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The New York Forest, Fish, and Game Association has published a report dealing with the work of its fish hatcheries. During the past year more than 100,000,000 marine fry have been placed in the sea, and in addition great numbers of trout and other game fishes have been hatched and placed in suitable streams. The association states that year by year it becomes increasingly difficult to obtain a proper supply of water, so widely are both streams and shore waters polluted. Karatagh occupies a small inclosed basin shut in by high hills. On one side of it rises the Karatagh Mountain, while on the other side flows a river. The recent earthquake, the exaggerated reports of which stated that 200 people were killed, broke away a great section of the mountain, causing it to slide down upon the town. The force of the shocks was already toppling houses when the landslide added to the destruction. Many of the inhabitants were killed in the narrow streets by the falling dwellings, no building in the town being left standing. M. Georges Urbain, a young assistant professor of the Paris University, claims to have discovered a new metal by separating the element ytterbium into two parts. For some time he has been carrying on experiments in the class of rare earths, and more recently undertook a fractional treatment of ytterbium. This led him to separate a hitherto undiscovered element from the latter, which was supposed to be a simple body up to the present. To the new element he gives the name of lotherium, from the county of Lorraine. As to the details of the operations which led him to this important result, he declines to make any information public before presenting a complete memoir upon the subject before the Acadmie des Sciences. The present experiments were carried out in one of the laboratories of the Sorbonne, to which M. Urbain is attached. He states, however, that he has already made a number of researches regarding the new element, observing its different characteristics by chemical tests and also by spectrum analysis, and comes to the conclusion that it possesses some new properties which will make it of great interest from a scientific standpoint.
