equitable distribution of the products of thought and labor, to which I have called attention on previous occasions, there could never be any danger that population would outstrip the means of subsistence. This is strikingly shown by Dr. Welling's illustration of the enormous mechanical power now wielded for man's benefit by the great agency of steam. Almost any other of the modern agencies would have shown the same truth. But the objection might be raised that these are, at most, only accessory to the production of subsistence, which must primarily come from the soil. Even to this it may be replied that we have as yet scarcely begun to economize the resources of the soil. Experiments already made demonstrate that the earth is now made to yield only a small fraction of what science and skill can obtain from it, so that this apparent limit does not exist in reality. Production-the power to create the means of subsistence-is thus practically unlimited, and the only real limit is that to population itself. The massing of population so densely as to render the entire habitable globe one vast city, though all could be shown to possess an abundant supply for their needs, would be undesirable. But this problem must and would be solved by the application to it of the same great power which man possesses to the exclusion of every creature below him-the power of mind exercised in rational restraint and in the control of the laws of reproduction. The character rather than the number of offspring would, according to a law already manifest in society, become the chief concern, and it would ultimately be the quality instead of the quantity of the population that would continue to increase.

While, therefore, it is intelligence that exempts man from the operation of the Malthusian law, still we find intelligence itself subject to an analogous law of its own. The social system of the savage is comparatively simple, and little intelligence is needed to adapt the individual to it. In civilization this system becomes complicated and intricate, and a great amount of intelligence is required of each citizen to subsist within it. Only by knowing what are the principles underlying the social system, and becoming acquainted with the manner in which they operate to sustain and carry it on, can any member of society be useful or anything but injurious to his fellow men. But the civilized intellect, unprovided with this acquired knowledge, is only a short step above that of the savage. The civilized infant is as blank intellectually as the savage infant; has no longer to live and immensely more to learn. In a word,

the natural development of the native capacity for intelligence does not keep pace with the artificial requirements of the civilized state, and we have another Malthusian law, as it were, that "while in the progress of civilization the capacity to acquire knowledge increases only in an arithmetical or some lower ratio, the amount of knowledge necessary to be acquired increases in a geometrical or some higher ratio.'

Mr. H. H. BLISS thought that in considering this problem there is danger of omitting factors as important as those included. Admitting that the means of subsistence increase faster than population, this does not preclude pressure. The life of the individual itself being a variable element, if it should vary in a constant ratio with the expansion of subsistence, what benefit would the weak and the poor derive from such expansion?

In

Prof. O. T. MASON said that in applying the doctrine of Malthus to human society, it is necessary to bear in mind that in our higher civilization we have a kind of social "house that Jack built." deed, we must pursue our studies after the manner of the paleontologist. If we represent the total fauna and flora of the first geological epoch by a, some of the species of this epoch will survive into the next period, so that the life of the second period would be in a rough way a+b, of the third period a+b+c, and of the modern period a+b+c+d. Now, in any of your great cities or cultivated communities such a state as this exists and we have, as it were, civilization a+b+c+d. In applying the doctrine of Malthus to one of these communities we must understand that a great deal of the dissatisfaction observed among the poor grows out of the fact that while they are themselves in a, they demand all the gratifications and comforts which have come to be the necessary concomitants of the condition d. The question, therefore, is not merely one of the pressure of population on food supply, for that has rarely failed of solution in any community as a whole; but it is constantly happening that those succumb who, survivals from a former period, are out of harmony with the condition of things around them.

The discussion was concluded by a few remarks made by the President, Maj. J. W. POWELL.

POPULATION OF Russia in Europe.-M. Alph. Castaing, in "Le Muséon" (vi, 31-49), makes the following divisions of Russia, as respects population: Finland, Baltic Provinces, Kingdom of Poland, Western Provinces, Little Russia, Southern or New Russia, Great Russia (Tsarats of Astrakhan, Kazan, and Muscovy). The people are classed racially:

Slavs: Finno-Sarmatians, comprising Poles, White Russians, Little

Turks: Ugrians, Altaians, Bulgars, Nogais, Tatars, Mongols, Kal

Russians, Ruthenians, &c.

Finns, mixed or pure

mucks

Muscovites

Jews

Foreigners.

22,000,000

2,000,000

4,000,000

15,000,000

25,000,000

2,000,000

2,000,000

72.000,000

ETHNOLOGY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA.-The western coast of America from Mount Saint Elias to Puget Sound is now one of the promising fields in anthropology. Dr. Franz Boas, in the Bulletin of the American Geographical Society (xix, 225-232), devotes a chapter to the Kwakiutl stock, inhabiting the shores of Queen Charlotte Sound. A list of reserves is given for the following Indians, divided into gentes, each claiming land as its property: Quaw-she-lah (Kwa-sila), Smith Inlet; Nah-keoock-to (Nakwartoq), Seymour Inlet; Nahwitti, including Naqomqilis and Tlatlasiqoala; Fort Rupert Indians, including Kwakiutl, Walaskwakiutl, Kuéh'a, and Komkiutis; Nimkeesh Indians; Village Island Indians (Mamaleleqala and Kwiksot'enoq); Gilford Island Indians, including Tsawate'noq, Kwauoenoq, and H'ah'uámis; Knight Inlet Indians (Tenah' tah' and Ah'wah'kitlala); Turnour Island Indians (Tlautisis); Mah-tulth-pe (Matilpi); Laich-kwil-tach (Lekwiltoq), consisting of five subtribes: Hah'amatses, Wiweq'æ, Wiweaqam, Kueh'a, and Tlaáluis. A census of the nation is appended for three dates— 1883, 2,264; 1884, 1,889; and 1885, 1,969.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF TIME-KEEPING IN GREECE AND ROME.

BY F. A. SEELY, OF THE U. S. PATENT OFFICE.

In my room in the Patent Office there hangs a Connecticut clock of ordinary pattern and quite imperfectly regulated. Its variation of perhaps half a minute in a day, however, gives me no concern, since, being connected by wire with the transmitting clock at the Naval Observatory, it is every day, at noon, set to accurate time. At the moment of 12 o'clock there comes a stroke on a little bell and, simultaneously, the three hands-hour, minute, and second-whether they may have gained or lost during the preceding 24 hours, fly to their vertical position. Immediately after I hear a chorus of factory whistles, sounded in obedience to the same signal, dismissing the workmen to their mid-day meal. At the same moment and controlled by the same impulse the ball, visible on its lofty staff from all the ships in New York harbor, drops, and the seamen compare their chronometers for their coming voyage. The same signal is sent to railway offices and governs the clocks on thousands of miles of track and determines the starting and stopping and speed of their trains. It goes to the cities of the Gulf and of the Pacific as well as to those of the Atlantic coast-noted everywhere as an important element in the safe, speedy, and accurate conduct of commerce; and so the work of the regulating clock of the Observatory, sent out by means which note the minutest fraction of a second of time, is playing its important part in the economy of our century. I cannot follow it out in detail; every one will do so to some extent in his own mind. But if we were to divide human history into eras according to the minuteness with which the passage of time is observed in the ordinary affairs of life we should find ourselves to have arrived, and very lately, in what might be called the era of seconds.

At the opposite extreme is the period when the passage of day and night reveals itself to the dullest intellect. Perhaps no savage people have ever been so dull as not to have noted more than this. We can hardly conceive a state in which the brutal hunter did not take note of the declining sun and observe that the close of the day was approaching. The lengthening of his own shadow was an

always present phenomenon, and men must have observed shadows almost as soon as they became capable of observing anything. But this kind of observation went on for ages without any attempt to subdivide the day, and none but the great natural periods marked off by sunrise and sunset were recognized.

Then

Between this period, marked by the observation of the natural day only, and that in which we live, there have been many steps of progress, the very dates of which may in some cases be quite distinctly observed. We find an era where noon begins to be noted, and the natural day is equally divided by its observation. we find an era in which either the entire day or its great natural fractions are again divided into smaller fractions of rather indefinite length, as is now done by some savages and as was done in the earlier history of Greece and Rome. Next to this comes the era in which definite artificial fractions of the day are observed, which may be called the era of hours. It was many centuries after this before men in the ordinary transactions of life counted their time by minutes, but the time when this began is quite distinctly marked.

I would not say that these eras are contemporaneous in all nations, nor could I assert that they correspond closely with any recognized stages in civilization and culture; in fact, the observation of hours of the day does not appear to obtain until civilization is reached, This is true however—men measure most carefully that which they value most, and the value of time is enhanced just in proportion to the multiplicity of the demands upon it which the existing state of society involves. The man who has engagements at the bank, the custom-house, his own warehouse or factory, and in a court-room, and a dozen or more individuals to meet, each of whom, perhaps, has similar pressing engagements, and then must reach an express train at 4.30 in order to dine at 6 fifty miles away, must allot his time with the greatest care and measure it with the utmost minuteness. To the savage, the sun rises and sets and rises again—one day is as another; nothing presses but hunger, and that he endures till fortune brings food. He needs no clock to tell him it is dinnertime, for it is always dinner-time when there is food. When people traveled leisurely by stage coach, walking up the hills to rest the horses, stopping at the wayside inns to dine, and well content at the close of the day if fifty or sixty miles had been covered, seconds of time and even minutes were of little account; but when trains are run on a complex schedule, and for a whole season in advance