ITEMS OF INTEREST April 1, 1911 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

The American section of the new world map, in which countries will be drawn on the same scale, that the relative size and characteristics of each may be shown, is progressing rapidly under the direction of the United States geological survey. Nine of the fifty-two sheets, each representing eighty-six thousand four hundred square miles, have been completed and surveyors and cartographers are working on the others, which, it is said, will be issued rapidly. The work is part of an international movement by nine of the more important government, to each of which has been allotted a part of the world's surface for mapping. The scale of the map—one to one million—gives it its name—the international one-millionth map—and geographers say that it is the greatest step forward ever taken in their science and in cartography.

The corporation of Harvard College has voted that all Cambridge boys who come from high schools, and whose parents are unable to pay the tuition fee, are to be exempt from it during the freshman year; that, subject to the approval of the dean of the summer school, rates charged in the summer school shall be reduced for all Cambridge teachers; that all university athletic fields in Cambridge are to be offered as playgrounds to children in Cambridge during the summer, in so far, as is practicable; that, upon request of the city, made to the president of the univeristy, and with his approval, that expert advice on municipal affairs of the city, within reasonable limits, will be given gratuitously by members of the faculty.

Hundreds of billions of tons of coal, contained in the vast area of coal lands in the West, consisting of more than seventy million acres, are owned by the United States government according to an announcement of the United States geological survey. By a new method of selling this coal land on a coal tonnage basis the government will gain an enormous amount of money. The old way was to sell the coal lands regardless of value, at ten dollars an acre if more than fifteen miles from a railroad, or at twenty dollars if within the limit. As a result of the new method coal lands have been priced as high as four hundred dollars an acre, and in one tract at even six hundred dollars.

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