community was found within only sixty or seventy miles of Lhassa.

CLIMATE AND POPULATION The climate was found to be harsh and dry. Snow falls occasionally from December to March; rain from May to August. April, September, October, and November are dry. The medium annual temperature was found to be 42, 67, and 50 degrees Fahrenheit for morning, noon, and night respectively. The data for December was 17, 34, and 27 degrees, and for July 60, 77, and 65 degrees.

It

The population, which has at times been estimated at 33,000,000, is probably about one-tenth of this number. is decreasing through disease, particularly smallpox, and on account of the large number of celibate priests.

The sons of Chinese soldiers and merchants temporarily resident in Tibet are counted Chinese, the daughters Tibetans. Other foreign residents are Indians from Cashmere and Mongolians and Tibetans from Nepul, the latter being skilled artisans, architects, sculptors, and jewelers. The Cashmere Mahometans are traders. They usually convert their Tibetan wives.

Almost all the land in central Tibet belongs to the Dalai Llama. Only high officials in Lhassa have hereditary homes. The Tibetan houses are of brick and stone, and have chimneys only in the kitchen. The other rooms have holes to let the smoke escape, and are cheerlessly cold. Dried dung is the principal fuel.

The common folks wear white, the wealthy red, officials yellow, and soldiers blue clothing of homespun. Jewels are worn in great abundance by the women. Barley meal, soup, the raw flesh of the yak and of sheep, butter, sour milk, and vegetables are main items of the diet. Wheat spirits sell for a cent a bottle. Men smoke tobacco and the priests take snuff.

PEOPLE RELIGIOUS AND IMMORAL

The people of central Tibet are passionately attached to their religious observances, which are purely formal. Prayers are regarded as of magic potency and figure in all ordinary and extraordinary affairs of life. Medicine. is in small popular favor. Morals are primitive, and marriage ties are loose. Both polygamy and polyandry are com

mon.

Agriculture and cattle-raising are the principal employments. Wheat, barley, peas and beans, cattle, sheep, yaks, horses, asses, and mules are the main products. Yaks and asses are used as pack animals. Labor is cheap, men being paid two or three cents a day, while women usually serve for their food and clothing. Even a llama receives only ten cents for a whole day's prayers. Sheepskins, cattle, yak tails, statues, books, and yellow llama caps are exported. The yak tails serve as horse tails in the outfit of Turkish

pachas. English and Indian cottons and woolens and copper and enamel utensils are introduced from India and tea, silks, cottons, horses, and asses from China.

EXHAUSTING METHOD OF WORSHIP

Lhassa was built in the seventh century. It has a picturesque location on the southern slope of a mountain, with luxurious gardens on the west and south. The Uitchu River passes to the south of the city. Dikes and canals have been constructed as protections against overflows. A fine, broad street around the city serves for religious processions and penitential exercises. Penitents go the length of this street, falling to the ground every five or six feet, so that in a day they prostrate themselves about 3,000 times. The city is small, having at most only 10,000 regular inhabitants. It is, however, an important trade center. The native traders are all women.

The Temple of Buddha, in the center of the city, is about 140 feet square. It is three stories high and has three gilded Chinese roofs. It shelters a gigantic bronze statue of Buddha, which has a hammered gold and jeweled headdress. A sacrificial fire, fed with melted butter, burns before the statue. Other statues and relics are kept in other chambers of the same temple, among which is the statue of the Goddess of Women, to which are offered spirits and wheat. The wheat is at once eaten by mice. In the same temple are also rooms for the Dalai Llama and his council.

The residence of the Dalai Llama is about a mile away from Lhassa, on Mt Bodala. It was built in the seventh century. Near by is the old castle Hodson-Bodala, which is 1.400 feet long and nine stories high. Here are the treasury, the mint, the schools of theology and medicine, quarters for 1,200 officials and 500 monks, and a prison. As many as 1,000 priests take part in religious processions to this mountain.

M. Zoubikov also minutely describes various monasteries and temples, including three near Lhassa, where 15,000 monks are mainly engaged in learned pursuits. At one of these-Brabunnearly 6,000 boys, young men, and even gray-bearded patriarchs are studying theology, the total number of resident monks being 8,000.

SELECTION OF THE LLAMA

Tibetan Buddhism, brought from India in the seventh century, struggled against the native Shamanism until the ninth century, when a compromise was

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agreed upon. According to the current teaching, there are many spirits which are continually reincarnated in men. The Dalai Llama is the living Buddha. Another defender of the faith is the spirit Choidshen, whose power is manifested through pious ascetics who spend their lives in contemplation.

Since the fifteenth century all power, civil and spiritual, has been nominally in the hands of the Dalai Llama, but China maintains a Manchu resident and an army. In order to avoid strife in selecting a Dalai Llama, the electoral council places three strips of paper with the names of three boys in an urn, and the Manchu resident removes one with a small staff. The new Dalai Llama's education is intrusted to a college of learned men. Until his twenty-second year the government is in the hands of a regent appointed by the Emperor of China. The present Dalai Llama is twenty-seven years old. He is the fifth since 1806, one of the regents having continued in authority for an unusually long time, owing to three children selected to be Llamas having died before attaining majority.

The Dalai Llamas' Council, in whose hands is the actual power, embraces four so-called "Galons," appointed by the Emperor of China. The administration is in the hands of a closed aristocracy, and bribery and corruption are nearly universal. Among the common penalties are drowning, torture, flogging, banishment, and fines. The Tibetan army of four thousand men is poorly disciplined, and is armed with bows and old fashioned guns. Robbery flourishes.

ROBABLY the first experimental gardening in Alaska, north of the Arctic circle, was done by

the International Polar Expedition to Point Barrow, Alaska, 1881-1883, which was organized for the purpose of coöp

erating in the work of circumpolar observation proposed by the International Polar Conference. The main object of the expedition was the prosecution of observations in terrestrial magnetism and meteorology. Experimental gardening was an elective investigation.

The arctic night at Point Barrow, which is of 70 days' duration, ends at noon on January 23, when the upper edge of the sun's disk appears above the southern horizon. The next day the entire disk iş visible. Each succeeding day the sun rises a little earlier and a little more to the east of south, and sets a little later and a little more to the west of south, and finally, when the day and night are of equal length, it rises directly in the east and sets in the west. The day continues still to lengthen and the night to shorten until the middle of May, when the midnight sun appears above the northern horizon and the long arctic day begins; the sun then remains above the horizon both day and night for 70 days, or until July 24, when it dips its lower disk at midnight below the northern horizon, and night and day again begin. But at no time are the sun's rays at Point Barrow vertical. The maximum altitude is 42° 3', which occurs at noon on June 22.

The snow does not begin to melt until after the sun remains continuously above the horizon, and does not disappear before July, but the land close to the coast is practically free from snow by the fifth of June. The snowfall is very light, the depth on the land along the coast at no time exceeding 15 or 18 inches. The total annual precipitation-rainfall or melted snow-is only eight inches.

A level treeless area (tundra) occupies the entire Point Barrow region. The subsoil, principally sand and gravel, perpetually frozen, is covered on the tundra generally by a light, clayey soil, and at spots near the coast by a dark, loam-like soil, which thaws to a depth

of from 3 to 9 inches. Upon the latter soil, within 200 yards of the ocean water line, the gardening described in this article was done. The soil has been enriched somewhat by refuse from Eskimo iglus, or permanent dwellings, which many years previous existed. there. The garden was dug to the depth of about 4 inches and raked. No other preparation of the soil was made, and no further attention was given to the garden from the time of seeding to harvest day.

On June 13 the seed of lettuce, radish, and mustard were sown. By this date caterpillars, worms, flies, and beetles appeared; ranunculus flowers were in bloom. June 21, one day before the sun reached its highest altitude and eight days after the date of seeding, the lettuce and radish germinated, but the mustard failed of germination. By this date additional species of flowers, including the daisy and the willow, were in bloom, and the pools of fresh water, which had formed on the tundra from rain and melted snow, were fairly alive with insect life, upon which the red phalarope was feasting.

The following table shows the temperature, precipitation, and weather from date of seeding to germination :

The mean daily temperature, from hourly readings, ranged from 32°.41 to 38°.94, the general average mean for the entire time being 35°.08. The total precipitation was 0.41 inches. The state of the weather was cloudy or foggy, excepting one day, when it was clear. Flurries of snow were not infrequent.

On July 10, twenty-seven days after seeding and nineteen days after germination, harvesting began. The lettuce leaves were from 1 to 2 inches in width and from 3 to 4 inches in length. The radishes, spherical in form, were from 1⁄2 to 1 inch in diameter. The condition of these vegetables at the time of harvest was perfect. The quality could not be excelled by any grown anywhere in lower latitudes, Antarctica, by inference, excepted.

Table Showing Temperature, Precipitation, and Weather from Date of Germination to Harvest.

perature was 32° or below for nine days. The maximum temperature was 50° or above for three days only. The mean daily temperature, from hourly observations, ranged from 32°.92 to 53°.35, the general average mean for the entire time being 38°.16. The total precipitation was 0.13 inches. There were 4 clear, 5 fair, and 10 cloudy or foggy days.

A study of the conditions under which the plants germinated and matured is not only curiously interesting, but suggests that there was some stimulating force-perhaps the large amount of atmospherical electricity-which caused them to arrive at maturity in a much shorter period than those grown in temperate zones. Whatever the agency, inasmuch as the summer season is so very brief, it is absolutely necessary that plant life in the north should arrive at maturity very quickly in order to perpetuate the species.

The vast tundras of northern Alaska are nature's gardens-the most extensive, the least cultivated, the most productive of any on the American continent. Every summer continuous beds of flowers on these level treeless areas extend north from the Arctic Circle to the shores of the ocean. True, the flowering plants are lowly in stature, but they are not pitiful or frost pinched as might be supposed. True, they keep close to the frozen ground, as if in love with mother earth, but they display masses of color-yellow, purple, and blue-so bright as to make them visible at great distances; and in the fall of the year their ripe foliage and the golden sunshine cause the tundras to fairly glow in rich colors-red, purple, and yellowstill further intensified by the varied colors of the ripening berries growing almost everywhere, all blending harmoniously with the neutral tints of the ground lichens and mosses, on which they seem to be painted.

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THE following letter from Prof. Flinders Petrie to the London Times outlines his work at Abydos during the present year: To the Editor of the Times:

SIR: The continuation of the work of the Egypt Exploration Fund at Abydos this year has given a wider view of the early civilization, of which the general lines had been fixed by the previous work on the Royal Tombs and the town. The clearance of the old temple site over several acres has brought to light, in a depth of about 20 feet, no less than ten successive temples ranging in age from about 5,000 to 500 B. C. For the first time we can see on one spot the changes from age to age through the whole of Egyptian history. To separate these buildings was an affair of anatomy rather than spade work; the walls of mud brick were so commingled with the soil that incessant section-cutting with a sharp knife was the only way to discriminate the brickwork. Often only a single course of bricks or a thin bed of foundation sand was all that told of the great buildings which had existed here for centuries. Over 5,000 measurements were taken for the plans and levels. The main result as regards the religion is that Osiris was not the original god of Abydos; the jackal god, Upuaut, and then the god of the West, Khentamenti, were honored here down to the XIIth dynasty. The most striking change is seen about the IVth dynasty, when the temple was abolished, and only a great hearth of burnt offering is found, full of votive clay substitutes for sacrifices. This exactly agrees with the account of Herodotus that Cheops had closed the temples and forbidden sacrifices. This materializing of history is made the more real by finding an ivory statuette of Cheops of the finest work, which shows for the first time the face and character of the great

builder and organizer who made Egyptian government and civilization what it was for thousands of years after. This carving is now in the Cairo Museum.

The discoveries of the civilization of the Ist dynasty, the beginning of the kingdom, expand what we already had from my work in the Royal Tombs. Of Menes, the founder, we have part of a large globular vase of green glaze with his name inlaid in purple; thus polychrome glazing is taken back thousands of years before it was previously known to exist. The free use of great tiles of glaze for wall coverings shows how usual the art was then. In the highest art of delicate ivory carving there are several pieces of this age; especially the figure of an aged king, for its subtlety and character, stands in the first rank of such work, comparable to the finest carvings of Greece or Italy. We must now reckon the earliest monarchy as the equal of any later age in such technical and fine art.

Pottery of forms and material quite unknown in Egypt also belongs to this remote age; and it proves to be identical with that in Crete of the late neolithic age. This fresh connection illustrates the trade and the chronology of that period. A head of a camel modeled in pottery takes back its relation to Egypt some 4,000 years; hitherto no trace of it had appeared before Greek times. An ivory carving of a bear extends also the fauna of early Egypt.

The great fort long known as the Shunet ez Zebib is now connected with the remains of another fort, which was discovered between that and the Coptic Deir, which is in a third fort. These buildings prove now to have been the fortified residences of the kings of the IId dynasty, whose sealings we have found in the dwelling-rooms.

Of a later age may be noted some