expense, have brought ruin upon their patrons, who had not studied the intricate laws of development. . . . The better knowledge of races and race peculiarities has revolutionized and humanized the theories of aborigines. The doctrine of extermination, formerly thought to be the only legitimate result of colonization, has become as odious as it is illogical. The inductive study of mind has hardly begun; but how much more successfully and rapidly will education and the development of the species progress when the teacher and the legislator can proceed at once from diagnosis to safe prescription, when natural selection and human legislation shall coöperate in the more speedy survival of the fittest"! A third benefit of the study is the opportunity which the science affords for the exercise of every talent, even the highest. It is possible for every craft to prosecute its researches and make its contributions on the subject.
The Big Trees of Turkistan.—According to ancient accounts, the mountains of Turkistan were formerly covered with large and handsome forests. Now, the absence of trees and the savage nudity of the mountain-slopes are what most strike the traveler in that country. The denudation would, perhaps, have been complete by this time if the Russian Government had not interposed to prevent further waste; and the restoration of the forests is at present under consideration by a commission. The growth of plants in as hot a climate as that of Turkistan is very rapid. Trees at Samarcand and Tashkend have been known to make growths by measure in a single year of from fifteen to nearly twenty feet, and a corresponding development in thickness. Nevertheless, fine trees are very rare, though a few exist of extraordinary size. They are generally found near some holy place or overshadowing some mosque or hermit's retreat, where they owe their preservation to the respect in which the natives hold the shrines to which they appertain. The Sartes of Tashkend tell of an arbor-vitæ, in the inclosure of one of the mosques of their town, which is nearly six feet and a half in diameter and five thousand years old. A French traveler has measured mulberry-trees at Oursrout and at Salavad that were more than sixteen feet in circumference at the height of the shoulder, but they did not seem to grow proportionately in height. These trees were all in religious places, and were accompanied by plane-trees of equal size. The latter tree is occasionally found of really wonderful dimensions. Madame O. Fedtchenko made a drawing of one which was six feet four inches in diameter, the interior of which had been converted into a little medresseh. It was growing on a saint's tomb, not far from Samarcand. A plane-tree in the Tajik village of Sairub is twenty-seven feet and a half in circumference at the height of the shoulder. It has been protected from the wash of rains by a barrier of stones, and its hollow trunk has been formed into a square room and fitted up as the village school-house. Near it is another twenty-six paces in circumference at the base. The people say that these trees were planted by Ali. Of a group of old plane-trees at Chojakend, east of Tashkend, the largest is a rotten and hollow old stump, looking like the ruin of a giant wall, from which six vigorous lateral trees have shot up. The whole plant is forty-eight paces in circumference at the base, and the hollow of the principal trunk is nine metres, or more than twenty-seven feet, in diameter. A party of a dozen tourists from Tashkend once had a feast in the inside of this stump, and were not cramped for room.—La Nature.
Anthropology and Philanthropy.—Professor Otis T. Mason, in his American Association address on the "Scope and Value of Anthropological Studies," speaking of their value to philanthropy, says: "With what admiration do we read of the devotion of those missionaries who have suffered the loss of all things in their propagandist zeal! Science has her missionaries as well as religion, and the scientific study of peoples has notably modified the methods of the Christian missionary. The conviction that savage races are in possession of our family records, that they are our elder kindred, wrinkled and weather-beaten, mayhap, but yet worthy of our highest respect, has revolutionized men's thoughts and feelings respecting them. The Bureau of Ethnology has its missionaries among many of the tribes in our domain, no longer bent on their destruc-
