The heaviest coastwise shipments of the United States are along the north Atlantic seaboard, and their magnitude and growth are approximately shown in the returns of the United States Corps of Engineers. These returns, though admittedly incomplete, show a total of receipts and shipments at the 48 leading ports from Bangor, Me., to Newbern, N. C., of 143,704,877 tons for the year 1909, as compared with 139,532,935 in 1906. A second item in the Atlantic and Gulf coast trade is lumber, of which growing quantities are shipped from Brunswick, Jacksonville, Savannah, Georgetown, Norfolk, Newport News, Bangor, Mobile and Charleston. The heaviest movement is from the southern ports to the large receiving ports of the north Atlantic. The Bureau of Statistics reports that in 1910, 459,534,815 ft. of southern pine were received at New York by water as compared with 486,660,000 in 1909, and 325,621,084 ft. of northern and The leading items in the coastwise southern lumber at Boston as com- trade of the Pacific coast are logs pared with 307,467,509 in the pre- and lumber, which are shipped in vious year. The Board of Naviga- rafts, barges, steam schooners and tion Commissioners of Philadelphia steamers and sailing vessels from reports the coastwise lumber re- Puget Sound, Gray's Harbor, Portceipts of Philadelphia at 226,717,318 land, and upper California, chiefly ft., and the Lumbermen's Exchange to San Francisco, southern Caliof Philadelphia presents an even fornia, and Hawaii. Oil is shipped larger figure. The United States Census Office reports that about 800,000 tons of cotton were, in 1910, shipped from the South to northern ports by water. In 1909, 7,754,700 bbl. of petroleum were shipped from Port Arthur and Sabine, Texas, chiefly to Marcus Hook, Pa., Gretna, La., Bayonne, N. J., Delaware River stations, Port Tampa, Fla., Philadelphia, Galveston, and Gibson Point, Pa. Other items of importance in the Atlantic and Gulf coast trade are fertilizers, phosphate rock, stone, sand, cement, brick, lime, railroad ties, poles, laths and shingles, wood and woodpulp and general merchandise, but complete current cargo statistics are not available. (See AMERICAN YEAR BOOK, 1910, p. 551, for summary of Census figures of 1906.) from southern California chiefly to Point Richmond, the port of Los Angeles, Portland, and Hawaii. Grain is shipped from Portland, Seattle and Tacoma to San Francisco; and a small amount of coal from Puget Sound. The total coastwise shipments and receipts of the 8 leading Pacific ports, not including Seattle, for the year 1910 were reported by the United States Corps of Engineers as 18,900,000 tons. Domestic Trade of the Great Lakes. In the calendar year 1910, 86,732,316 tons of merchandise were shipped between the ports of the Great Lakes, as compared with 80,974,605 in 1909 and 60,518,024 in 1908. The following table shows the receipts and shipments of the leading classes of commodities: One index of Lake freight movements are the gateways between the lakes. In 1910 62,363,218 net tons of freight passed through the Sault Ste. Marie canals as compared with 57,895,149 in 1909, and 67,559,922 net tons passed through the Detroit River, as compared with 62,247,671 tons in the previous year. Lake. Shipments (net tons). The largest item by far is iron ore, of which 41,507,626 gross tons were shipped in 1910 from Duluth, Two Harbors, Superior, Escanaba, Ashland, and Marquette, chiefly to Ashtabula, Conneaut, Cleveland, Chicago, Buffalo, Lorain, Fairport, Erie, and Toledo. 24,680,941 net tons of coal were shipped. Hard coal moves chiefly from Buffalo, Erie, and Os- The distribution of the total Lake wego to Superior, Milwaukee, and trade of 1910 by lakes is shown in Chicago; while soft coal chiefly from the following table: Toledo, Ashtabula, Cleveland, Lorain, and Sandusky to Milwaukee, Superior, Duluth, Manitowoc, and Chicago; 1,207,792 thousand feet of lumber moved mainly from Duluth, Manistique, and Manistee to Chicago, North Tonawanda, and Buffalo: 36,707,315 bushels of wheat were shipped chiefly from Superior, Duluth, and Chicago to Buffalo, Chicago, Detroit, and Toledo; 39,921,929 bushels of corn chiefly from Chicago and Milwaukee to Buffalo, Ogdensburg, and Ludington; 22,659,792 bushels of oats mainly from Manitowoc, Chicago, Milwaukee, Superior, Duluth, and Gladstone to Buffalo, Ludington, and Frankfort. The Lake trade also included 13,837,837 bushels of barley, and smaller Superior.. Total.. Receipts (net tons). 12,918,551 44,806,123 13,858,637 1,405,487 45,523,565 23,864,634 693,767 84,628,657 560,415 84,414,636 Commercial Movement on Rivers and Canals.-The following table shows the total traffic passing through the state canals of New York, the Erie, Champlain, Oswego, Cayuga, and Seneca and Black River canals, as reported by the U. S. Bureau of Statistics: produce, lumber, coal, and general | the United States during the curmerchandise. The tonnage of the rent year. Improvements are, howErie Canal has declined from 6,673,- ever, being made on the Erie Canal 370 tons in 1872 to 2,031,307 in 1910, and the total tonnage of all the New York canals at present is less than three per cent. of the tonnage moving by rail. The aggregate showed further decline in 1910 as compared with the previous year, and this decline was witnessed on each of the four chief links of the New York state system. The tidewater coal canals, which constitute a second group, have shown no tendency in recent years to regain their former position in the coal trade. The Delaware and Raritan Canal carried 448,964 tons in 1910, as compared with 401,231 tons in 1909. About 400,000 tons, mainly of coal with certain quantities of iron and building materials, are annually shipped through the Lehigh Canal and the Delaware Division. Slightly over 50,000 tons are shipped through the Schuylkill Canal; about 88,000 through the Morris Canal, and the Delaware and Hudson has been abandoned. The traffic of all these canals has been declining within recent years. The Lehigh Canal and the Delaware Division are owned by the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company; the Schuylkill Canal by the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad; the Morris Canal is leased perpetually to the Lehigh Valley Railroad, which has offered to present it to the state of New Jersey, and the Delware and Raritan is leased to the Pennsylvania Railroad for 999 years. The traffic of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, in spite of its small depth of 10 ft. with a vessel draft of 9 ft., has in recent years increased its traffic. In 1910, its cargo tonnage aggregated 848,546 tons; in 1909, 816,037; and in 1908, 654,284 tons. In 1910, this canal moved 2,413 steamers, 1,894 barges, 701 other vessels, and 25 rafts. There were no changes of importance in any of the remaining state, federal and private canals of *For length, depth and termini of leading state, federal and private canals see AMERICAN YEAR BOOK, 1910, p. 553. by the state of New York with a view of again making it a highway of importance. The agitation for construction of an inland route along the Atlantic coast so as to provide a sheltered waterway for the coastwise fleet-particularly barges-has again arisen. The United States Engineer Corps have surveyed routes for the chief links in the proposed system, and during the past year a committee of the Atlantic Deepwaterways Association submitted to the United States War Department a detailed traffic report in the interests of an improved barge canal from Philadelphia to New York. A ship canal across Cape Cod is at present being constructed by the Cape Cod Canal Company. River Traffic.-On a number of American rivers considerable quantities of freight are annually carried by barges, steamers, rafts and gasoline boats. The United States Bureau of Statistics reports that in 1910 Lock No. 3 of the Monongahela River passed a downstream traffic of 9,138,196 tons, and Lock No. 1 an upstream traffic of 1,329,919 tons. The United States Engineer Corps reported a total of 11,486,278 tons for the year 1909, consisting chiefly of coal, sand, and gravel, iron and steel goods. The Allegheny River annually carries considerable quantities of coal, gravel, sand, lumber. timber and stone. The United States Bureau of Corporations reports that annually about 20,000,000 tons are moved on the Ohio River and its tributaries. and 11,500.000 tons on the Ohio River proper. On the upper Ohio the traffic consists mainly of coal, logs, sand, gravel, and package freight; on the middle Ohio, coal, lumber and timber, grain, tobacco, and other farm products; and on the lower Ohio, coal, corn, wheat, groceries, livestock, flour and tobacco. The United States Engineer Corps reports annual cargo tonnage of over four million tons on the Willamette and lower Columbia rivers, consisting chiefly of grain, flour, lumber, farm products, logs, machinery to and from coastwise points and within the Delaware capes at 2,675,600 tons. and general merchandise. It like wise reports 773,945 tons on the San Joaquin River for the year 1909; and 382,710 tons for the Sacramento The best known of all American River. The Hudson annually moves streams, the Mississippi River, has about 8,600,000 tons, chiefly of build- but a light and declining tonnage. ing materials, coal, wood, grain, lum- The largest item is the coal coming ber, ice, farm produce, manufac- from the Ohio River; other articles tured products and general mer- carried include stone, gravel, sand, chandise. The tonnage of the Dela- oil, provisions and groceries; grain ware is in the nature of coastwise and its products, cotton, cotton-seed and foreign rather than river traffic, oil and its products, iron and steel, as it is the outlet for a large ocean lumber and live stock. The total port. In 1906, the United States shipments between St. Louis and Census Office reported an aggregate Cairo in 1909 are stated at 318,554 of 20,577,000 tons; and since then tons; between Cairo and Memphis, the traffic has fully recovered from 1,232,093; between Memphis and the depression of 1907 and 1908. Vicksburg, 1,071,037; and between The leading shipments are coal, sand, Vicksburg and New Orleans, 2,104,petroleum, stone, oysters and fish, 720, a total of 4,726,434 tons. The fertilizers, chemicals and iron pro- total, however, contains many dupliducts; the leading receipts are sand, cations. It is reported that in 1906 coal, lumber, wood pulp, ties, mine the commerce of the entire Missisprops, oil, produce and fruit, chemi- sippi River system, including all cals, sugar, grain, and fertilizers. tributaries except the Ohio River In addition, the Bureau of Naviga- system, did not exceed 4,304,278 tion Commissioners in 1910 estimated tons, and that since then this trafreceipts and shipments of general fic has, on the whole, slightly demerchandise in regular line steamers creased. BIBLIOGRAPHY BARNES, H. C.-Interstate Transporta- MCPHERSON, L. G.-Transportation in tion. (Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1910.) CLARK, J. M.-Standards of Reasonable ness in Local Freight Discriminations. HAINES, H. S.-Problems in Railway Europe. (New York, Henry Holt and Co., 1910.) MCVEY, F. L.-Railroad Transportation. (Minneapolis and Chicago, Cree Publishing Co., 1910.) MILLS, J. C.-Our Inland Seas. (Chicago, 1910.) MORRIS, Ray.-Railroad Administration. (New York, D. Appleton and Co., 1910.) THOMPSON, S.-Railway Library (1910). (Chicago, 1911.) VROOMAN, C. S.-American Railway Problems. (London, New York, etc., 1910.) XXVI. MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY MATHEMATICS E. B. WILSON In a subject so entirely intellectual | to-date presentation of our knowledge as pure mathematics, so largely de- and our doubts as to the infinite and pendent for any estimate of true transfinite in mathematics. It should values upon the developments and be remarked that in mathematics the eliminations which time alone can infinite and transfinite cannot be accomplish, it is probably the nor- mere words and hazy ideas, as is mal condition that the reviewer, often the case in theology and philwhether by his own reading or by osophy, but must have at least sufinquiry among colleagues, should fail ficient definiteness to be capable of to elicit any items of extraordinary logical analysis free from self-conprogress during a year past. This tradiction; the difficulties of the subdoes not mean that the usual numer- ject are best appreciated by those ous minor technical advances have most familiar with it. For those not been in evidence too frequently who are interested, as every school for individual mention; and it does teacher of elementary mathematics not mean that the future may not should be, and as many educated permark 1911 as the birth year of some sons must be, in a semi-popular surgreat new theory by no means con- vey of intermediate mathematics spicuous in its swaddling clothes. from an elementary viewpoint and of elementary mathematics from a higher perspective, the appearance of a series of Monographs on Mathematics (Longmans, Green & Co.), written by especially qualified professors in various institutions and edited by J. W. A. Young (Chicago), is one of the most important events of the year. Instructive Essays.-Illustrative of these remarks and highly valuable in itself is the address "The Published and Unpublished Work of Charles Sturm on Algebraic and Differential Equations" (Bull. Amer. Math. Soc., vol. xviii, p. 1), by Prof. M. Bocher (Harvard), retiring president of the American Mathematical Society. He shows that the birth of Sturm's greatest work must be dated 1829, and is represented merely by some half-dozen titles and short notes: the great memoirs did not appear till 1835-6; and it is likely that the value of Sturm's work was not so clear in the early '30's, or the late '30's, as it was fifty years later or as it is to-day. On March 22, before the Société Math. de France, the philosopher-mathematician B. Russell (Cambridge, Eng.) made an address "On the Axioms of the Infinite and the Transfinite." This essay, though somewhat technical. is perhaps the least technical t. and most up Mathematical Prizes.-A number of the learned societies or academies have foundations for mathematical prizes of no mean distinction and monetary value. One of the most distinguished is the Bolyai Prize (established in honor of Bolyai, one of the first investigators in non-Euclidean geometry) of a medal and 10,000 crowns, awarded quinquennially by the Hungarian Academy to the mathematician whose total work during the preceding five years seems most valuable. The award in 1905-6 went to H. Poincaré (Paris), widely regarded as the greatest living mathematician, and recently elected mem |