about 600 tons displacement, The Galilee, has been chartered at San Francisco. The scientific personnel at present consists of Mr. J. F. Pratt, commander; Dr. J. Hobart Egbert, surgeon and magnetic observer; Mr. J. P. Ault, magnetic observer, and Mr. P. C. Whitney, magnetic observer and watch officer. The sailing master is Captain J. T. Hayes.
Trial trips were made early in August under the direction of Dr. Bauer, and the ship set sail on September 1 for the Hawaiian Islands. After its return, it will depart early in 1906 for a more lengthy cruise, embracing nearly the entire circuit of the North Pacific Ocean. The total length of the course marked out is about 70,000 knots. It is not supposed that great irregularity in the distribution of the earth's magnetism will be found over the deep waters of the Pacific, but distortions are likely to occur along the coast and in the neighborhood of islands. Thus, as Dr. Bauer has pointed out, with the aid of the results of the detailed magnetic survey of the United States and Alaska, opportunity will be afforded of studying, the effect of the configuration of land and water on the distribution of the magnetic forces. The first circuit, passing as it does along the American and Asiatic coasts, will yield especially interesting results in this respect. Along the Aleutian Islands marked local disturbances will probably be disclosed, as reports are received frequently from mariners in this region regarding the unsatisfactory behavior of the compass.
ELISÉE RECLUS.
M. Elisée Reclus, who died near Bruges, on July 4, in his seventy-sixth year, was an eminent geographer and an interesting personality. He was the son of a protestant pastor, one of a family of twelve children, several of whom have become eminent. The revolutionary spirit which he showed all through his life may have been responsible for his geographical work, for it was after he was expelled from France in 1851 that he spent six years in continuous travel. Reclus returned to Paris in 1857 and wrote numerous geographical articles and books, including the volumes that have been translated into English under the title 'The Earth.' During the siege of Paris, he took the side of the communists, though among them he was conservative. He was, however, again banished from France, and did not return until the general amnesty of 1879. In Switzerland he began his great 'Nouvelle geographie universelle,' the nineteen volumes of which were completed in 1894. He left at the time of his death an unpublished work in four volumes treating history as influenced by geographical conditions. During the later years of his life he was a professor in the University libre of Brussels. We reproduce here a portrait from La Nature. Reclus is said to have been a man of the most intense human sympathy, always ready to sacrifice himself for his communistic and anarchistic convictions. Yet he found time to accomplish a vast
