Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/390

study of Mendel's law and the mutations of de Vries. The monograph describes the breeding of the eel, the gray mullet, the oyster and other forms. As Professor Mitsukuri says: "While the pasturage of cattle and the cultivation of plants marked very early steps in man's advancement toward civilization, the raising of aquatic animals and plants, on any extensive scale at all events, seems to belong to much later stages of human development. In fact, the cultivation of some marine animals has been rendered possible only by utilizing the most recent discoveries and methods of science. I believe, however, the time is now fast approaching when the increase of population on the earth, and the question of food supply which must arise as a necessary consequence, will compel us to pay most serious attention to the utilization for this purpose of what has been termed the 'watery waste.' For man to overfish and then to wait for the bounty of nature to replenish, or, failing that, to seek new fishing grounds, is, it seems to me, an act to be put in the same category with the doings of nomadic peoples wandering from place to place in search of pastures. Hereafter, streams, rivers, lakes and seas will have, so to speak, to be pushed to a more efficient degree of cultivation and made to yield their utmost for us. It is, perhaps, superfluous for me to state this before an audience in America, for 1 think all candid persons will admit that the United States, with her Bureau of Fisheries, is leading other nations in bold scientific attempts in this direction."

 

SCIENTIFIC ITEMS.

We regret to record the death of Dr. Win. Thos. Blanford, F.R.S., the well-known British geologist, and of I Mr. Geo. H. Eldridge, geologist of the U. S. Geological Survey.

The Berlin municipality has appropriated $20,000 to erect a statue in honor of Rudolf Virchow, which will be placed on the Karlsplatz, close to the Charity Hospital.—The faculty and students of the medical and dental departments of the George Washington University have erected, in the main hall of the department of medicine, a bronze tablet to the memory of their late dean and professor of chemistry and toxicology, Dr. Emil Alexander de Schweinitz.

At a meeting of the General Education Board, held on June 30, a gift of ten million dollars was announced from Mr. John D. Rockefeller, as an endowment for higher education in the United States. The announcement of the gift was made in a letter from Mr. Frederick T. Gates, Mr. Rockefeller's representative, which reads as follows:

I am authorized by Mr. John D. Rockefeller to say that he will contribute to the General Educational Board the sum of $10,000,000 to be paid October 1 next in cash, or, at his option, in income producing securities, at their market value, the principal to be held in perpetuity as a foundation for education, the income, above expenses and administration, to be distributed to or used for the benefit of such institutions of learning at such times, in such amounts, for such purposes and under such conditions, or employed in such other ways as the Board may deem best adapted to promote a comprehensive system of higher education in the United States.

Mr. Rockefeller has also given one million dollars to Yale University.