of the major projects, and it is planned to continue it on a more extensive scale, funds having been appropriated for the erection of a laboratory, which will be placed under the direction of Professor Benedict. It is stated that the laboratory will be built where pathological cases can be secured for investigation, and it is now reported that it will be placed in Boston.
The two remaining departments are economics and sociology and historical research. The former, under the direction of President Carroll D. Wright, of Clark College, is preparing an economic history of the country with the assistance of more than a hundred collaborators. As head of the department of historical research, Professor J. F. Jameson has succeeded Professor A. C. McLaughlin. The department aims to be a clearing-house for the historical profession, and is engaged in various miscellaneous activities, thus differing somewhat from the other departments.
It will be of great importance for science to learn whether research work can be conducted more economically and efficiently in institutions of this character than when combined with educational work, as at our universities, or with economic work, as under the government. More than half the income of the institution is appropriated for work in astronomy and geophysics, in which subjects the president is especially competent, but it may be doubted whether it is an advantage for institutions in California, Arizona, Florida, New York, Massachusetts and South America to be conducted from Washington. It would probably be better if the laboratories were built and endowed, and their future development entrusted to local control.
THE SAGE FOUNDATION
Another great foundation on the lines of those established by Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Rockefeller is now announced. Mrs. Russell Sage has offered to give ten million dollars to a board to be incorporated by the New York legislature for a foundation the object
