to 1900 was at the rate of 3.45 per decade. Should this decrease continue the percentage of increase would cease in 1950 and thereafter a decrease in population would ensue. The population of the country would then be 88 millions in 1910, 101 millions in 1920, 111 millions in 1930, 119 millions in 1940 and 123 millions in 1950, at which time the population of the country would have reached its maximum and would thereafter decline. It is of course unlikely that this will be the future of our population. The percentage of increase will almost certainly become smaller, but probably with increasing slowness. The data from 1860 to 1900, however, give indications of these results, and they are more probable than the boundless increase of population of the country and of the world which has sometimes been predicted.
SCIENTIFIC ITEMS
At the meeting of the National Academy of Sciences, held in Washington last week, President Ira Remsen, of the Johns Hopkins University, was elected president to succeed Mr. Alexander Agassiz. The vacancy in the vice-presidency thus created was filled by the election of Dr. Charles D. Walcott, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.—Members were elected as follows: Joseph P. Iddings, professor of petrology, University of Chicago; Harmon N. Morse, professor of chemistry, Johns Hopkins University; Franklin P. Mall, professor of anatomy, Johns Hopkins University, and Elihu Thomson, Thomson-Houston and General Electrical Companies.
Oxford University has conferred its doctorate of science on Dr. A. Graham Bell.—Dr. Franz Boas, professor of anthropology in Columbia University, was presented on April 16 with a volume of researches by his colleagues and former students in honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his doctorate.—
Dr. Francis Galton has been appointed to deliver the Herbert Spencer Lecture for 1907, at Oxford, and proposes to lecture on 'Probability, the Foundation of Eugenics.'
Mr. Edward B. Moore, assistant commissioner of patents, has been appointed commissioner to succeed Mr. Frederick I. Allen, who has resigned.—Count de Montessus de Ballore, of Abbeville, France, one of the leading authorities on earthquakes, has accepted a call from the government of Chili to establish for them a seismological service of the first rank. This action on the part of the Chilian government is a direct result of the disastrous Valparaiso earthquake of last August.
Among gifts to educational institutions the following may be noted: Princeton University has received from donors whose names are for the present withheld a gift of $1,200,000, for the erection and endowment of two scientific buildings—one for physical science and one for biology and geology. In each case the building will be erected as a cost of $400,000, and $200,000 is provided for equipment and maintenance.—By the will of Edward W. Currier Amherst College receives the sum of $500,000. Two legacies are released by Mr. Currier's death; one of $180,000 to Williams College and one of $100,000 to Yale University—Mr. John D. Rockefeller has given to the University land fronting the south side of Midway Plaisance of the value of $1,500,000.—Barnard College, Columbia University, has been made the residuary legatee of the estate of Miss Emily O. Gibbes. It is estimated that the college may receive $750,000—Miss Anna T. Jeanes, of Philadelphia, has created an endowment fund of $1,000,000, the income from which is to be applied toward the maintenance and assistance of elementary schools for negroes in the southern states.
