The municipal art commission of New York City has discovered that Greater New York has been going along for nearly twenty years without an official flag, and has taken steps to remedy the defect. It has recommended to the board of estimate and the board of aldermen the adoption of a flag to take the place of the mayor’s flag now used on State occasions as the emblem of the city. The design for the new flag was selected by a committee consisting of John B. Pine, Francis C. Jones, R. T. H. Halsey, and I. N. Phelps Stokes, of the Art Commission Associates, an organization of former members of the commission. They had been at work on the selection for a year. The design recommended by this committee and by the commission in turn to the city’s legislative authorities provides for a flag consisting of three perpendicular bars of orange, white, and blue, the blue to be nearest to the flagstaff, with the seal of the city in blue on the middle bar of white. The colors are to correspond as nearly as possible to those of the flag of the United Netherlands in use in 1626. The commission also recommends the adoption of a model of the city seal submitted by the flag committee. This seal corresponds to the present city seal in all essential details, but it is executed somewhat more faithfully than the majority of the present seals after the pattern of the original city seal. The commission recommends that in order that there may be no further confusion in the use of the city seal in decorations or otherwise, a cast of the new pattern be made in bronze and kept in the safe in the mayor’s office, to be copied whenever necessary. At present the flag used as the city flag is the one officially adopted for the mayor. It has a solid white ground, with the seal of the city in blue. Big Increase in Prison Ranks. A marked increase in the population of the various State prisons, reformatories, penitentiaries, county jails, and New York City institutions reporting to the State commission of prisons for the year ended September 30, 1914, is shown in statistics collected by the commission. The total prison population on that date was 16,678, an increase of 1,817 over the preceding year. The increase for the year 1913 over 1912 was seventy. Ten years ago the prison population was 12,793, showing an increase in a decade of 3,885. A marked increase is also shown in the number of actual commitments. The number jumped from 101,611, in 1913, to 118,027, in 1914. The number in custody in the four State prisons, including the State prison for women, at Auburn, was 4,955, an increase of 235. There was, however, a decrease in the number of inmates of the women’s prison from 116 to 103. The number of prisoners in the State prisons at the close of the fiscal year was 1,503 more than it was ten years ago.