circulation to the value of $65,897,100. Recently, on account of the war in China and the Philippine Islands, many millions of Mexican dollars have been exported, producing a certain stringency in the Mexican money market. The evil is not great, and it will disappear totally, owing to the opportune measures taken by the government and the prudent and conservative policy of the banks.

A few words now about our War and Navy Departments.

I admire the peace congresses, the anti-war speeches and sermons, but my opinion is that those well-intentioned persons lose their time, as there will always be war, because we cannot change the intimate nature of mankind, and universal and perpetual peace is a mathematical limit, to which mankind can approach but never touch, as then humanity would cease to be what it is.

The barbarism of war, the injustices and atrocities inseparable from it, are truths within the knowledge of every civilized man; but as long as there will be human passions, as long as there will be a great difference of strength among nations, there will be war. I think that there is a practical and efficient method, if not to extinguish what is an impossibility, at least to make international wars very rare, and that is to invent something equalizing as much as possible the strength of the different peoples, leveling to the greatest possible extent the weak with the strong. The invention of dynamite and other explosives, the great improvements in hand arms and in the artillery, under equality of circumstances favor more the defense than the attack, and are therefore in favor of the weak, and are producing in favor of peace and justice an excellent and practical effect. I say justice, because in the majority of cases justice is on the weak side.

An army is a necessity. Justice is represented by the image of a girl hav

ing a balance in her left hand and a sword in the right, and unfortunately, but truly, she is obliged to use the sword more than the balance.

Armies at the beginning and the middle of the last century were in many cases bodies of men with interests and exigencies opposite to those of the nation's supporting them.

In our times good armies must be bodies of armed men, taught not only military exercises, but to know that the law is superior to everything; that they form a part of the nation of whom they are servants and not masters. Every citizen must be a soldier, because every citizen has the ineludible duty of keeping peace and order in the interior and repelling the foreign invader. That, it seems to me, is the only way of forming and keeping an army, especially in a country ruled by republican institutions.

In Mexico experience has conclusively shown that officers and even soldiers cannot be improvised, and the very first care of General Diaz has been to establish a good school for instructing scientific officers. The military school of Chapultepec in its actual condition is the fruit of his efforts. Many foreign officers of different nationalities have visited that establishment and believe that it ranks among the first in the comprehensiveness and perfection of military instruction there imparted and in the severe but just discipline to which the cadets are subjected.

From that institution are graduated all the officers of our army, and new rules have been recently issued to prevent the abuse committed by some persons who go there to receive a good and gratuitous education without any intention of serving in the national army.

In the capital and in many other places commodious barracks, affording comfort and good hygienic conditions to the soldiers, have been constructed or are in the course of construction. The soldiers are armed with weapons

pronounced to be the best by technical commissions after long, conscientious, and severe trials, and our artillery includes some pieces of a system invented by one of its best officers, Colonel Mondragon.

The cavalry is composed of excellent riders, very easy to find in Mexico, and provided with horses selected expressly for military service.

The barracks are not as before-places for keeping the soldiers-but schools where reading, writing, and elementary arithmetic and different trades are taught. The troops are subject to the strictest discipline, but at the same time the inferior has always within his reach the means to redress an injustice or to prevent or have punished an ill-treatment from his superior. The military code has been one of the works to which the government has particularly directed its attention, to put it in perfect harmony with justice and the republican institutions ruling the country. The ambulance and hospital branch receives continual additions to its equipment, and is formed from many of the best surgeons and physicians. Experience has proved its efficiency. There

are officers selected by the government studying in foreign countries, and their observations are applied to the improvement of our army.

Very recently the government has issued a decree for the reorganization of the army, with the object of keeping in active service the same number of troops we have now, but of supplying the means to increase that force to the extent of some hundreds of thousands in time of necessity, and adding as a reserve the whole nation in the case of a foreign invasion.

Our navy is in its infancy, but the flotilla we have around Yucatan to provision the land troops and to coöperate with them and to subdue those of the Maya Indians who refuse to obey the laws regulating a civilized community

Little

is rendering invaluable services. by little the number and size of our war vessels will be increased, as our government never loses sight of that important branch of national defense.

To conclude, Mexico is a country endowed with many natural gifts, ruled by a wise government and republican institutions equal to the United States in essential points, inhabited by 14,000,000 intelligent, peaceful, and industrious people, remarkable for their natural courtesy and hospitality, which is extended to all without distinction of nationality.

Mexico cultivates friendly relations with the whole civilized world, and is in the most intimate intercourse with the Government and people of the United States.

The governors of the States, into which the Republic is divided, coöperate intelligently with the federal authorities to establish and maintain all moral and material improvements.

There is a complete and constantly improving system of public education, uniform in the country, which is making education compulsory and gratuitous, and the schools, nearly 13,000, are attended by numerous pupils, and the extension of elementary knowledge to the lowest classes of our people is the best proof of the methods employed.

Industry in all its branches is growing at a worderful pace, and the number of manufactories is in constant progress and their products are of a high grade.

The means of communication are numerous, there being in actual operation more than 9,000 miles of excellent railroads, and more than 61,000 miles of telegraphic and telephonic lines, and different submarine cables for communication with every civilized nation.

The national and international postal system is now very good and growing continually to a degree of great perfection.

The national treasury is in a flourishing condition, and we Mexicans can say

with pride that it is administered with consummate ability and perfect honesty.

Finally, we are in perfect peace, and there is not a single cloud on our political horizon, and therefore it is the time to form upon solid foundations our army and military institutions, following the old Roman maxim, as true today as in the times of Cæsar, "In time of peace prepare for war.'

The Mexican people have fought for their independence against great odds, with poor arms, without a cent, and having scarcely the necessary food to maintain life, and have fought incessantly till they have come out victorious. That same people, well armed, with abundant pecuniary resources, and guided by good

S

IR JOHN MURRAY has recently returned from a six months' expedition to Christmas Island, a tiny isle 200 miles south of Java, and has thus added one more to his many interesting explorations. Sir John was born in Coburg, Ontario, Canada, on March 3, 1841. He received his early education at a public school in London, Ontario, and at the Victoria College, Coburg, Ontario; but when a youth he removed to Scotland, where his education was continued at the High School of Stirling and at the University of Edinburgh.

In 1868 he took a voyage in an Arctic whaler to Spitzbergen and other places in the Arctic regions. In 1872 he was appointed as naturalist on the civilian scientific staff of the Challenger Expedition, and in that capacity accompanied H. M. S. Challenger during her scientific circumnavigating cruise from 1872 to 1876. On the return of the expedition he became first assistant, under Sir C. Wyville Thomson, on the commission

appointed to prepare the scientific results for publication, and in 1882, owing to the failing health of Sir C. Wyville Thomson, he was appointed editor of the "Challenger Reports." These "Official Reports on the Scientific Results of the Voyage of H. M. S. Challenger" filled fifty large royal quarto volumes, and were published at intervals as ready, the first volume appearing in 1880 and the final volumes in 1895. Besides editing nearly the whole series, Sir John Murray was joint-author of the "Narrative of the Cruise" and of the "Report on the Deep-Sea Deposits," and author of a "Summary of the Scientific Results," in two volumes. The British Government has presented copies of these reports to scientific institutions and learned societies in all quarters of the globe.

In addition to superintending the work of publishing the "Challenger Reports," he has during the past thirty years published a large number of papers on oceanographical, geographical, geological, and other subjects,

many of them of great interest and scientific value, in which he has expressed some novel and ingenious ideas respecting the past and present condition of our planet.

In 1880 Sir John Murray took part in a scientific exploration of the Faroe Channel, between the'north coast of Scotland and the Faroe Islands, in H. M. S. Knight Errant, and again in 1882, in the same region, in H. M. S. Triton. He was for several years scientific member of the Fishery Board for Scotland, and in 1899 he was appointed a delegate of the British Government at the International Fisheries Conference at Stockholm. He also acted as president of the Geographical Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Dover, 1899.

During eight or ten years he was engaged in a bathymetrical and biological survey of the coast of Scotland in his small steam yacht, the Medusa, in which work he was assisted by many scientists. He has also taken an active part in the foundation of marine stations for physical and biological research at

Granton, near Edinburgh, and at Millport, on the island of Cumbrae, in the Firth of Clyde, as well as in the foundation of the meteorological observatories on the summit and at the foot of Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Scotland.

Christmas Island was added by England to the colony of the Straits Settlements in 1889, and is some 12 miles long by seven broad. It has rich phosphate deposits, which are worked by an English company. The works give employment to about 700 coolies and a score of whites, but is believed never to have been inhabited prior to the English annexation.

In recognition of his scientific work Sir John Murray has been awarded the Cuvier prize of the Institute de France, the Humboldt medal of the Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, the Royal medal of the Royal Society, the Founder's medal of the Royal Geographical Society, the Keith and the MakdougallBrisbane medals of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Cullum medal of the National Geographic Society of Washington.

POPULATION OF UNITED KINGDOM

FORT

ORTY-ONE and one-half millions people are now crowded into the United Kingdom. A similar density of population in the United States would mean a total population in this country, excluding the dependencies, of about 1,036,000,000.

For the last ten years England and Wales show a rate of increase of 12.15 per cent, which slightly exceeds their rate of growth for the preceding decade, 11.65 per cent; Scotland, a rate of increase of 10.8 per cent, also a greater increase than during the preceding decade, and Ireland a rate of decrease of

only 5.3 per cent, which is little more than one-half the rate of decrease of the preceding decade. The census figures are thus very gratifying to Englishmen, for they show no signs of diminishing national vitality, but rather tend to show increasing national virility. It is yet too soon to give exact percentages of the relative growth of the urban and rural districts, but what figures have been given show a most marked increase in city populations.

The population of England and Wales is now 32,525,816, of Ireland 4,456,545, and of Scotland 4,471,957, making a total population for the United Kingdom of 41,454,219.