Page:The National Geographic Magazine Vol 16 1905.djvu/115

 GEOGRAPHIC NOTES

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY

HE annual meeting of the National Geographic Society was held at Washington, January 13. Eight members of the Board of Managers were elected to serve for the three years, 1 905-1907, as follows :

Alexander Graham Bell, Alfred H. Brooks, Henry Gannett, General A. W. Greely, Gilbert H. Grosvenor, Angelo Heilprin, O. H. Tittmann, and General John M. Wilson.

Prof. T. C. Chamberlin, of the Uni- versity of Chicago, was elected to fill the vacancy in the Board caused by the resignation of Prof. Wm. M. Davis, of Harvard University.

The report of the Secretary, Hon. O. P. Austin, showed that the present membership of the Society is 3,400, of whom 1,125 are residents of Washington and 2,275 distributed throughout the United States, Alaska, Philippines, Europe, Asia, and Africa. The net gain in membership for 1904 was 7S9. During 1904 the Society held 12 scientific meetings, 16 special meetings, and 4 field meetings.

At a meeting of the Board of Managers January 27 Dr Willis L. Moore, Chief of the U. S. Weather Bureau, was elected President of the Society. Dr Moore has been actively identified with the Society for many years, serving on the Board of Managers since 1899. At the same meeting Mr Henry Gannett, Geographer of the U. S. Geological Survey, was elected Vice-President. Mr Gannett was one of the incorporators of the Society, in 1888, and with the exception of the year 1903, which he passed in the Philippines, he has served continuously on the Board since the Society was founded.

CHART OF THE WORLD

HROUGH the courtesy of the Hydrographic Office of the Navy Department, and more particularly of Captain H. M. Hodges, hydrographer, and Mr George W. Eittlehales, the National Geographic Magazine publishes as a supplement to this number a chart of the world on Mercator's projection, showing the submarine cable lines and their connections and ocean routes. Cable and telegraph lines are printed in red and ocean routes in blue. The latest cable lines are shown — as, for instance, the Alaskan cables of the U. S. Signal Corps and the wireless connection across Norton Sound. The tables of distances printed on the bottom of the chart will doubtless be found very convenient by many. One table tells at a glance the comparative distances of New York and Shanghai, or Yokohama by the Panama, Suez, and Cape of Good Hope routes. Another table gives the distances of our Gulf ports from the Atlantic end of the Panama Canal (Colon), and also from each other. The chart can be easily detached from the Magazine and hung on the wall for more convenient use.

NOTES ON THE PHILIPPINES

NE of the most striking facts in the report for 1904 of Col. Clarence R. Edwards, U. S. Army, Chief of the Bureau of Insular Affairs, is the statement that only $5,300,000, or less than 8 per cent, of the $69,000,000 worth of goods entering and leaving the Philippine Islands in 1904 were carried in American bottoms. What a lamentable instance of the insignificance of our merchant marine, which, like our iron, coal, and agricultural industries, ought to be the greatest in the world.

During the year nearly 13,000 Americans went to the Philippines with the intention of making their permanent home there. Most of them did not specify the nature of their occupation, but among those who did were 333 teachers, 117 engineers, 50 physicians, 47 clergymen, 33 lawyers, 406 clerks and accountants, 186