show an increase in all districts of the Conference, as follows: Prince Edward Island, 155; St. Stephen, 67; Sackville, 173; Miramichi, 133; Fredericton, 205; St. John, 278. The property owned by the denomination in the Conference is upward of $1,000,000. Taking the whole Church together, the increase has been from 17,000 to 19,000 members. In many places where a dimunition was expected, the increase has been large. There was an increase, also, in the financial part of the work in the Conference of between $6,000 and $7,000.— -According to a paragraph in the London Christian World of June 10, an effort is being made to secure Rev. Dr. William Taylor, of the Broadway Tabernacle, New York, for the va cant pulpit in John Street U. P. Church, Glasgow. The stipend offered is said to be £1,500, or $7,500, or one-half of that.- -Mr. J. H. Hart, the New York Mormon agent, says that no converts or recruits will come to the United States this month.- -Mr. S. H. Hadley, a convert of the Cremorne Mission in Thirty-second street-Jerry McAuley's-has been made the general superintendent of the McAuley Mission in Water street.- -Canon Liddon, St. Paul's, London, has been elected bishop of the Scotch Episcopal Church, Edinburgh, in succession to the late Bishop Cotterill- -Nearly one-fourth of the population of Kansas are members of some Christian Church.- -The Rev. Dr. D. S. Tuttle, missionary bishop (Protestant Episcopal) of Utah, has accepted the bishopric of Missouri to succeed the late Bishop Robertson.. -The Pilgrim Congregational Church, St. Louis, has engaged as an assistant in parish work the widow of its late pastor, Rev. Dr. Goodell, at a salary of $1,200. -After five years of deadlock between Prussia and England over their respective rights to the appointment of the Protestant Bishop of Jerusalem, Prussia has decided to dissolve the compact of 1841, under which the two countries agreed to alternate in the appointment, and to found an independent Prussian bishopric at the Holy City. It is thought that Dr. Reitter, the German missionary, will be the first appointee under the new order.- -The work of building New Holy Trinity Church, in Bermuda, is progressing rapidly. Three first-class stone cutters from Edinburgh have arrived there and two more are expected shortly. The building committee expect to have the nave ready for service in February next.

-The report of the Canadian Presbyterian Assembly is full and encouraging. It embraces five synods, thirty-nine Presbyteries, and 773 congregations, and nearly 400 mission stations. Ten thousand five hundred persons were added to the church by public profession. Over 100,000 young people are in the Sabbath schools. The total sum paid as salary to ministers is $680,000. The average salary throughout the church is $833 and a manse.

several benevolent societies and divers charities.- -Mr. Spurgeon recently stated that about one hundred and twenty students had gone from his Pastors' College to foreign mission stations in various parts of the world.

FINANCE AND COMMERCE.

THE BUSINESS SITUATION.

TRADE AND CROPS.-The crop reports for the past week have been the first serious fact, except the May strikes, which for nearly a year has affected the steady advance in prosperous business. How great this movement has been is best shown by railroad earnings for June, which, on roads covering 35 per cent. of our railroad mileage, rose 12 per cent. from June, 1885, to June, 1886, or from $17,799,864 to $19,414,362. The gross earnings of fifty-seven railroads for the first six months of 1886, covering about the same mileage, show an advance over the like period in 1885, from $117,934,881 to $125,287,353 in 1886. Still more striking is the im proved business which has come to roads whose mileage has greatly increased in the last five years. The Stockholder groups twenty-nine such railroads of which full returns are accessible, and gives their gross earnings as follows:

Miles in operation
Gross earnings
Earnings per mile

1881. 26,205.000 $68,854,000 2,627,000

1885. 34,154,000 $75,602,000 2,170,000

1886. 34,825,000 $88,019,000

2,527,000

While this mileage is, at the time mentioned, over a fourth of that in the United States, these earnings are not much, if any, over 20 per cent. of the total gross earnings for our railroad system. In short, the proportional earnings of these roads are light, as compared with our railroads as a whole. This was true in 1881, it was still truer in 1885, and it is probably true now. Five roads, Union Pacific, St. Paul, Northwestern, Lake Shore, and Louisville and Nashville, furnish nearly two-thirds of this total. The lesser roads are scattered East of Illinois. With all its limitations, such a list is a good deal of a pointer, and the figures show plainly that in the first six months of the current year these lines had Yet these addipractically got the better of the increase of mileage from '81 on. The total income of the church tions in this period were about on a level with the march taken by the country at large, and this increase of mileage over earnings has been one of the most serious causes of our railroad depression. Nor must it be forgotten that the cost of almost everything a road has to buy when these railroads were earning $2,627 per mile is much less than now, when they are earning $2,527. There is every reason to be. lieve that the same advance in the earning capacity of everything else in the country has taken place. The question to-day is whether the drouth which has injured Spring wheat has affected this prosperity. If corn is affected, and of this there are some signs, the blow to the fundamental conditions of good trade next Winter is very serious; but at present this is improbable. The only thing which is now known is that Spring wheat has been injured in three of the five States which grow it. Such intelligence is quite enough to stampede the "street," but what does it amount to? The wheat supply of the United States embraces three sources of supply-surplus from last year, Winter wheat, and Spring wheat. The surplus this year is from 50,000,000 to 75,000,000 bushels, and it is one-tenth of the supply for the coming crop year. This is not affected. The Winter wheat, which is already harvested, not much under 300,000,000 bushels, three-fifths of the supply, is not affected. The Spring wheat ranges from 120,000,000 to 150,000,000 bushels. A loss of one-fifth and over would not cut the total wheat supply a tenth. The destruction of the crop would scarcely more than equal the blow which fell on Winter wheat last year. In short, barring the decrease in surplus, the shortage on Spring wheat leaves the crop for this year just what the yield was last year, and, if anything, a little larger. "Crop and surplus together the past year opened with 500,000,000 bushels. It opens now, both together, with at least 450,000,000 bushels. The first figures left 70,000,000 bushels over, with the lowest price on record to stimulate consumption. The decrease may, probably will, affect price; but only within limits.-Philadelphia Press, July 12.

is $1,546,000.- -During the past twenty years nearly £66,000 has been expended
in the survey of the Holy Land by the Palestine Exploration Fund Committee.-
The new synagogue at Turin cost 555,000 lire.- There are 146 theological sem-
inaries in America, with 5,290 students and 750 professors, an average of one pro-
fessor to every seven students.- -Mr. Spurgeon's Tabernacle in London now has
a membership of 5,214. Dr. Newman Hall has nineteen Sunday-schools in con-
nection with his church in London, in which there are 5,600 pupils. In England
and Wales there are 600,000 Sunday-school teachers and 5,200,000 scholars.-
The English Church Union has been holding its twenty-seventh meeting. Among its
officers are seventeen bishops of the English Church, and it has a total member-
ship of 21,470. In his opening speech Lord Halifax, who presided, made a plea
for the union of Christendom with the See of Rome.- -In pursuance of an order
from Archbishop Ryan, there will hereafter be celebrated in the Cathedral of New
-A school for the children of colored Cath-
York masses for the colored people.-
olics is to be opened, in the Parish of the Holy Trinity, Philadelphia, Pa. It will
-The new Catholic church in
be in charge of the school Sisters of Notre Dame.
New Haven, Ky., will be dedicated September 8.- -Fully fifteen thousand people
witnessed the laying of the corner-stone of the New St. Mary's church, New Britain,
Conn.. The Rev. Dr. Sonneschein is accused by his co-religionists of " flirting
-At Old Orchard Beach,
with Unitarianism" in a bold, undignified manner.-
from the 2d to the 12th of August, an undenominational convention for Bible study
and for the advancement of Christian work will be held under the auspices of the
New York Gospel Tabernacle and conducted by the pastor, the Rev. A. B. Simp-
son. -Mr. Flinders Petrie, the fortunate finder of Naukratis and agent of the
Egytian Exploration Fund, has made another important discovery in the land of
the Pharaohs. This is none other than the ruins of the royal palace of the Egyp
tian monarch at Tahpanhes, mentioned in the forty-third chapter of the Book of
Jeremiah, the place to which "Johanan, the son of Kareah," with "all the cap-
tains of the forces," and "the remnant of Judea" brought the fugitive daughters
of Zedekia, then a dethroned and mutilated captive in Babylon..

-Since the visit
of Dr. Livingston to the two great English universities, Oxford and Cambridge
have done good work in Central Africa. It would now appear as if the Scottish
universities had made up their mind to connect their names with some part or
parts of the great mission field. Arrangements have just been completed whereby
the students at Aberdeen, St. Andrew's, Glasgow, and Edinburgh have charged
themselves with the support of a mission in the native State of Sikhim, in North-
-The three Jewish theological semina-
eastern India, on the borders of Thibet..
ries of Germany have graduated 86 students, who will devote their lives to rabbin-
ical pursuits. There are 28 graduates each from the Berlin Seminary and Hach-
-In giving his reasons for declining
schule, and from the Breslau Seminary, 30.-
the offer of the bishopric of Edinburgh, in the Scottish Episcopal Church, Canon
-The English
Liddon lays stress upon the fact that he is not a Scotsman.-
Church Congress is to be held this year at Wakefield, under the presidency of the
-The first colored Catholic priest ordained from America
Bishop of Ripon.-
preached his first sermon at St. Mary's, Hoboken, N. Y., last Sunday. He will
-The Universalist minister of Danbury, Conn.,
take a parish at Muncy, Ills.-
baptizes converts by sprinkling flowers upon them, and uses a formula quite as
unique-full of sentiment and poetry. The excuse he gives is that baptism is a
symbol of purity, and flowers are as suggestive as anything, and quite as appropriate.
He thinks the custom is bound to become universal among pedobaptists.-
widow of Chr. Merian, of Basel, who built the magnificent Protestant St. Eliza-
beth Church, at Basel, at a cost of $1,000,000, twenty years ago, bequethed $500,-
ooo to her town and $50,000 to the Basel Missionary Society; $250,000 go to

-The

OUR TRADE WITH LATIN AMERICA.-The United States Bureau of Statistics have recently issued an interesting pamphlet on the subject of our trade with Latin America, in which is presented, in tabular form, the details of commerce of the United States with Mexico, the West Indies, Central and South America. · The following table of the commerce of these countries in 1870 and 1884 gives some idea of the growing value of this trade:

Mexico

Central America
Spanish West Indies
British West Indies
French West Indies
Other West Indies
Guiana

Venezuela
Colombia

Ecuador

Peru

Bolivia

Chili

Argentine Republic
Uruguay
Paraguay
Brazil

Total

1870.

1884.

$61,146,438

$69,108,451

24,099,289

38,125,502

110,362,222

148,885,415

46,903,673

68,025,336

17,466,500

26,256,732

12,997,313

10,771,912

22,477,584 27,908,155

6,031,108

11,685,337 30,869,671

3,113,017

4,408,653

16,791,000

51,494,774

12,461,665

12,518,725 122,371,808

10,310,286

67,255,030

68,116,401 133,721,271

28,162,436 41,935,767 1,954,000 3,058,050 218,849,413

193,577,710

709,259,354 1,013,991,415

A large proportion of our trade with these countries is in crude articles, provisions, etc. The figures given by the Bureau of Statistics are: Crude articles and raw products, $37,532,445; manufactured articles, $35,714,404. Our trade in manufactured goods is largest, proportionately, with Chili, the Argentine Republic, and Central America. On the other hand, 92 per cent. of our trade with the French West Indies is in raw products, 86 per cent. of our trade with Guiana, and 75 per cent. of our trade with the British West Indies. The manufactured goods we send to these countries come in the following order: Manufactures of iron and steel, cotton goods, furniture, and manufactures of wood, oil, carriages, chemicals, agricultural implements, refined sugar, soap, gunpowder, leather, and spirits. Of our receipts, two-thirds are sugar and coffee; then come hides, tobacco, Indiarubber, drugs, fruits and nuts, wool, wood, and cocoa. The new Senator from Tennessee, Mr. Whittborne, made an address in Congress on the necessity of improving our relations with the countries to the south of us. He showed that of our imports from Latin America, $76,147,418 come in foreign vessels and $66,937,648 in American vessels; of our exports, $22,435,169 in foreign and $36,725,728 in American vessels. Three-fourths of our Brazilian trade is carried in the ships of other countries; four-fifths of our trade with Uruguay. Of our shipments to Brazil and Chili, more than half go in foreign bottoms.-The Age of

Steel.

one thing which I can not hide from you now, and that is that Mandalay will in a
few years be the center of a great iron and copper industry. The neighborhood
(i. e., within a circuit of 150 miles) abounds in iron mines, and to the southeast of
Mandalay there is one, if not many, coal-mines to back it up. Already the British
Burmah State Railway engineers are surveying the country with a view to running
a line from this place to Tounghoo, and it strikes me very forcibly that this line
will run through the heart of the coal-field. There are also many ruby, silver,
copper, and, I hear, gold mines. In fact, the country is swimming in mineral
wealth.". -It is claimed that at present there are no large stocks of copper any.
where in this country.- -A gold fever is raging in the Argentine Republic in con-
sequence of the reports of the discoveries of the precious metal in Patagonia.-
In Germany, the ownership of coal and iron ore is vested in the state, and while
the royalty is but 2 per cent. of the profits, iron ore escapes any charge whatever.
-From the latest Government returns, the total production of coal is given at,
for the world, 406,380,000 tons.- -England produces about four-tenths of the
coal as the result of working the 11,900 square miles of its coal area for several
centuries. -The United States of America gives over one-fourth of the total coal
production of the world. -The Black Hills of Dakota contain many varied and
valuable resources, and new discoveries are steadily increasing the list. The latest
is the discovery of fine hone and whetstone beds. Prof. Bailey has submitted sam-
ples to experts in Chicago, who report that the rock is very valuable, ranking with
the Arkansas stone.. There are coals in the Caucasus, the Ural Mountains, and
some other places, as well as in Siberia.- Statistics show that the amount of coal
mined in Germany during 1885 to be 58,293,873 tons, an increase of about
1,000,000 tons over 1884.- -The number of furnaces in blast in Scotland on the
19th of June was 84, as against 92 of the previous week.-
-There is hardly any
Russian industry which has made such gigantic strides of late years as the coal
trade, in spite of the circumstance that at present only one deposit is worked on
any great scale, viz., that of Donetz.- -Money in London was so plentiful in pro-
portion to the demand for it last month that borrowers for day-to-day loans were
scarce, though offered the use of funds at the nominal charge of a half to three-
quarters of I per cent. per annum. Bills running three months were gladly dis-
counted at the rate of 1 per cent. per annum. Cork leather, as produced in France,
is claimed to possess some special advantage, as compared with the natural skins.
In its production, thin sheets or pieces of cork are covered on both sides with an
extremely thin India-rubber skin, with any ordinary textile fabric outside of all,
the whole becoming thus a sort of homogeneous texture or tissue, although the
cork sheets, in their normal state, are readily permeable by water, friable and
brittle, and possessed of very little strength or cohesion.- -The assessor's books
of San Francisco show an increase in assessed valuations of city property over last
year
of more than $4,000,000. The total of assessments this year is $120,530,000.
-S. P. Warner, a stock broker of California, who did a large business with
female speculators, disappeared this week, leaving a large crowd of mourning vic-
tims.- -The products of the Lake Superior copper mines for June was: Calumet
and Hecia, 2,746 tons; Quincy, 275; Franklin, 200; Atlantic, 192. The prod-
uct for the first six months this year foots up-Calumet and Hecia, 15,210 tons;
Quincy, 1,371; Franklin, 1,214; Atlantic, 1,139. The June output of the Calumet
and Hecia is the largest product for a like period of time that the mine has ever
made.American manufacturers. have just achieved another triumph in the
award of the contract for 280,000 feet (53 miles) of wire rope for the proposed new
cable lines in Melbourne, Australia, where it has just been decided to build twenty-
six miles of cable road, the government having guaranteed the company's four per
cent. bonds. The cars likewise will, we infer, be built in this country, as is the
case with nearly all the cars for street lines.

EDUCATION.

NOTES. The export of petroleum from January 1st to June 19th amounted to 252,219,763 gallons. -On the 1st of June there were 308 furnaces in blast in the United States, with a weekly output of 119,770 tons of pig-iron, the largest yield in the history of the iron production of the country.- -The sources of petroleum in India are situated wholly in extra-Peninsular regions—namely, in the Punjab, in Assam, and in Burmah.— -The projectors for natural gas at Des Moines, Iowa, so far have not found any. They have gone down to 1,100 feet, at the rate of fifty feet per day. They intend to go the depth of 2,600 feet before they give up, or find gas.- -A Chicago firm will bore for a gas well at Appleton, Wis., to the depth of 500 feet. The exports of copper from New York during the week ending June 21st were 248,907 pounds. Total since January 1st, 7,479,330 pounds, as compared with 26,203,964 pounds in 1885, 3,741,949 pounds in 1884, 5,725,165 pounds in 1883.-Philadelphia, Pa., and Rochester, N. Y., have what is believed to be the cheapest electric lights in the United States. The price per night is 45 cents at Rochester, 48 to 59 cents at Philadelphia. The average charge through the States for 200 candle-power lamps will approximate 60 cents per night.- -Tenders will be received by the Bank of England on the 30th for £2,695,000 Treasury bills, being £500,000 more than the sum maturing, £2,195,000 having been allotted on three months' bills on March last at an average of £1 9s. 2d. per cent. -One of the principal financial events of the week has been the publication of the terms for the settlement of the Mexican debt. The proposal is to issue £109 new stock for each £100 of old, with arrears. On the 100 stock 1⁄2 per cent. interest will be paid on July 1st THE SUMMER SCHOOL.-Plato and Socrates have their successes now every and the £9 will carry interest from January next. The 1864 loan receives £50 of summer, and such audiences as the famous Greek philosophers never met. The the new stock, with interest dating from January next. The interest increases 1⁄2 idea of the summer school under hypethral surroundings takes us back directly to per cent. each year until the full 3 per cent. is reached.- -Messrs. Morton, Rose that famous park or grove in the Anthenian suburb where Plato and other oracular & Co. have received subscriptions for £744,000 five per cent. sterling mortgage voices of antiquity held forth. The germinal idea was a Greek one, and the subdebentures of the Western Railway of Buenos Ayers, the issue price being 91 per jects discussed were as large as the broad amphitheater of nature in which they cent. The North Carolina Estate Company has invited applications for £65,000 were entertained. It is curious that after all these many centuries have elapsed 7 per cent. first-mortgage debentures of £10 each. According to Stubb's Weekly since Plato and Socrates discoursed, there is still so much need to go over the Gazette, the number of failures in England and Wales gazetted during the week same ground. But we find that there is. The Cornwell School of Philosophy is ended June 19th was 72, or 37 less than last year. The total since the beginning the one among all the different schools which comes nearest in breadth to Plato's of the year was 2,300, being an increase of 180. The number of bills of sale regis- Academy; and its themes-ambushed, perhaps, under other titles sometimes-are tered in the week was 188-a decrease of 39 from last year. The aggregate to still those which were aided and instructed by the flowing Cephissus. We have date is 5,724, or 212 more than last year.- -The aggregate clearings at thirty had, in fact, for one, Aristotle's De Anima itself. This, as Prof. Harris says, was leading cities for the week ended on Saturday last were $1,003,648,480."the application of the highest doctrines reached by Greek speculation to the Paragould Stave Manufacturing Company, capital stock $100,000, has been inknowledge of what is most interesting to man-his spiritual nature." But in dis; corporated at Paragould, Ark.- -Prof. Leslie says: "I take the opportunity to cussing it, the doctrines of Leucippus, Democritus, the Pythagoreans, Anaxagoras, express my opinion in the strongest terms that the amazing exhibition of oil and Thales, Alcmeon, and those of Plato's Phædon Zimaus were brought up and congas which has characterized the last twenty, and will pro] ably characterize the next sidered. Neo-Platonism and the pre-Socratic philosophy Gnosticism and Panten or twenty years, is nevertheless not only geologically, but historically, a temtheism and Agnosticism are among other topics that have continued the Greek porary and vanishing phenomenon-one which young men will live to see come argument. It is true, the Concord School adds Darwinism, evolution, heredity, to its natural end. And this opinion I do not entertain in any loose or unreasonable and the nebular hypothesis, which have their modern celebrity, but the modern form; it is the result of both an active and thorough acquaintance with the subsubjects of Democracy, economic laws, and the consideration of the scheme of ject.' -The largest gold nugget ever found in the world was discovered in 1858, Jonathan Edwards, which the ancient philosophers have considered, have nothing in the Ballaret diggings, Victoria, Australia, and weighed 2,165 ounces troy.- in them which would not have been familiar to the Greek academy also. Of All of the gold on earth to-day, in whatever shape-that is, mined gold, or, to put it course, the discussions of German and Scotch philosophies are only modern in their plainer, the gold in use in all nations and the product of all age--if welded into terminologies, and not at all in the substance of their thought. There are other one mass, would be contained in a cube of less than thirty feet.- -Nevada has summer schools, however, than the one at Concord, and they are nearly all, with produced within twenty-five years over $400,000,000 in precio is metals.- this exception, popular rather than philosophical. It is a good idea, in fact, that correspondent, writing from Calcutta to the London Ironmonger, sys; "There is they are so. They have extended Plato's idea in open-air teachings where all can

-The

A

now.

had then been enacted to prevent the watering of stock and all other kindred forms of rascality, the railway problem would have been simpler by far than it is at present. It is not too late to guard against these evils in the case of railways which may

structed and an immense amount of irremediable mischief has been done. When
it comes to the general legislative regulation of railway charges the interests of the
corporations will, very frequently, be found at war with the interests of the people.
In such cases it is not difficult to predict the result.-New Orleans Times (Dem.).
NOTES. The Mexican department of public works has ordered the inspectors of
railways to render a report on the manner in which the various companies have or-
ganized their watch service.A railroad official, who, for twenty-five years, has
kept a record of accidents at railroad crossings in this country, states that of thirty
cases where accidents have proved fatal, in twenty-two the parties driving the
teams run into were under the influence of liquor at the time of the accident.-
The Hidalgo legislature has passed a law enabling persons desirous of building rail-
ways in that state to do so without securing a special charter. Consul Tanner,
at Chemnitz, Saxony, reports that the high price of wooden railroad ties and tele-
graph poles has led to the substitution of iron and steel for these purposes.—The
following from the Political World shows that they are not easy over railroad
freights in England: A firm of manufacturers in London have recently been
erecting some new machinery in their factory, and, among other articles, a large
iron wheel was required. This a firm in Liverpool undertook to provide, and, in
due course, the wheel was ready for delivery. It transpired, in the course of in-
quiry, that the cheapest way to send this wheel to London would be via New York.
To send it from Liverpool to London by rail would cost £2, but to send it to New
York by ship, and thence back to London, would only necessitate an outlay of £1.
The wheel was sent via New York.- A device has been invented by which
electricity is made to record the weights indicated upon scales or steelyards, the
application being especially designed for the weighing of freight cars while in mo-
tion. It is said that, with this device properly applied to the scales, an accurate
account can be kept of the weight of every car passing over them, even at full
speed.. -Robert J. Burdette is responsible for the following story: Affable trav-
Mr.-er-
eler, to neighbor in railway car-"Your name is very familiar to me.
ah-" Quiet stranger-"My name is Moctzonetskiest Koroczoctoctber. I am a
Pole." Affable traveler-" Yes; er-it isn't your name so much as your face. I
was about to say your face was very familiar to me." Quiet stranger-" Yes;
I have been in Sing Sing prison fourteen years. I was discharged this morning.'
"We had a queer mixed train yesterday," said a Milwaukee brakeman, this
morning, as he methodically unbuckled two coaches on the eastern and signaled
"go ahead" to the pony engineer. "Going down there was a corpse in the bag-
gage car and a bridal party in the Pullman, and, besides that, we had over a hun-
dred going to the court at Winona, one murderer and two horse thieves, and a
post-office robber, two secret societies, and, besides all this, a couple of bright little
girls that were put in my charge to run them through to Portage, where their sis-
ter lived.". -The Cumberland and Pennsylvania railroad is a small road, so far
as mileage is concerned, but it does a large business, and no road of equal mileage
has such heavy machinery. Among 31 locomotives, the lightest weighs 91,000
-Within little
pounds, and a large proportion of them weigh 117,600 pounds.-

that he once was present with Professor Rossbach at a decapitation where the division occurred between the fourth and fifth cervical vertebra. The trunk dropped down lifeless and with every muscle relaxed, simply obeying the law of gravity, while the head continued for one and a half minute to make dyspnoea-like respira-hereafter be built, but the greater part of our railway system has already been contory motions, just like a person who, when suffering from the most intense dyspnoea, would endeavor to breathe.- -A Southern secular paper is authority for the following statement regarding the fattening effect of chewing-gum: "Twenty years ago the rule, was the Southern women were thin and delicate; it is not the rule Southern women are not physically equaled in all North America. Any physician who is as well informed as he ought to be will tell you that this is true. This change is due to the habit of chewing gum.- -Congressman Viele, of New York, made a strong effort in the House last week to secure an appropriation of ten thousand dollars to continue the National Board of Health. Representative Randall declared that there was no need for a National Board of Health, and the House seemed to coincide with him, for the item proposed by General Viele was not adopted. -Dr. Worms has recently made known to the Academy of Medicine the result of his investigations concerning Daltonism and other sorts of colorblindness among the personnel of the Northern railway. The number of persons examined is 11,173, and the proportion of defective color-vision is a very small one. Two persons only were utterly incapable of distinguishing one color from another; three were color-blind for red; six for green; eighteen mistook green for red; fifteen could not distinguish green from blue or gray; fifty-two had a certain weakness in color-vision.- -A French journal ites the fact that a number of persons have recently been poisoned in France by eating asparagus grown in localities where small amounts of sulphide of carbon existed in the soil. The symptoms were those of cramps and diarrhoea. The human spleen has been removed seven times in Italy, and in but two instances has the patient recovered. Professor Antonio Ceci, of Genoa, has recently performed the operation, and his is one of the two successful cases. The patient was a poor girl, seventeen years of age, and the enlarged spleen weighed one-fifteenth of her entire bodily weight- -The evidence of the greater safety of ether than chloroform as an anesthetic is accumulating very rapidly. In England, during 1885, there were twelve deaths attributable to chloroform, and but three to ether.- -Physi cians are now using aniline-oil as a local anesthetic when simple operations, such as the opening of a felon, are to be performed. The finger, in such a case, is dipped for a short time in the oil, and, although the flesh may subsequently be cut to the bone, it is said there is absolutely no pain.- -Professor Humphrey, of England, has great doubt about people living one hundred years, and is investigating the matter.- -Dowdeswell claims to have found the germ of hydrophobia in the central canal of the spinal cord and in the medulla oblongata.- There is a prospect of a new medical college being started at Colfax, Iowa.sensational statement has been arrived at by the medical officer of the rural sanitary district of Hexham, in Northumberland, England, who, in explanation of the fact that 124 out of every 1,000 children in his district die before attaining the age of twelve months, asserts the mortality to arise from exposure of children in perambulators.- -A committee of twenty-five members has been appointed in Vienna for the purpose of making arrangements for the forthcoming International Medical Congress to be held in 1887. President Cleveland has consented to be one of the patrons of the Congress.- -The increase of physicians in New York and Brooklyn during the last three years is shown in the following table: 1884-5New York, 128; Brooklyn, 28; New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, 278. 1885-6-New York, 113; Brooklyn, 87; N. Y., N. J., and Conn., 125. 1886-7New York, 24; Brooklyn, 41; N. Y., N. J., and Conn., 190.- -Dr. Francesco Brancaccio, of Naples, finds the blood of the domestic fowl to be an efficient remedy in pernicious and simple anæmnia and chlorosis.

RAILROADS.

-A somewhat

RAILWAY MANAGEMENT.-The Illinois Central Railway has recently placed a very considerable loan, bearing 31⁄2 per cent. interest at par, and it is announced that these bonds now command a premium in the open market. This fact eminently deserves the attention of railway managers and inventors alike. The magnificent credit enjoyed by this great corporation is the result of many years of uniformly prudent and honest management. The stock of the Illinois Central is largely held by English investors, and the officials of this great line may well glory in the reflection that the 32 per cent. bonds command the same price in the London market as British 3 per cent. consols.

The history of the Illinois Central is delightfully different from that of the vast majority of American roads. In this case there has been no watering of stock, no donation of vast sums to favorite construction companies, no stock jobbing on the part of officials, no borrowing of money for the purpose of declaring bogus dividends. Every dollar of the stock and bonded debt represents value received. The company's annual statements show the actual state of the property. Very different is the story of roads like the Erie, which have absorbed enormous masses of capital, without yielding any adequate return.

The mismanagement of American railways lies at the bottom of some of the gravest problems of the time. There would have been far less restlessness under extortionate charges if it had been believed that honest investors in railway securities were the real beneficiaries of the extortion. On the contrary, there is a general and well-founded belief that existing tariffs are seldom based on the actual cost of doing the business, but are in most cases framed to subserve the interests of unscrupulous millionaires. The general demand for legislative restriction of railway charges finds its explanation in the career of certain monopolists and wreckers who have brought disgrace on the fair fame of the nation.

In truth, measures should have been taken years ago to protect the interests of investors, which are, indeed, coincident with the interests of the public. If laws

more than a year, all the locomotives on the St. Paul and Duluth road (13) have been changed from wood burners to coal burners. Some English and Spanish capitalists are contemplating the erection of an immense mill at Bilbao, to cost The Northern $15,000,000, to build ships and to turn out railway material.

Pacific Railroad Company are putting air brakes on their freight-car equipment, at the rate of 1,000 cars a year.- -Orders for 10,000 tons of steel rails have been sent out by the Great Northern railway, of England.- -Messrs. Maclellan, of Glasgow, Scotland, are constructing ten steel bridges for an East Indian line.

SCIENTIFIC.

TIMEING BICYCLE RACES BY ELECTRICITY.-E. H. Foote, of the Massachusetts Bicycle Club, has submitted to President Ducker a scheme for obtaining absolutely correct timing of races, and it is so ingenious that the club will put it into practice. The details are: Take a strip of rubber 21⁄2 to 3 inches wide and inch thick, long enough to cross the track. Sew or rivit on one side of this two strips of thin sheet brass or copper. Fold the two sides of the strips together. Fasten one end to the ground on the opposite side of the track to the judges' stand, the other end to the ground on the side next the stand. This end to be attached to a block of wood or rubber, having binding screws connected with the metal strips. These screws are also connected in circuit with a battery and a loud, single-stroke bell. The strips are kept apart at the opposite end by a wooden plug, if necessary. The riders to be started with their wheels just in contact with the strips. Whenever there is pressure enough put on the rubber to place the metal straps in contact, the bell will sound. The starting time to be taken at the first stroke of the bell, when the first man crosses, as there would be a slight variation in the men getting The time of finish to be also away, and the rear wheels would also cause a stroke.

taken by stroke of the bell. The time between the strokes of the bell would be absolutely correct, and could probably be taken more accurately than by the eye. This system could be extended by the putting in the battery circuit a recording instrument which would automatically and accurately record on paper each and every time, however many men there might be in the race. This would necessitate quite an additional expense, as the recorder would have to be actuated by an accurate time piece.-Electrical Review.

THE RADIOPHONE.-M. Mercadier has devised a radiophone of a very simple kind. It is, in fact, simply a microphone with the supports of the carbons fixed to a thin diaphragm or plate of varnished pine. The microphone is connected to a

WEALTH AND POPULATION.-That wealth is accumulating in a more rapid ratio among the commercial countries of the world than the increase in population, is a fact very clearly demonstrated by statistics and figures. At the beginning of the present century the population of the United States was about 5,300,000, and is now approaching 60,000,000, the increase being about 950. In 1880 the total wealth of the country was estimated in the census returns at $49,800,000,000, an increase in eighty years of more than 4,400. That wealth is accumulating with great rapidity there can be no question, and that the people of all civilized countries are better off-that is, are better paid for the labor, are better housed and better fed and clothed than ever before is a proposition that requires no argument for its support. In the matter of national obligations there also has been a large increase. In 1820, the national debt of the United States reached but $100,000,000, in 1880 had been increased to $1,975,000,000, or 1934-fold. The national debts of the world, in 1820, aggregated $7,310,000,000, while in 1880 they footed up $27,220,000,000, an increase of 375 per cent. in sixty years. The wealth of the people of the United Kingdom, in 1800, was estimated at $9,000,000,000, while it amounted to $44,206,000,000 in 1877, an increase of about 495 per cent. The export trade of the same kingdom, between 1816 and 1820, averaged annually $255,000,000, while between 1871 to 1878 the yearly average was $1,395,000,000, or an increase in fifty-eight years of 550 per cent. In the same period the import trade was increased from $160,000,000,000 to $1,835,000,000, or about The consumption of wheat in Great Britain in 1834 was 258 1,147 per cent. pounds per head of the population, increased to 311 in 1860. The population of Great Britain and her colonies, in 1800, amounted to 17,000,000 souls, increased to 43,000,000 in 1880, or an increase of about 250% per cent. The value of the agricultural products of France was increased from $930,000,000, in 1830, to $1,885,000,000 in 1878; that of her manufactures from $390,000,000 to $2,080,000,000, and that of her commerce from $235,000,000 to $1,840,000,000, or the

aggregate increase in forty-eight years was $4,250,000,000. The commerce of the world in the ten years ended with 1879 was increased from $10,250,000,000 to $13,935,000,000. The consumption of cotton in the commercial world in the thirty-seven years ended with 1877 was increased from 554,000,000 pounds, annually, to 1,186,000,000 pounds; that of wool from 198,000,000 to 366,000,000 pounds, and the production of iron from 4,360,009 tons, in 1850, to 13,673,000 tons in 1877. The population of Europe, exclusive of Great Britain and Ireland, in 1800, was 170,000,000, increased to 270,000,000 in 1880.-The Stockholder.