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Urban areas whose dominant economic activities are those of providing an array of recreational services to tourists normally reflect this specialization in their land use patterns. Although precise statistical definition of the relative importance of recreational functions within an urban economy has certain inherent difficulties, some towns are so obviously dependent on tourism that they are universally recognized as resorts. In these towns, a characteristic urban morphology is apparent. Their unique physical qualities, so readily observed in the basic urban structure of resorts, may provide students of the science of tourism with insight into their function. Function and form, in tourism as in other urban activities, are, necessarily, closely interwined. ‘The landscape of a town, or if the word is accepted, the “townscape”, is worthy of far more geographical research than it now receives.’ The objective of this paper is the description of this interrelationship as observed in a representative American seaside resort, together with a brief historical interpretation of urban development in this resort.

The conventions, conferences, assemblies, meetings and transient trade shows of voluntary membership organizations may be grouped together under the general heading of “conventions”. Conventions have been growing in number and size throughout the world as the necessity of the interchange of information and specialized knowledge increases. In the professional, academic, and business fields, the mutual benefits obtained through personal contacts, the main reason for holding conventions, foster expanding attendance. Continuing improvements in the ease and efficiency of communications and transportation have been instrumental in facilitating more national and international conventions. It is as though the growing usage of electronic means of communications have stimulated rather than replaced face‐to‐face exchanges of ideas and of data.

Students of tourism have long recognized the Caribbean area as a popular tourist objective. The visitors have come primarily from North America; as Burkart and Medlik ob‐served, “…the principal tourist reception areas in the world lie up to about 1,000 miles or so from the generating source or, to put it another way, at about two hours flying time”. The Caribbean's large and expanding tourist trade may be attributed to, in addition to this obviously significant factor of proximity, the physical geographic factors of tropical climate, sandy beaches and varied topography. The Caribbean's cultural geographic assets include its diversity of colonial heritage and its variety of racial and ethnic populations. The unique economic and social situation of this region of the world, together with the continuing role of the U. S. as a prime generating source, will probably result in continued encouragement of and catering to this impressive tourist trade. Of particular note to students of tourism is the rising volume of cruiseship traffic within the Caribbean. This aspect of tourist trade illustrates some significant interrelationships of transport and tourism. This study's objectives are the analysis and interpretation of contemporary cruise‐ship traffic patterns, specifically in terms of studying the relationships which are apparent among various ports of origin and their related ports of call.

Recreation is a many‐faceted phenomenon. It is curious that so dominant a place in American recreational literature has been held, virtually without exception, by studies of recreational activities in dominantly rural settings. The necessity of examining and understanding the characteristics of and utilization of recreation facilities within nonurban environments is not in question. The rapidly increasing economic and social significance of leisure in American life certainly requires studies of recreation in all its forms. Such frequently publisized trends in the American economy as the rising percentage of employment within the service industries, including recreation, should encourage interest in the economic aspects of the approaching era of greater leisure among more people. Accelerating urbanization has led understandably, to a search for additional nonurban sites for recreation, and to a program of analysis of the trends within and problems associated with outdoor recreation.

Competition among various potential land uses for the finite and ecologically vulnerable resources of attractive landscapes is a problem of the first magnitude for the United States. Americans increasingly sense that the ‘frontier psychology’ of virtually unlimited space and resources as applied to recreational amenities and spaces is no longer valid; that they are indeed competing for recreational space. They compete with forms of land‐use incompatible with recreation and, more serious in terms of long‐term trends, they find themselves competing for access and enjoyment of facilities with other Americans.

One of the traditional sources of data available for the interpretation of the relative significance of any facet of the economic structure of urban areas, either within a city, or for purposes of inter‐city comparisons, has been some version of employment data. However, as noted previously, dependence solely on employment data for the identification of recreational functions within cities does not permit objective differentiation of the recreational functions from other personal services. Further, it is incapable of presenting an accurate comparative ranking of resorts whose short peak seasons of activity do not happen to coincide with the date of enumeration chosen for the Census recording of employment (by place of work) or occupation (by place of residence).

“Seaside standards and culture patterns have now reached such stages of refinement that it is possible to judge a man's status, tastes, and income by the beach he attends…”. Some of the most intensive and highly specialized recreational land use exists along the ocean beaches of northeastern United States, providing a great range of social group appeal. In contrast to the essentially extensive recreational land use patterns of the rural, resource‐oriented parks and forests under Federal or state control, the development of these intermediate and user oriented recreational facilities, frequently resourced‐based, has been accomplished primarily through private enterprise operating in urban areas.

Business cycle theory is normally described as having evolved out of a previous tradition of writers focusing exclusively on crises. In this account, the turning point is seen as residing in Clément Juglar's contribution on commercial crises and their periodicity. It is well known that the champion of this view is Schumpeter, who propagated it on several occasions. The same author, however, pointed to a number of other writers who, before and at the same time as Juglar, stressed one or another of the aspects for which Juglar is credited primacy, including the recognition of periodicity and the identification of endogenous elements enabling the recognition of crises as a self-generating phenomenon. There is indeed a vast literature, both primary and secondary, relating to the debates on crises and fluctuations around the middle of the nineteenth century, from which it is apparent that Juglar's book Des Crises Commerciales et de leur Retour Périodique en France, en Angleterre et aux États-Unis (originally published in 1862 and very much revised and enlarged in 1889) did not come out of the blue but was one of the products of an intellectual climate inducing the thinking of crises not as unrelated events but as part of a more complex phenomenon consisting of recurring crises related to the development of the commercial world – an interpretation corroborated by the almost regular occurrence of crises at about 10-year intervals.

An appeal under the Food and Drugs Acts, reported in the present number of the BRITISH FOOD JOURNAL, is an apt illustration of the old saying, that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. In commenting upon the case in question, the Pall Mall Gazette says: “The impression among the great unlearned that the watering of the morning's milk is a great joke is ineradicable; and there is also a common opinion among the Justice Shallows of the provincial bench that the grocer who tricks his customers into buying coffee which is 97 per cent. chicory is a clever practitioner, who ought to be allowed to make his way in the world untrammelled by legal obstructions. But the Queen's Bench have rapped the East Ham magistrates over the knuckles for convicting without fining a milkman who was prosecuted by the local authority, and the case has been sent back in order that these easygoing gentlemen may give logical effect to their convictions.”

The Corporation of the City of London are about to appoint a Public Analyst, and by advertisement have invited applications for the post. It is obviously desirable that the person appointed to this office should not only possess the usual professional qualifications, but that he should be a scientific man of high standing and of good repute, whose name would afford a guarantee of thoroughness and reliability in regard to the work entrusted to him, and whose opinion would carry weight and command respect. Far from being of a nature to attract a man of this stamp, the terms and conditions attaching to the office as set forth in the advertisement above referred to are such that no self‐respecting member of the analytical profession, and most certainly no leading member of it, could possibly accept them. It is simply pitiable that the Corporation of the City of London should offer terms, and make conditions in connection with them, which no scientific analyst could agree to without disgracing himself and degrading his profession. The offer of such terms, in fact, amounts to a gross insult to the whole body of members of that profession, and is excusable only—if excusable at all—on the score of utter ignorance as to the character of the work required to be done, and as to the nature of the qualifications and attainments of the scientific experts who are called upon to do it. In the analytical profession, as in every other profession, there are men who, under the pressure of necessity, are compelled to accept almost any remuneration that they can get, and several of these poorer, and therefore weaker, brethren will, of course, become candidates for the City appointment.