed. The results of this long devotion are now before us in six large octavo volumes, published by Brockhaus, Leipzig, and counting up in all to nearly 2,400 pages of handsomely printed material. The languages considered are the Kechua, the Aymara, and the Chimu, with an appendix on the Chibcha. There is an ample supply of grammatical analyses, texts, phrases, and, of the Kechua, a copius Kechua-German-Spanish dictionary. That the Aymara and Chimu vocabularies are not arranged alphabetically must be regarded as a blemish. One of the volumes contains the original text and a German translation of the drama of Ollanta, believed by many to be a genuine specimen of a native, pre-Columbian, dramatic production. There are also many songs and specimens of prose writings in the same tongue. Taking Middendorf's practical observations along with Tschudi's "Organismus der Kechua Sprache," the student will find himself well equipped to master this interesting idiom.

The Orientation of Primitive Structures.

The study of the relative directions which the walls and angles of ancient structures bear to the cardinal points has scarcely yet received the attention from archaeologists which it merits.

Several varieties of this "orientation," as it is termed, are to be found, each with its own meaning. The ancient Egyptian mastabas and pyramids have their sides facing the cardinal points. This arose from the desire of having the door in the centre of the eastern side to face the rising sun, and the western door, sta, to face the setting sun, as it was through the latter that the god Anubis conducted the soul to the other world. On the other hand, the Babylonians and Assyrians directed the angles, and not the sides, of their temples to the cardinal points, for what occult reason is not clear. Again, Mr. J. Walter Fewkes has found that the kib vas, or sacred chambers, of the Tusayan Indians at the Moqui Pueblo are oriented north-east and south-west. This

he at first thought was owing to the character of the bluff, but there are reasons to believe it of a ceremonial origin.

Some curious observations in this connection are reported by Mr. Robert M. Swan, about the Zimbabwe ruins, in the last number of the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society. He found a series of ornaments on the walls of the great temple so disposed that one group would receive directly the sun's rays at his rising and another at his setting at the period of the winter solstice, when these points in that

latitude were respectively 25° south of east and west; while a third series of ornaments faced the full midday sun. Others were similarly arranged for the summer solstice; and a great stone over the temple showed, by alignment with the main altar and a carved pattern on the wall, the true north and south.

Last year an English archæologist undertook a journey to Greece to make a special study of the orientation of the ancient temples on that classic ground, but his results have not yet appeared. Certainly, as will be seen from the above, the point is one full of significance.

On Prosopology.

There is little doubt that craniology, as a branch of anthropology, has been much over-estimated, and affords only very insecure material for ethnic classifications. On the other hand, the study of the features of the face, which may be called Prosopology, from the Greek, prosopon, face, is yielding constantly more valuable results. The width or narrowness of the face, the nasal and orbital indices, the prominence of the jaws, the facial angles, and the development of the chin, all are points of prime ethnic signifi

cance.

One of the leading European writers on this subject is Professor Kohlman of Basel, whose works are extremely instructive. In this country a series of papers on "The Ethnology of the Face," by Dr. A. H. Thompson, have appeared in the Dental Cosmos for the current year. They place the details of the subject in a popular light, and emphasize its value; but they would be more satisfactory had their author not been led astray by some of the books which he quotes. To class the Eskimos and the American Indians among the Mongolians is quite out of date; and to call the white race Caucasians, and to divide them into blondes and brunettes as leading subdivisions is scarcely less so. He does, indeed, distinguish an "Americanoid" type, from which he excludes the Eskimos and Aleuts as being "true Mongols; on what grounds he or any one would be puzzled to say. He describes the hair of this "Americanoid " type as similar to that of the Mongolians, from which, in fact, it differs in nearly every respect. In spite of these drawbacks, Dr. Thompson's articles form a welcome and praiseworthy addition to recent American contributions to anthropologic literature.

Linguistic Bibliography.

The study of American languages will in the future be vastly facilitated by the admirable series of bibliographies by Mr. James C. Pilling, which are now being published by the Bureau of Ethnology. Some idea of their thoroughness may be gained from the fact that the latest issued, confined to the Algonquian dialects alone, has 614 double-columned, closely printed, large octavo pages! Compare this with the 258 pages of Ludewig's "Bibliography of American Aboriginal Literature," which included all the languages of both North and South America!

Mr. Pilling has put forth similar volumes, less in size but not inferior in completeness, on the Iroquois, Eskimo, Dakota and Muskokee groups of tongues; and proposes to lay a similar basis for the study of all the North American stocks. It would be most desirable for some similar catalogue to be made relating to the tongues of South America. The Decrease of the Birth-rate.

One of the most portentous problems is the decrease of the birth rate in certain social conditions. It is asserted on apparently good authority that the Negritos and the Poly

nesians are dying out, largely owing to the infertility of their marriages. Certain South American tribes, the Guatos of Paraguay, for instance, will soon disappear from the same cause. But we need not confine our instances to savage peoples. Physicians say that our "colonial dames," scions of Anglo-American families who have lived several generations in this country, have much smaller families than their great-grandmothers.

In France this lessening of the birth rate has assumed serious proportions, and has alarmed patriotic men lest as a nation it should become numerically too weak to hold its own in the conflicts of the future. The distinguished author and statesman, the Marquis de Nadaillac, has published some stirring admonitions to his countrymen on the subject under the titles "Le Peril National and la Depopulation de la France." He finds the birth-rate least in the cities, in the richest communes, and in the most prosperous conditions of society. Turning to its causes, he has convinced himself that this diminution is voluntary and of malice prepense on the part of married couples. They do not want the bother of many children; they do not wish their property to be split up; they prefer pleasure and ease to the labor of parental duties. Young men prefer mistresses to wives, and mistresses are always barren. The competition of modern life and its rabid thirst for enjoyment undermine the family tie. The birth-rate is small, not for physiological but for sociological reasons. How far this applies to the United States has not yet been sufficiently investigated; but it is probably nearly equally true here.

THE VARIABILITY OF SPECIFIC CHARACTERS AS EXHIBITED BY THE EXTINCT GENUS CORYPHODON.

BY CHARLES EARLE.

IT is a well-recognized law in biology, that a species or a genus upon the point of extinction undergoes a great amount of variation; and, as an example of this kind, I propose to describe some of the variations which the species of the fossil genus Coryphodon exhibit.

The fine collection of Coryphodon material in the American Museum of Natural History has enabled me to study this subject; and in a forthcoming paper in the Bulletin of the Museum I shall attempt a revision of the American species of Coryphodon.

The great amount of variation in this genus is shown from the fact that no less than twenty-one species have been de

scribed, and only in a few cases have any of them been ac

knowledged as synonyms.

Taking up the variation of the teeth, I will first describe the structure of a typical upper and lower molar of Coryphodon. The superior molars are a modification of the primitive tri-tubercular type, in which the anterior crescent, or antero-external lobe, has been lost, or so much modified that only traces of it remain. On the antero external portion of the crown there is a prominent cone, which is in connection with the single internal lobe by a sharp crest (see Fig. a, c); this forms the main grinding surface of the tooth. On the second superior molar of a true Coryphodon there is always a well-developed postero-external crescent (see Fig. e, c), which is homologous with the postero external crescent of other forms. This crescent may undergo a great amount of variation, as will be described later. In the last superior molar the postero-external crescent is represented by only a crest, which runs parallel, or nearly so,