general expenses are largely provided for from the bequests of Edward B. Phillips and Robert Treat Paine. The Henry Draper Memorial, established by Mrs. Draper, furnishes the means of studying the spectra and other physical properties of the stars. The observing station near Arequipa, Peru, 8,050 feet above the sea, was established under the bequest of Uriah A. Boyden. By maintaining a station south of the equator, work at Cambridge may be extended to the southern stars; and all important researches there are, therefore, now made to include stars in all parts of the sky, from the north to the south pole. Miss C. W. Bruce, of New York, has provided the means for a photographic telescope, which will be mounted first in Cambridge, and later in Peru. In meteorological work the observatory is associated with the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory, the New England Meteorological Society, and the New England Weather Bureau, and provides for the publication in its annals of the results obtained by the observers of these associated stations. Meteorological stations connected with the observatory at Arequipa, Peru, are situated on Mount Chachani, 16,650 feet, and on El Misti, 19,200 feet, above the sea. Several large prisms have been procured for photographing the spectra of the stars.
Women in Postal and Railway Service.—According to the Journal des Economistes, France was the first country to admit women to places in the postal administration, and their engagement has proved so satisfactory that the authorities are inclined to prefer them to men wherever it is possible. In the United Kingdom, deducting the letter carriers, 25.2 per cent of the persons employed in the post offices are women. In Switzerland women are eligible equally with men for vacancies in the postal and railway departments. Many women are engaged in the telegraph and telephone departments, and the railways employ them in various capacities. In Holland only eight classes of employment in the administration of posts and telegraphs are open to women. The railways employ seven hundred and twenty women. In Italy a few women are occupied in the postal and telegraph offices. In Spain nearly all the positions in the telephone offices are held by women, and their work in the telegraph offices has been so satisfactory that the Government has decided to have more of it. In Sweden more women than men are found in the telegraph offices, and single women are admitted to all departments of the post-office service, except that of letter carriers. Women have the same salaries and equal positions in the telegraph and post offices of Norway and Denmark as men, and in Denmark may become "station masters" on the railway, while they also figure as shorthand writers in the Parliament. We find them also in public offices, on the most liberal terms that have been made, in Finland and Iceland. They occupy many positions in Germany, Austria, Roumania, Russia, and in the British colonies. The Republic of Brazil admits women to all the Government departments; the United States of Colombia has provided a class in telegraphy for them; and in Chili, besides filling places in the postal and telegraph departments, they monopolize the function of conductors on the tramways.
The Russian Village.—While the dissolution of the community of land in western Europe is of comparatively recent date, in Russia, as Mr. Isaac A. Hourwich shows in his Columbia College study of the Economics of a Russian Village, the process of evolution has been less rapid, and this primeval institution has been preserved till to-day. There is not, however, found there within historical times that tribal communism which Mr. Lewis H. Morgan met with among North American Indians. The Russian village community of historical times consists of a number of large families, often, yet not necessarily, of common ancestry, who possess the soil in common, but cultivate it by households. The ancient communal co-operation reappears sporadically, on various special occasions, in the form of the pómoch (or help). Some householder invites his neighbors to help him in a certain work (just as in the times of our early settlements) to mow his meadow lot, to reap his field, to cut down wood for a new house he has undertaken to build, etc. This is regarded as a reception tendered by the family to its neighbors, and different kinds of refreshments are prepared for the occasion, which constitute the only remuneration for the work done by
