National.

The Boy Scout movement is emphasized as an aid to conservation by conservation by Gifford Pinchot, former chief forester, who says of it: "There are very many reasons why I believe in the Boy Scouts; one of the first of them is that I do not see how it is possible for any good scout to grow up without becoming a good forester. I predict that not long from now we shall find the largest increase in the profession of forestry from the men who have been trained as Boy Scouts."

A bill for land value taxation in municipalities upon a referendum vote, introduced in the lower House of the New Jersey Legislature, provides that in such municipality thereafter all personal property and all buildings or other improvements upon land shall not be taxed, but the entire amount of the taxes to be raised in said community, other than excise taxes, shall be levied upon land alone, according to its value.

A gift of three hundred thousand dollars from Mrs. Russell Sage to Cornell University is announced. The money is given for a new dormitory for one hundred and seventy-five women students whose rooms are now scattered about in private houses owing to the limited capacity of Sage College, the women's department of the university. The new dormitory will be known as Prudence Risley Hall, in memory of Russell Sage's mother.

The gross area of the one hundred and fifty-two national forests, including the two in Alaska and one in Porto Rico, on Jan. 30, was 191,250,038 acres. California leads the list with the greatest number of forests as well as the largest area, twenty-one, having a total area of 27,973,983 acres; Alaska takes second place with two forests amounting to 26,748,826 acres; Idaho has twenty forests with a total area of 19,890,329 acres.

Strict government regulation of all industrial combinations by means of laws which are not the result of "half baked reforms and are not conceived in the minds of demagogues playing to the clamor of ignorant agitators and a misled minority of the people," was urged by Theodore Roosevelt in an address before the Southern Commercial Congress at its recent session.

To avert an annual unnecessary expense of sixty thousand dollars for fees paid to notaries public for affidavits for expense account and other documents, the secretary of the treasury has asked Congress to authorize certain officials in all branches of the government service to administer oaths to government employees relative to all accounts in which the government is interested.

The contract for the New York city post office has been awarded on a bid of $2,515,267. There were lower offers, but the successful bidder guaranteed to deliver the building to the treasury department in twenty-three months. The building will be situated west of the new Pennsylvania railroad station.

The corporation tax provisions of the Payne-Aldrich tariff act have recently been sustained as constitutional by the supreme court of the United States in a unanimous decision. A source of income of approximately twenty-five million dollars annually is thereby assured to the government.

The average salary paid to its officials by the city of Chicago is $1,193 a year and ranges from a few at a dollar a day to the mayor's salary of eighteen thousand dollars a year. The total amount paid is $26,166,609, of which all but $9,319,200 goes to civil service employees.

It is announced that Charles J. Bonaparte, secretary of the ravy, and attorney-general in the Roosevelt Administration, will enter daily journalism as contributing editor to the Ballimore Daily Sun. He is president of the National Municipal League.

The Congressional Library at Washington contains a collection of eighty-thousand volumes written in the Russian language, the largest collection of Russian books in the world outside of the Imperial Library at St. Petersburg.

As a result of detailed field examination by geologists and engineers of the United States geological survey, 2,267,946 acres of public lands were classified or withdrawn during January.

Fully five thousand Americans have visited the Panama Canal during the present season.

International.

The international peace bureau at Berne, Switzerland, of which the United States is a member, sent a circular letter on the 8th to the foreign ministries of all the powers concerning the question of the limitation of armaments as proposed in the resolution adopted by the American Congress, and which authorized President Taft to appoint a commission to study the subject. The bureau calls the attention of the governments addressed to the text of this resolution and quotes President Taft as saying, in his message to Congress of Dec. 6, that he had delayed nominating the members of this commission because he was awaiting the expression of foreign governments as to their willingness to cooperate with the United States in the appointment of similar commissions. Earl Grey, in the English House of Commons, gave a ringing speech in favor of such an arbitration treaty with the United States. It has been heartily echoed by press and public and is calling forth favorable comment in other continental powers.

On Feb. 15, at The Hague, before a tribunal of which the Swiss minister at Paris is president, began the arbitration of the dispute between Russia and Turkey regarding the payment of pecuniary claims to Russian subjects by Turkey, arising out of the war of 1877-8. Turkey has already paid more than one million dollars of these claims, but has refused to pay interest on the capital of the indemnities, as asked by Russia. The present arbitration is of the question of interest, both governments having agreed to leave it to The Hague.

According to the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, the declarations of Sir Edward Grey, speaking on Anglo-German relations in the House of Commons on the subject of armaments, correspond closely with the German view-point and open a prospect of the further development of the relations between Great Britain and Germany. The Social Democrats have given notice that they will introduce a resolution in the Reichstag calling on the government to begin negotiations for a "naval peace" with England.

The Chinese government declares its intention of agreeing to both points at issue with Russia and is now drafting a reply to the recently received ultimatum along this line. The foreign board states that it is prepared to accept the establishment of Russian consulates in the places specified by Russia, and also promises to take measures regarding Chinese monopolies in Mongolia, which will permit Russian subjects freedom in trade in Chinese goods as well as in the goods of other countries.

In accordance with a bill passed in the French Senate Feb. 10, central European, or Greenwich, time became the legal time of France at midnight, March 10, the difference between Paris and Greenwich time being nine minutes and twenty-one seconds. France is now within the same time section as England, Belgium, Holland, and Spain.

A motion in the French Chamber of Deputies that the government be urged to make an effort to have the limitation of armaments placed on the program of the third Hague conference, was carried by a vote of four hundred and forty-seven to fifty-six.

Thirty-six members of the dreaded Camorra of Italy have been indicted for taking lives and are now on trial at Viterbo, Italy. So great is the public fear of the Camorra that there was great difficulty in securing a jury.

The government of Panama has published a call for the construction and financing of the proposed railroad from the City of Panama to David. The railroad is likely to become a link in the Pan-American railway. The Portuguese foreign office has been notified that the British government has decided to recognize the existing government "subject to the election and assemblage of Parliament in April."

Industrial and Commercial.

Plans which have been under way for the last four years for the building of a huge industrial center on the South Boston, Mass., waterfront, to be financed by foreign capital, have been made known in the formation of the American Building Trust. An area of a million and a third square feet of land will be converted into a colony of thirty factories and warehouses with underground freight tubes, new fireproofing arrangements, and the largest docks in the world, the entire cost being estimated at twenty million dollars.

Application will be made on April 3 to the Governor of Pennsylvania for charters for about sixty electric companies. This will be the first public move in the fulfilment of the great power scheme of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, which aims to electrify eastern Pennsylvania, affecting a territory with a population of two million five hundred thousand people, including Philadelphia.

Higher wages were paid to American farm laborers during 1910 than at any time in the last forty-five years, according to statistics just made public by the department of agriculture. The average wage for the country was $27.50 per month during 1910, while twenty years ago they were only $18.33

The annual report of the North German Lloyd Steamship Company for 1910 shows gross profits 38,150,600 marks ($9,537,650), as compared with the 32,899,000 marks for the previous year. A dividend of three per cent was declared for the year, against no dividend the previous year.

Dealers in food stuffs in Washington, D. C., have banded themselves together to bring about a reduction of ten to thirty per cent in the retail price of groceries. Fifty-two of them have just formed the League of Consumers' Friends.