wheat, hay and cotton at more than one third and the smaller crops at nearly one third. The annual value of animal products is approximating three billion dollars.
The work of the Department of Agriculture is commensurate with this vast production of the farms. When secretary Wilson assumed charge eleven years ago, there were less than 2,500 persons employed. There are now more than 10,000, and of these more than 2,600 may be classified as scientific men. The bureau that has had the most remarkable growth is the Forest Service, which has increased from 14 persons to 3,753. It administers an area of national forests amounting to 168,000,000 acres, which paid laf?t year into the national treasury $1,800,003 in receipts. The income of the agricultural colleges was five million dollars in 1897 and fifteen million dollars in 1908. There was one agricultural high school in the former year and no normal school taught agriculture. There are now fifty-five agricultural high schools and one hundred and fifteen normal schools at which agriculture is taught. The Department of Agriculture distributed last year nearly seventeen million publications. The more these are read the better it is, not only for the farmers of the country, but for all the people.
SCIENTIFIC ITEMS
We record with regret the deaths of George Washington Hough, professor of astronomy at Northwestern University and director of the Dearborn Observatory, and of Thomas Gray, professor of engineering at the Rose Polytechnic Institute.
Presiding officers of societies meeting at Baltimore were elected as follows: The American Society of Naturalists, Professor T. H. Morgan, of Columbia University; The Geological Society of America, Mr. G. K. Gilbert, of the U. S. Geological Survey, for the second time, he having held this office in 1892; The American Chemical Society, Dr. W. R. Whitney, director of the Research Laboratories of the General Electric Company, at Schenectady The American Zoological Society, Professor Herbert E. Jennings, of the Johns Hopkins University; The American Anthropological Association, Dr. W. H. Holmes, chief of the Bureau of American Ethnology; The American Psychological Association, Professor Charles H. Judd, professor of psychology at Yale University and director-elect of the School of Education in the University of Chicago; The American Philosophical Association, Professor J. G. Hibben, of Princeton University.
Professor T. C. Chamberlin, after presiding at the Baltimore meeting of the American Association, left for San Francisco on his way to China, where he will study the geology of the country with special reference to its influence on social and educational conditions, as a member of a commission sent by the University of Chicago.
