A steamboat company is placing its little vessels on the canals of Venice, and the gondolas, which were one of the charms of the city to travelers, are destined to disappear—unless a few may be reserved to gratify the curiosity of tourists.
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The Commissioner of Education of Rhode Island has issued a circular to teachers, calling attention to the work of the Audubon Society for the Preservation of Birds, and to the incalculable value, from various points of view, of bird life, and advises them to foster Nature study as furnishing a natural channel by means of which instruction and information on the subject may readily be brought before the children, and through them to the people generally.
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In a paper on The Ultimate Basis of Time Divisions in Geology, T. C. Chamberlin accepts it as proved that there were no universal breaks in sedimentation or in the fundamental continuity of life, no physical cataclysms attended by universal destruction of life, and that sedimentation has been in constant progress somewhere and life continuous and self-derivative since the beginning. He then raises the question whether this continuity of physical and vital action proceeded by heterogeneous impulses or by correlated pulsations. The author’s conclusion is in favor of the hypothesis of correlated pulsations involving a rhythmical periodicity.
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Nettle fiber is said to be coming into great favor for the manufacture of fine yarns and tissues. Several factories in Germany are using it, and the introduction of the extensive cultivation of nettles into the African colony of the Cameroons is contemplated.
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There are now, according to the last annual Report of the Commissioner of the General Land Office, thirty-six forest reservations (exclusive of the Afognak Forest and Fish-Culture Reserve in Alaska) in the United States, embracing an estimated area of 46,021,899 acres. This estimate is for the aggregate areas within the boundaries of the reservations, but the lands reserved are only the vacant public lands therein. The actual reserved area is therefore somewhat less than the estimate.
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