In a memorial address of the late Dr. James Hall, made at the recent meeting of the Geological Society of America, Secretary H. L. Fairchild referred to Dr. Hall's development as almost coeval with that of the science of geology in America, and his sixty-two years of activity as connecting the work of the self-taught pioneers in this branch with the widespread field of activity of to-day. Dr. Hall's accuracy and well-balanced observation had made his first work, a report on the Geology of Western New York, a classic of the science to-day. THE PEOPLES OF THE BALKAN PENINSULA--THE GREEK, THE SLAV, AND THE TURK.[6] BY WILLIAM Z. RIPLEY, PH. D., ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY; LECTURER IN ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. The significant geography of the Balkan Peninsula may best be illustrated by comparing it with the other two south European ones, Italy and Spain. The first point to notice is that it is divided from the mainland by rivers and not by a well-defined mountain chain. Iberia begins definitely at the Pyrenees, and Italy proper is cut off from Europe by the Apennine chain. On the other hand, it is along the line of the Danube and of its western affluent, the Save (see map between pages 614 and 615), that we find the geographical limits of the Balkan Peninsula. This boundary, as will be observed, excludes the kingdom of Roumania, seeming to distinguish it from its trans-Danubian neighbor Bulgaria. This is highly proper, viewed from the standpoint of geography and topography. For Roumania is, for the most part, an extensive and rich alluvial plain; while the Balkan Peninsula, as soon as you leave the Bulgarian lowlands, is characteristically rugged, if not really mountainous. [Illustration: PEOPLES OF THE BALKAN PENINSULA After SAX '78] From Adrianople west to the Adriatic, and from the Balkan Mountains and the Save River south to the plains of Epirus and Thessaly, extends an elevated region upward of two thousand feet above the sea, breaking up irregularly into peaks often rising above five thousand feet. There is no system in these mountains. The land is rudely broken up into a multitude of little "gateless amphitheaters," too isolated for union, yet not inaccessible enough for individuality. As White observes, "If the peninsula, instead of being the highly mountainous and diversified district it is, had been a plateau, a very different distribution of races would have obtained at the present day." Nor can one doubt for a moment that this disordered topography has been an important element in the racial history of the region.