TH

1,388,300

HE U. S. Geological Survey has assigned the following field parties for work during this season:

Arizona: T. A. Jaggar, Waldemar Lindgren, J. M. Boutwell, F. L. Ransome, John D. Irving, and R. T. Hill.

Arkansas: George I. Adams.

California: George F. Becker, W. Lindgren, J. C. Branner, J. S. Diller, Geo. H. Eldridge, and H. W. Turner.

Colorado: C. W. Cross, Ernest Howe, J. Morgan Clements, S. F. Emmons, John D. Irving, and George I. Adams. Connecticut: William H. Hobbs and H. E. Gregory.

Delaware: R. D. Salisbury and George B. Shattuck.

Georgia: Arthur Keith.

Idaho: Bailey Willis.

Indiana: George H. Ashley.

Indian Territory: J. A. Taff and George I. Adams.

Kansas: W. S. Tangier-Smith. Kentucky: M. R. Campbell and George H. Ashley.

Louisiana: George I. Adams.

Maryland: Continuation of cooperative work as in previous years; William B. Clark, E. B. Matthews, and George B. Shattuck; study of ancient crystalline rocks, paleozoic stratigraphy, and coastal plain deposits.

Massachusetts: B. K. Emerson. Michigan: Frank Leverett, F. B. Taylor, C. R. Van Hise, C. K. Leith, and W. S. Bayley.

Minnesota: C. R. Van Hise and J. Morgan Clements.

Missouri: W. S. Tangier-Smith. Montana Continuation of special studies in the Rocky Mountains; Charles D. Walcott, director; W. E. Weed, and Bailey Willis.

Nevada: G. K. Gilbert.

New Jersey: R. D. Salisbury and George B. Shattuck.

New Mexico: George H. Girty, R. T. Hill, and C. W. Cross.

New York: L. C. Glenn, T. N. Dale, and J. F. Kemp.

North Carolina: Arthur Keith. North Dakota: N. H. Darton and C. M. Hall.

Ohio: Charles S. Prosser.
Oklahoma: J. A. Taff.
Oregon: J. S. Diller.

Pennsylvania: Parts of Butler, Armstrong, Indiana, Washington, Westmoreland, Fayette, and Tioga Counties, M. R. Campbell, A. C. Spencer, George B. Richardson, and L. Fuller; northern Pennsylvania, George H. Girty; Philadelphia and vicinity, Prof. Florence Bascom and C. R. Van Hise; refractory clays of Pennsylvania, C. W. Hayes ; Fulton and Franklin counties, George W. Stone; coal measures, C. D. White. South Carolina: Arthur Keith. South Dakota N. H. Darton and J. E. Todd.

Tennessee: Arthur Keith.

Texas R. T. Hill and George I. Adams.

of these nations will have a special section assigned to it for study, so that a complete knowledge of the currents, sea bottoms, etc, may be soon obtained. The Norwegians and Russians have already equipped special steamers to carry out their share of the work, and work on the German vessel which is building for the same purpose is well advanced.

The Bureau of American Republics has published two handsome maps of Mexico on the scale of 50 miles to the inch. The first map, besides being a general map of the country, by colors shows the elevation of every part of the Republic. It also gives the agricultural features, showing what sections are wheat-growing, what are favorable to the great Mexican staple henequen, etc. The second map shows the distribution of minerals throughout the country as far as prospecting has revealed their location. These maps are the result of much research, combining all the results of latest surveys. The Bureau announces that similar maps of all the Central and South American Republics are in course of preparation. The map of Brazil is nearly completed, and work on the maps of Guatemala and Costa Rica well advanced.

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The Royal Geographical Society has this year awarded the Founders' medal to the Duke of Abruzzi for his two feats of being the first to ascend Mt. St. Elias and of gaining what is now farthest north," 86° 33'. The expense of each of these expeditions was borne mainly by the Duke, though his uncle, the late King Humbert, generously aided him. The Society has awarded the Patrons' medal to Dr. A. Donaldson Smith for his explorations in Central East Africa in 1894-'95 and 1898-1900. Dr. Smith traversed the last densely inhabited area remaining unexplored in Africa-the country between Lake Rudolf and the White Nile. Awards have

also been made by the Society to Captain Cagni, of the Duke of Abruzzi's party, and to Mr. L. Bernacchi and Captain Colbeck for aid in Borchgrevink's South Polar Expedition. King Edward VII has succeeded Queen Victoria as Patron of the Society.

Philippine Weather Service.-The Philippine weather service has now scattered throughout the archipelago some 20 telegraphic stations from which advance warnings of the approach of typhoons can be wired to Manila. Before the revolution of 1897 Spain had a number of similar stations located at strategic points, but when Dewey entered Manila. Bay not one remained outside of the city. After the occupation of the islands by the American Government plans were at

once formed by the Chief of the U. S. Weather Bureau, aided by Father Joseph Algué, S. J., to reorganize and extend the former service, and now that the pacification of the islands is nearly secured, these plans are rapidly becoming realized. The Philippine service is in charge of the Manila Observatory, with Father Algué as director. It is supported by the funds of the Philippine Government rather than those of the United States, and is independent of the U. S. Weather Bureau, but receives the active coöperation and assistance of the latter. As soon as enough of the islands have been connected by cables the U. S. Government will organize an extensive system, and the Philippine service will be incorporated under Federal direction.

Report of the Chief of the Weather Bureau, 1899-1900. U. S. Department of Agriculture. Pp. 436. 1901. Prof. Willis L. Moore gives a comprehensive statement of one year's work of this great scientific branch of the Government. During the year many important advances were made. A station

established at Turks Island completed the chain of stations extending from the Lesser Antilles northwestward to Bermuda and the southeastern coast of the United States. Plans were formed, and have since been realized, for special storm forecasts for the North Atlantic Ocean, giving the wind force and wind direction for the first three days of the route of all outgoing steamers. Experiments were made in wireless telegraphy, and eminently satisfactory progress made in the investigation.

A re

duction to a homogeneous system of the barometric observations taken by the service during the past 30 years was un

dertaken. The total eclipse of May 28, 1900, was observed by Professors Bigelow and Abbe, at Newberry, S. C., and new information (to be published later) obtained regarding the effect of solar action upon the earth's atmosphere. Arrangements for distributing forecasts and warnings to vessels navigating the Great Lakes were so perfected that each of the 20,000 vessels that passed Detroit received the latest weather news, and also vessels leaving Chicago and the Great Lake ports. Forecasts of cold waves, of hurricanes, and of floods saved millions of property.

A valuable feature of the report are tables, prepared by Prof. A. J. Henry, giving the monthly mean, maximum, and minimum temperature, pressure, and moisture of 170 Weather Bureau stations. The meteorological observations of Evelyn B. Baldwin during the Wellman Arctic Expedition of 1898-'99 complete the report.

N

EVER have I been so overwhelmed with the magnitude of a task as in beginning this attempt to epitomize Asia in an hour.

Asia is the Continent of continents; a giant land to which Africa is but an appendage and all Europe only an excrescence. Larger as to mainland than both Americas combined, Asia with her insular extension southeastward might swallow the great landmass of Africa with Europe in addition. Of the 50, 000,000 square miles of land on the face of the earth, Asia holds fully 15,000,000, or three-tenths of all-indeed, stretching as she does from the equator to the very shadow of the pole and within a few degrees of half way around the globe, she is as a world in herself, and can be likened to the rest of the planet only by means of superlatives: Her climate ranges from the utmost type of torridity to extremest cold, from heaviest equatorial torrents to bleakest aridity, from recurrent tropical typhoon to poleward calm. Her features are stupendous as her expanse is vast: The Himalaya Mountains and the Pamir

Plateau-the Asian highlander's "Roof of the World"-make pygmies of all other elevations on earth. The world's most extensive plain forms central and northern Asia, and comprises the greatest tundra and vastest forest on the planet; one of the two largest deserts of the world (Gobi, with its extension in Takla-Makan) lies at the eastern base of this unparalleled upland, though out of the world's ten rivers exceeding 2,500 miles in length six are in Asia as against two in Africa and one in either America-and even this reckoning misses three of the mightiest among the world's waterways (Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Indus), rivers raised to foremost rank by unequaled loftiness of basin and swiftness of flow. Gauged by any measure, Asia is Titanic, the land of all lands in length and breadth, the queen of continents.

Great as is physical Asia, human Asia is far greater; for as the home of mankind and the cradle of culture, she outcounts all the rest of earth. Out of the world's population of 1,500,000,000, nearly 900,000,000, or six-tenths of the

whole, abide in Asia; out of the four or five or more races of men, all but one (the Amerind) are indigenes of Asia or its immediate insular and peninsular extensions; and if Egypt be placed with Arabia (where she belongs in every cultural aspect), then out of the fifty or eighty centuries of recorded history running from the hazy dawn of antiquity to the clear light of modernity, the earlier half must be credited wholly to Asia. Music and drama were old in Asia before Athens and Rome were planted, and oriental schools of painting and sculpture prepared the way for a nobler culmination in Greece and Italy. In industries, the long, long way from bestial tooth and claw to the stone knife and thence to the metal tool was first trodden by Asian folk and their Egyptian brethren; nearly all of the world's domesticated animals came from Asia, where horses and kine, sheep and swine, and the dog and fowl were tamed in the eastern morning of humanity (undoubtedly through uncounted generations of totemism and beast-worship after the manner of all lowly men) and the cat and the camel were caught in some part of that industrial tide which ebbed and flowed over the Red Sea basin for millenniums, while the hardy reindeer of the arctic and the ponderous elephant of the tropics were enslaved so late as yet to retain the characters of their wilder kindred; so, too, the world's richest crop-plants, like wheat and rice, oats and barley, were created in Asia by ages of experiment to feed millions, and to render all other lands eternal debtors to the queenly continent. The fundamental laws of the world, from motherright to the Decalogue and from bloodvenge to the Golden Rule, were framed in Asian centers and tested by the experience of millions before their germs were exported by Cecrops and Romulus and sown by Solon as seeds of future justice; and it is to Asia that the student turns for the longest dynasties, the

largest nations, the grandest empires in history. Most of the well-springs of language flowing westward to unite in the great Aryan reservoir of worldspeech arose in Asia; several Asian centers gave letters to the eastern world long before Cadmus came to Greece; and despite the teeming output of the occidental press of a century, a large share of the literature of the world is still Asian, and leading poets and prosaists of western lands are flocking back to the oriental storehouse for motives just as their contemporaries are building new towns out of the ruins (and for the spoils) of ancient cities. Of the nine world religions that have spread to millions of men-Shintoism, Brahmanism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Judaism, Zoroastrism, Mohammedism, with the sublimation of their finest essences in Christianity-all were nurtured in Asia, and all but one attained highest development beyond the Bosphorus; indeed of the modern sciences, three-mathematics, astronomy, chemistry-originated in the almacabala and astrology and alchemy of ancient Asia; while the metaphysical philosophies of even mid-European shrines are dull and feeble besides the ethereal emanations of the oriental mind, emanations so subtle yet strong as to react in bodily abnegation (in the self-immolation of the suttee, in the ecstatic self-torture of the dervish dance, and in the hypnotic selfparalysis of priestly fakirs) far transcending the saner powers of the western world.

Such is human Asia. Seen in any aspect, she is extended, picturesque, majestic, full of meaning; viewed in her various phases at once, she is bewildering in wealth of detail, if not an utter chaos of redundant facts. It were easier to deal with the human affairs of all of the rest of the world together than with those of Asia alone.

Happily the scientific student is not