Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/197

Rh enormous damage they do, the bureau hopes to induce more effective legislation in suppressing them.

Investigation has shown that, in an average year, 60 human lives are lost in forest fires, $25,000,000 worth of real property is destroyed, 10,274,089 acres of timber land are burned over, and young forest growth worth, at the lowest estimate, $75,000,000, is killed. A special canvass of the country by the Department of Agriculture in 1891 discovered 12,000,000 acres of timber land destroyed by fire. These figures are mere estimates, which fall far short of showing in full the damage done. No account at all is taken of the loss to the country due to the impoverishment of the soil by fire, to the ruin of water courses, and the drying-up of springs. Even the amount of timber burned is very imperfectly calculated, and the actual quantity destroyed is far in excess of that accounted for. Forest fires in this country have grown so common that only those are reported that are of such magnitude as to threaten large communities. The lumbering industry in remote sections of the country may be ruined and people forced to flee for their lives without a mention of the disaster beyond the places near where it occurred.

The fires that burnt this year in Washington and Oregon were uncommon only in the number of lives lost. The burning of logging and mining camps and farm buildings, the loss to the country in the destruction of timber and young tree growth, is of yearly occurrence. Every fall, not only in Washington, Oregon, Colorado and Wyoming, but up and down the Pacific coast and all over the Rocky Mountain country fires burn great holes in the forests and destroy the national wealth. The air of the mountains over hundreds of miles is pungent with the smoke of conflagration, and navigation on Puget "Sound has often been impeded by smoke. The following comment by Dr. Henry Gannett, of the U. S. Geological Survey, should convey a fair idea of the damage done in the state of Washington: "In less than a generation two fifths of the standing timber has been destroyed in one of the richest timber regions on the continent, and of the destruction more than half has been caused by fire. Assuming that the timber would, if standing, have the value of 75 cents per thousand feet, not less than $30,000,000 worth has gone lip in smoke, a dead loss to the people of the state."

since 1863 professor of physics in Columbia University, one of the most eminent American men of science, died on November 12, in his seventy-second year. We hope to publish subsequently some account of Professor Rood's life and work.

years ago Mr. Hodgkins left his fortune to the Smithsonian Institution to be used for the increase and diffusion of more exact knowledge in regard to the nature and properties of atmospheric air in connection with the welfare of man, the endowment amounting to about $250,000. Part of the fund has been used to establish a Hodgkins gold medal, which in 1899 was awarded to Lord Rayleigh and Professor Ramsay for their discovery of argon. A second award of the medal has now been made to Professor J. J. Thomson, of the University of Cambridge, for his investigations on the conductivity of gases, especially the gases that compose the atmospheric air. An engraving from this medal, made by M. Chaplain, is here given. Professor Thomson has just been appointed the first lecturer at Yale University on the foundation established with a bequest of $85,000 from Benjamin Silliman.

degree of LL.D. was conferred on Dr. Alexander Graham Bell at St.