LISBON, PORTUGAL, August 5, 1909. _The American National Red Cross, Washington, D. C._ GENTLEMEN: Through His Excellency, Colonel Page Bryan, American Minister at Lisbon, we have just received your new contribution of $300 for our Earthquake Relief Fund, your credit on that account having thus risen to $1,300. We beg to present to you our earnest thanks for this generous manifestation of your sympathy and take the liberty of enclosing a photo showing the design of the houses you kindly have aided us to build for 160 families of the poorest classes in the four villages destroyed by the earthquake. Very faithfully, yours, PELA SOCIEDADE PORTUGUEZA DA CRUZ VERMELHA, G. L. SANTOS FERREIRA, Secretary. CANAL ZONE RED CROSS By Major C. A. DEVOL, U. S. Army. Of the three great classes of Red Cross work, war relief, international relief and emergency relief, the last is the field in which the Canal Zone Branch is making itself peculiarly useful. [Illustration: PRESIDENT TAFT ADDRESSING AUDIENCE OF RED CROSS MEMBERS AT THE Y. M. C. A., CULEBRA.] On the Canal Zone there is less need of such an organization in some ways than there would be in a community of 50,000 people in the United States, because here the government, through the Isthmian Canal Commission, maintains a good system of hospitals and district physicians, and also because there are few people here who cannot work, and almost none who cannot get work if they want it. But there is a limit beyond which the Commission may not go in the expenditure of government funds, and, broadly, that limit is that it may not aid people who are not employed on the Canal work. To the cases that lie outside this limit the Red Cross addresses itself. [Illustration: VIEW OF HOSPITAL GROUNDS FROM ENTRANCE, ANCON.] [Illustration: WRECK OF STEAM SHOVEL NO. 261. BAS OBISPO, DECEMBER 12, 1908.] An instance arose recently in Colon, where a family was destitute because it had been deserted by the husband and father. The mother and three children were kept alive by private subscription until the Red Cross was organized. The Red Cross then sent the family to New York, where the members of the Masonic order came to their relief and sent them to the mother’s home in England. The Commission could not help in such a case, but the Red Cross could, and did. A citizen of France, living near Tabernilla, and not employed on the Canal work, was bitten by a mad dog a few weeks ago. He had no money to pay his way to a Pasteur Institute; attempts to inoculate for hydrophobia on the Isthmus have been of uncertain value, and the Commission could not send a non-employee to the United States. The Red Cross appropriated $50 for his steamship fare to New York and he was successfully treated in the Pasteur Institute in that city.