The Iron Age estimates that steel billets cost $14.75 to make with Bessemer pig iron at $10 per ton.

The Journal of Commerce, basing its calculation on the estimate of conservative underwriters, fixes the annual fire loss from incendiarism in the United States and Canada at $39,000,000, or 25 per cent of the whole.

Southern spinners, according to the Manufacturers' Record, have about $105,000,000 invested in cotton mills, containing 70,000 looms and 3,000,000 spindles, and are "sending the mills to the cotton instead of the cotton to the mills."

According to figures published by the Bureau of Statistics, the immigration into the United States for eleven months of the year 1894 has been less than half as great as for the same period of 1893—or 233,891 compared with 486,276.

A ship canal from Bordeaux to Narbonne, connecting the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, is one of the coming public enterprises. The distance is 320 miles. Boats will be towed by fixed engines. The cost of the canal is estimated at $150,000,000.

Nineteen ships, of an estimated value of $2,870,000, are said to be now either under contract in the shipyards of the Great Lakes, or negotiations for their construction are so far advanced that "it is quite probable they will be built to go into commission as early as possible next season."

At the meeting of anthracite coal trade agents on December 28, it was decided to restrict the output during January to 45 per cent of the capacity. This is equivalent to 2,300,000 tons. It was decided also not to make any change in prices, which will remain at $3.50 for broken, $3.60 for egg and chestnut, and $3.75 for stove coal. Western prices were not disturbed.-Bradstreet's.

During the season of navigation just closed 14,491 vessels passed through St. Mary's Canal, at the "Soo," having a registered tonnage of 13,110,366, an increase of 21 per cent in number and 34 per cent in tonnage as compared with the previous year. The amount of lumber locked through the canal was 722,788,000 feet, as against 588,585,000 in 1893, an increase of 23 per cent.-Northwestern Lumber

man.

Several large canal projects are at present under consideration by the Ministry of Roads and Communications in Russia. One of the most important plans is not new, having been brought up at intervals for a number of years; it is that for connecting the White Sea with the Baltic. The estimated cost by the latest survey is 10,000,000 roubles. Another canal for which surveys are now being made is that to connect the Don and the Volga, which would also serve as a connection between the Black Sea and the Caspian.

The fattening of live stock on cottonseed hulls and meal is becoming quite an important feature in Southern business affairs. It promises to add materially to the prosperity of the South, and to enable that section not only to supply its own wants for good beef, but to ship fattened beeves North in competition with the West. The cattle can be fattened on cottonseed meal and hulls at a total cost of about ten cents a day, while it is estimated to cost at least twenty cents a day in the West and Northwest, where bay, corn and other foodstuffs are used.-Manufacturer's Record.

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MISCELLANY

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THE AMERICAN VOICE.

WHY is not as much attention paid to the pleasure to be derived by way of the ear as the eye? In this country we treat the ear barbarously. The ear gets the minimum of pleasure, and it retorts by aggravating the nerves. And so it happens that much of the discomforts of our life come through the ear. What the foreigner most notices in this country, until he becomes, as we are, more or less callous to it, is "noise.' We are not simply pitched on a high key nationally, but on a discordant key. It is not a gayer or more animated country than some others, but it is noisier. Certainly we do not cultivate harmony or moderation. To begin with, the "American voice" has an unenviable reputation. It is apt to be shrill, strident, high-pitched, unmodulated. This quality adds It disorganizes the nerves, an unnecessary aggravation to social life. and increases the tendency to nervous prostration-this and the other unchecked noises. The human voice ought to be a delight; it was meant to give musical pleasure.

There is no good reason why the American voice should not give pleasure. The voices of uncultivated races are often delightful. The negroes set us a good example in agreeable tones. That there is no radical incurable defect in the American voice we know, because we have had orators whose tones were as musical as the organ and the flute; there are communities where we hear for the most part modulated, low and pleasing speech; and it is getting to be admitted that an American singer is the peer of any in the world. But in general no care is taken about the voice in speech. Girls as well as boys are permitted to make

home discordant and school a babel of mere noise by the most vulgar and rasping use of the vocal organs. Mrs. Browning might have written, with us in view, a more pathetic poem on the "Cry of the Children." If children ought ever to be whipped, or, to put a case more in consonance with the tendency of the age, if children ought ever to whip their parents, the castigation should be given for the harsh, piercing and discordant voice. It is idle to say that this sort of voice is natural to them. Any voice can be cultivated to a degree that it shall not be unpleasant, and this education should go on from infancy in every home and every school. It is a matter of public interest for the public pleasThink what a tea party might be !

ure.

The voice is, however, only set to the pitch of the other noises. In all thickly settled communities the ears are split and outraged by the steamwhistle of the factories and the locomotives. In the depths of the night the startled sleeper has the veil of seclusion torn away from him by the scream of the whistles, the invalid's excited nerves are worn to rags by the barbarous pipe of the locomotive. We skringe and suffer with only faint protest. It is only a part of the universal noise and hubbub. Most of this screaming of the steam-demon is absolutely unnecessary in this day of clocks and watches and guarded railway crossings. But if we must have the whistle, why not invent one that is moderately musical instead of being a torture? This is a suggestion of quiet-loving people, who find the noise of our American life every day more intolerable. Perhaps any abatement of it would not suit the majority, who like to go tearing and whooping through the world.

It is fortunate, considering our voices, that we are not Moslems, for then we should substitute for the muezzin's melodious call to prayer a harsh summons that would frighten every sinner back into his bed, and compel him to stop his ears against the rasping invitation to devotion. But is it altogether fortunate? For have we not the church and other jangling bells? These give out noise and nerve-shaking clamor instead of melodious notes. There are very few bells in the United States that are agreeable to the ear. The foundries seem to go on the idea that anything in the shape of a bell will answer the purpose, with little or no regard to its tone, and we are called to church with the same metallic anger that invites us to a fire. The manufacturers are probably indifferent because the public are indifferent. Their products are mechanical, and only by chance musical. There is the need of art in the making and ringing of a bell, as in the making and playing of a piano. We appear to be content with any mass of metal cast in the bell shape, and to let a ringer with the instinct of a blacksmith evoke its dissonance with a sledge-hammer.-Charles Dudley Warner, in Harper's Magazine for Jan

uary,

O

GOOD TASTE.

WHAT is taste? Let me give you three definitions-the first Burke's, the second Carlyle's, the third Schopenhauer's. In his treatise on the "Sublime and Beautiful," which it is the stupid fashion not to read, Burke writes: "I mean by the word taste no more than that faculty or those faculties of the mind which are affected with, or form, a judgment of the works of the imagination and the elegant arts. The cause of a wrong taste is a defect of judgment, and this may arise from a weakness of the understanding, or, which is much more commonly the case, it may arise from a want of proper and well-directed exercise, which alone can make it strong and ready." The passage from Carlyle runs as follows: Taste, if it means anything but a paltry connoisseurship, must mean general susceptibility to truth and nobleness; a sense to discern and a heart to love and reverence all beauty, order, goodness, wheresoever or "" This in whatsoever forms and accomplishments they are to be seen. is Schopenhauer's definition: "Taste consists in a capacity of reception -that is to say, of recognizing as such what is right, fit, beautiful, or the reverse; in other words, of discriminating the good from the bad." Speaking for myself, I could wish for nothing better, apart from moral worth, than to be the owner of a taste at once manly, refined and unaffected, which should enable me to appreciate real excellence in literature and art, and to depreciate bad intentions and feeble execution wherever I saw them. To be always in the right must be supreme satisfaction. To be forever alive to merit, in poem or in picture, in statue or in bust; to be able to distinguish, as if by instinct, between the grand, the grandiose and the merely bumptious; to perceive the boundary between the simplicity which is divine and that which is ridiculous; between gorgeous rhetoric and vulgar ornamentation; between pure and manly English, meant to be spoken or read, and sugared phrases which seem intended, like lollipops, for suction; to feel yourself going out in joyfu admiration for that which is noble and permanent, and freezing inwardly

against whatever is pretentious, wire-drawn and temporary-this is indeed to taste of the fruit of the tree, once forbidden, of the knowledge of good and evil. How are we to set about getting taste?

Bad taste comes by nature, and good by taking thought. To go wrong is natural, to go right is discipline. Laborare et orare should be the motto of every one who desires to cultivate the faculties of taste, which it must be remembered, are judicial faculties, and involve passing judgment upon human achievements. There is a hateful expression one frequently hears, "unaided intelligence." There is such a thing, and usually it might be better named "impudent ignorance." A stupid but learned judge is far less harmful to the community than a clever ignoramus. As between man and man, both judges will probably do a vast deal of injustice, but while the learned fool will only err in the application of principles he leaves untouched, the clever ignoramus would in five years, were the Court of Appeal to let him alone, let loose upon us the foundations of the great deep.

Good taste, we may be certain, is only attainable by the exercise of the mind, by study, by thought. Healthy exercise for mind and body, that is our ceaseless cry. This is why we attend lectures and ride on bicycles, and do many other strange things. As a matter of fact, there is less dif ference of opinion among qualified persons on questions of taste than on any other kind of question. Burke has pointed out that there is more general acccord on the merits of any particular passage in Virgil than as to the truth of any proposition in Aristotle. There are some things which are indisputable. We are miserable sinners, that is certain; the tiger and the ape still spring and swing within us; but in spite of that, and by virtue of something ordained or suffered for the human race, we are capable, if rightly trained, of perceiving the difference and maintaining the distinction between things great and things little.—Augustine Birrell, in Scribner's Magazine for January.

HOW THE DEAF ARE TAUGHT.

[Dr. Edward M. Gallaudet, President of the National Deaf Mute College, publishes in the Outlook the following reply to an article by Dr. S. Millington Miller, in the same journal, a condensation of which appeared in our issue of December 20, 1894.]

WITH your permission I will note some of Dr. Miller's errors. Professor Bell's figures in his monograph on a possible deaf variety of the human race do not "indicate that 33 per cent of the children resulting from the union of deaf men and deaf women were born deaf," nor any. thing approaching this large proportion. It is still further from the fact to say that figures in the hands of Professor Fay, of this college, "enforce even more unequivocally the same conclusion." And the repeti tion of a charge that a man of Professor Fay's high standing in his profession is withholding such figures from unworthy motives is in itself unworthy. It is not true that Professor Fay "is a believer in the manual method of the instruction of the deaf," to the exclusion of other methods, as Dr. Miller avers. On the contrary, Dr. Fay, as editor of the American Annals of the Deaf, the most prominent journal of our profession in the world, has for more than twenty years favored the introduction of speechteaching for the deaf into every school. It is not true that the method of the Abbé de l'Epée "consisted entirely in a natural and conventional series of mimical and symbolical signs." The distinguished and philanthropic Abbé made great use of writing, and raised many of his pupils to a high rank as scholars; and, furthermore, he taught very many of his pupils to speak and to read the lips of others. It is not true that there is a school in Rochester, N. Y., where the single-hand alphabet is taught to the exclusion of everything else." In this excellent school the English language is taught, as well as all the ordinary studies of a primary school, and several of its pupils have been well prepared to enter the college at Washington. Speech and lip-reading are also taught to a majority of its pupils. It is not true that "the oral method teaches the deaf [as an entire class] to speak." This is attempted, but no fact is more fully established than that with a large proportion the effort fails.

"

It is not true that the college at Washington "has been so far conducted by purely manual methods." Systematic instruction in speech was introduced into the college in 1870, and continued for a number of

years, when it was discontinued for good reasons. In 1891 a department of articulation was created, with a corps of ten instructors, since which time ample facilities for the cultivation of speech and lip-reading have been afforded all our students. It is very far from the truth that, as Dr. Miller pointedly implies, up to a very recent period I have been opposed to the oral teaching of the deaf. As long ago as 1867, after a careful study of oral schools in Europe, I formally recommended that every deaf child be afforded an opportunity to learn to speak; and from that time to the present I have taken advantage of every practicable occasion to

advocate the same policy. A resolution to this effect, which I offered at a convention of instructors held in California in 1886, and which was unanimously adopted, has been made a part of the constitution of the Association to Promote Oral Teaching, of which Professor Bell was the founder, patron and first president.

Dr. Miller gives some very meager and misleading statistics in reference to the schools for the deaf in the United States. While it is true, as Dr. Miller states, that about twenty per cent of these schools follow the pure oral method, there are in these oral schools less than 800 pupils, or less than 9 per cent of the total number in all schools, which was, at most recent date, 9,542. Dr. Miller fails to mention the important fact that of the 86 schools in the United States and Canada, 59, containing 88 per cent of all the pupils, were conducted on the combined system, in which nearly 50 per cent of the pupils are taught speech and lip-reading, while the most valuable features of the method of De l'Epee are retained. Dr. Miller also takes no notice of the important testimony of the school board of Portland, Me., which, a few months since, after a careful examination of the best oral school in New England (that at Northampton, Mass.) and the only combined system school within the same limits (that at Hartford, Conn., the parent school of all in America), decided to adopt the combined system in their school in Portland, which had followed the pure oral method from its foundation sixteen years ago.

HYPNOTISM AND CRIME.

IT has been evident for some time that hypnotism was certain to cut a considerable figure in criminal investigations. This is inevitable from the very claim made by the hypnotists themselves, that they can so control the mind and will of another that they can make him think or do whatever they please. This is but another way of saying that a hypnotized person is a mere passive instrument in the hands of the person controlling him, as much so as the pistol or knife which the murderer uses in destroying the life of his victim.

Pretensions so far reaching cannot be admitted by the courts without the closest examination, the most thorough inquiry. To be sure, the admission of the hypnotic theory only shifts the responsibility from the passive instrument to the active agent. But it may often happen that the actual perpetrator is known while the person supposed to control him is unknown. The theory that the perpetrator of the crime has done it under the influence of the will of another which he was unable to resist would be a very convenient resource for the criminal and the criminal lawyer, especially in cases where the supposed instigator of the crime was out of the reach of justice. The dangers that lurk in a theory of this sort are easy to perceive.

The practice of hypnotism, like that of a number of similar arts, has fallen largely into the hands of persons of doubtful reputation. Their statements have to be received with very liberal allowances. When they testify as experts they are scarcely as trustworthy as the average expert witness, which, we are obliged to admit, is rather a strong statement. Still it is probable that it will be found that there is some basis of fact for the claim that one person may be made to act in accordance with the will of another, and that he does not possess the power to resist. But if the individual voluntarily places himself under this hypnotic control, is it any excuse for committing a crime? This has been decided in the negative in the analogous case of crime committed under the influence of voluntary intoxication. The question of involuntary hypnosis, if such a thing exists, belongs to another branch of the inquiry.

Sooner or later we shall probably find it necessary to enact legislation in this country, as has been done in France, to regulate or restrain the work of the hypnotist. To put a person into a condition where he may involuntarily become a criminal is a serious matter, and the privilege of doing so cannot be accorded to every fakir who may find it in his power to exercise it.- Louisville Courier-Journal.

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES.

The architect of the Woman's Building of the Cotton States Exposition, to be held in Atlanta, Ga., next year, is to be Miss Elise Mercur, of Pittsburg.

The presidents of the colleges in Indiana, at a meeting held at Indianapolis, decided to prohibit intercollegiate football games henceforth. Exhibition sports of any kind only will be allowed.

There are 45 survivors of the war of 1812 on the roll of the Pension Office, of whom 15 are one hundred or more years old. There are 12 pensioners of the Revolutionary War, but they are all widows.

The Pope recently gave orders for the construction of his tomb. Professor Luo chetti is to attend to the architectural part, and Eugenio Maccagni will be the sculptor. The tomb will be in the basilica, Santa Maria Maggiore. Pius VI was the last Pope buried there.

Nathan Haskell Dole, of Boston, is agitating the question of the establishment of a chair of Russian language and literature at Harvard. Mr. Dole is an enthusiast on Russian literature and he points out that not a college or university in this country has such a chair.

Mr. MacMonnies, the young American sculptor, has been officially notified that the French Government has bought for the Luxembourg collection his bronze statue of a Bacchante, exhibited in the Salon. This is the first time an American sculptor has been so honored.

A very recent summary of the accidents caused by the earthquakes in Italy during last month reveals the fact that more than twenty villages are in ruins, 500 persons seriously wounded, 40,000 homeless and 86 have been killed or have died from consequent shock or illness.

Congratulations and good wishes from nearly every part of the civilized world were received last week by M. Louis Pasteur, the eminent French bacteriologist, upon the completion of his 72d year. M. Pasteur's health, which has recently been quite feeble, is said to be much improved.

The Japanese Mikado is a man of great personal magnetism. He is in fine physical condition and is naturally extremely vivacious. His eyes are brilliant, his teeth white and regular and his smile attractive. He has been a great reader and is especially well informed regarding French literature.-New York World.

Mr. S. S. McClure, who is probably as well qualified to speak of the late Robert Louis Stevenson's affairs as anybody in this country, says this author's earnings with his pen approached $200,000, estimating, of course, the present value of his copyrights. All this is practically the work of the last six or seven years.

The Czar of Russia promises to be one of the most popular monarchs in Europe. He has completely won the St. Petersburg populace by his lack of fear in going about the streets of the capital unattended-a great contrast to the manner of his father. The police, however, do not like his ways, as they are in constant fear that he will be killed.-New York Tribune.

Emperor William, of Germany, sent the following telegram to Mme. de Lesseps: "I have just received a telegram announcing the painful loss which you have suffered. The entire intellectual and scientific world weeps with you, madam, on the grave of one of our greatest men, a genius who comprehended the world. Be assured, madam, that in this moment all my sympathies are with you and your family."

SCIENTIFIC

NEW METHOD OF POWER TRANSMISSION. THERE is no subject which at present more strongly excites the interest of practical men than the problems connected with the generation and transmission of mechanical power. Some months ago it was suggested in these columns that we were near the end of the age of steam and at the beginning of the age of electricity. That statement was accompanied by some remarks bearing on the crude and wasteful methods of power conversion exemplified in the steam engine. The attentive reader of scientific contributions to the periodical literature of both hemispheres will find no thought so frequently repeated as this-that the most vital of economic problems is how to develop and transmit mechanical energy with the minimum of loss. A writer in the current number of the Nineteenth Century makes the broad statement that great as have been the influences of the use of steam power on modern life and civilization, compared with the possibilities of electric energy as the method of applying and transmitting power, the influences of steam will become almost trivial. Or, converted into language more closely scientific, it may be said that while "the developments that have followed the invention of that imperfect instrument for converting heat into work by the agency of steam-the steam engine-have been of untold advantage to the human race, the application of modern thermodynamics and electrotechnics is destined to produce a still greater change and amelioration in the conditions of commercial, industrial and home life."

In the popular discussion of this subject, some confusion of thought is apt to arise from the failure to discriminate between what may be called the production of power and its subsequent conversion and transmission. In a fall of water, in the force of the wind, in the combustion of coal, we recognize certain natural agencies which are used in the application of power to industrial uses. Up to a date comparatively recent, the utility of all of them has been bounded by the very narrow limits of locality. That is to say, the waterfall turned only the mill which was connected by a shaft with the wheel to which it communicated a part of its energy. So with the windmill and the steam engine, which transformed by the aid of steam the heat energy stored up in the coal into rotary motion. The electrician came, and finally succeeded in demonstrating that power

generated in one locality could be transmitted by suitable conductors to considerable distances without any serious loss, and the possibility of a new scheme of productive organization at once became apparent. Given, in short, the economical and effective transformation of any kind of motive power into electricity and its reconversion into any form of motion, and the extent of the revolution of existing methods became entirely dependent on the distance which can be traversed by what we shall call the electric current, without any serious diminution of the force of the original impulse.

The writer in the Nineteenth Century claims that at the distance of 100 miles there is a loss of not more than 25 per cent of this electrically transmitted power. On that statement he bases an argument on the expediency of generating electrical energy at the mouth of the pit from which the coal is mined, and transferring it thence to whatever point at which its power may be required. It is claimed that the transformation of fuel into power could be effected in a manner so nearly perfect that there would be a ratio of three quarters of a pound of coal to one actual or available horse power of energy for the period of one hour. The average consumption by existing steam plants is said to be not less than five pounds of fuel for the same actual power during the same time. On the bases of English distances there would be a loss on the transmission of this electric energy from the Derbyshire or Staffordshire coal fields to the midlands and the metropolis of about 33 per cent, so that the given threequarters of a pound would be increased to one pound of combustible per actual horse power per hour. Thus, the equivalent of one ton of transmitted electrical power delivered in London would be equal to three tons of rail-transmitted steam coal power.

There is throughout the discussion no mention of the great invention of Mr. Nikola Tesla-the "oscillator"-but the writer must have had some such method of economical electric generation in his mind to make the claim he does. In any case he fails to take account of the epochmaking character of that apparatus in two essential respects: First, the use of steam at enormously high pressure, and, second, the generation of electricity without the waste of power due to the intervention of rotary motion. The effective energy of the heat stored in the coal can be increased at least fourfold by Mr. Tesla's method of using the expansive force of the steam at very high temperatures, and his immediate conversion of the power thus generated into electrical energy by the simple and direct vibration of the piston carries out still further the process of applying what has hitherto been unavailable in the existing methods of converting heat into work through the medium of steam.-Boston Herald. ©

THE STUDY OF EARTHQUAKES.

THE destructive earthquakes which have lately visited Italy, Greece, Turkey and Japan have again brought to the front the long-since debated question as to the probable origin of those grand trepidations of the soil. Great divergence of opinion undoubtedly prevails still among geologists; but some accord begins also to be established upon the chief points at issue, so that the main features of an earthquake theory can already be delineated. A really scientific study of earthquakes is of relatively recent origin. It may be said that it dates from the great catastrophe at Naples in 1857, when H. R. Mallet worked out, in his classical report, the methods of investigation of earthquakes, and when Palmieri, establishing his seismometric observatory on the slopes of Vesuvius, attracted general attention to the necessity of special instruments for measuring the movements of the soil. Each earthquake of importance has been carefully investigated since, and the spot, or the line, from which the disturbance originated, as well as the depth at which it lay below the surface, have been carefully determined in each case. In many places the tremors of the soil are now carefully measured and registered by means of special instruments; and although it was found very difficult to devise an instrument which would accurately record the movements of the soil, the chief difficulties have gradually been overcome, and the records of our seismometers and seismographs, properly interpreted, give already a good idea of the waves which spread in the soil.

As to the delicacy of the modern tools used for detecting the slightest tremors, it is sufficient to say that by means of the new seismometrograph established at the Collegio Romano it was possible to observe at Rome not only the earthquakes which took place in Greece, India and Turkestan, but also to see, on March 22 last, three distinct waves coming from three distinct shocks in Japan. They had traveled over an enormous distance-nearly one earth-quadrant at a speed of about 2,750 yards in the second, and yet were visible in the tracings by the instrument. But the new bifilar pendulum devised this year by Mr. Horace Darwin is even still more promising; it can record and measure a tilt of

the earth's surface of less than one-three hundredth part of a secondthat is, a change of level which would occur if a line one mile long were lifted by one-thousandth part of an inch at one of its extremities. And, finally, direct experiment is now called in to the aid of the young science, and artificial earthquakes having been provoked both by explosions of mines and by the fall of heavy masses of iron, their effects upon delicate instruments have been carefully studied. The tools of the seismologist thus attain a high degree of perfection.

In studying the distribution of earthquakes upon the surface of the globe the annals of all countries have been ransacked, and monumental catalogues have been compiled by H. R. Mallet, Alexis Perrey and Fuchs, and, quite lately, by Orloff and Mushketoff for Russia and the adjoining lands of Asia. Special centers have also grown up for a detailed study of earthquakes, in South Italy, Greece and Japan, especially in Japanthe land of earthquakes and earthquake studies-where invaluable data are collected by sending out all over the country scores of thousands of post cards, which are returned every week to the Seismological Institute, with notices of the shocks experienced at each spot. There is also no lack of investigations relative to the distribution of earthquakes in time, their supposed periodicity and their possible connection with the seasons of the year, the relative positions of sun and moon, the atmospheric pressure, the electric earth currents and so on; and if the expectations of Falb and Perrey, who have tried to predict earthquakes, have not been fulfilled, we may still hope that warnings similar to those which are issued for coal-mine explosions will some day be possible. One fact of importance appears, at any rate, with certainty from these investigations-namely, that earthquakes are decidedly more frequent during the winter months than during the summer, and that their frequency stands in some not yet fully determined connection with atmospheric pressure. Of course, this does not mean that cold seasons, or a high atmospheric pressure, or even the supposed tidal action of the sun and the moon upon the elastic earth's crust, may be considered as causes of earthquakes. They must be taken only as additional impulses aiding to break an already unstable equilibrium which originates, according to the now prevailing views, from the dislocations of the strata themselves, chiefly due to aqueous causes. The study of earthquakes thus stands now on a firm scientific basis.-Prince Kropotkin, in the Nineteenth Century for December.

FLYING MACHINES.

SCIENCE has taught us how to propel ourselves over the surface of the earth in various ways, and subterranean travel has been achieved through tunnels, but the effort to rise above the surface in aerial flight has an unbroken record of practical failure from the days of mythical Icarus down to the present time. Birds perform a feat which man still finds beyond his powers. Nevertheless the problem of aerial travel engages many active minds, and not a few practical men are of opinion that its solution is near at hand. Among these is Mr. Hiram Maxim, the inventor of the famous Maxim gun, whose paper on Experiments in Aeronautics" was recently read at the Society of Arts, London, to a crowded audience. Mr. Maxim prefaced the account of his own experiments by references to attempts at aerial flight made by other Americans. Some forty years ago, he stated, his father planned a flying machine to be lifted into the air by two screw propellers, revolving in opposite directions, with ■ motive power derived from explosive materials, preferably gunpowder. Chloride of nitrogen was employed by another American, with the result of injuring his eyes by a premature explosion. His own experiments, which were begun some twenty years ago, produced no valuable result until he abandoned the balloon as a means of lifting his flying apparatus. Any balloon large enough to be of practical value in lifting machine is large enough, he finds, to prevent its progress through the air. At a speed of 35 miles an hour a small and cheap aeroplane lifts more for its weight than a balloon and requires much less power to propel it. This demonstration, that the balloon is not only useless, but Impracticable, is of the greatest importance for the art of flying. It makes an important era in aeronautics.

The aeroplane being adopted as the means of rising and the screw propeller as a means of getting on, Mr. Maxim experimented with motors with the object of finding one that would give most power. with least weight. Naphtha engines were rejected as dangerous, though possessing advantages. The steam engine was found to be upon the whole the safest motor. A boiler 8 feet long, 4 feet wide, 26 feet high, with 800 quare feet of heating surface and weighing 1,000 pounds was made and lested to a pressure of 330 pounds per square inch. By using inch topper tubes in the construction of the boiler a large heating surface in

small space is obtained with great strength. The fuel is naphtha vapor burnt at thousands of jets after mixture with air and superheating. Engines are made of high-grade steel tempered in certain parts. A screw 17 feet 10 inches in diameter, with a pitch of 16 feet and 5 feet width of blade and weighing 135 pounds, was found to be an efficient propeller for a flying machine weighing, men and fuel included, about 8,000 pounds. There is a rudder at the bow and another at the stern, both connected with the same windlass. The aeroplane to which they are attached consists of a framework made of strong but thin steel tubes and stayed with steel wires, the whole being covered with a balloon material. This covering is, in fact, double, the upper being varnished so as to be airtight and the lower but slightly varnished. The rudders are covered in a similar manner.

It is the upper cover of the aeroplane that takes the load and bags upward between the supports, while the bottom one is not distorted. As respects the stability of the machine, the center of weight is much below the center of lifting effect, and the upper wings are set at such an angle that when the machine tilts to the right or left the lifting effect is increased on the lower side and lessened on the upper side, thus securing an automatic correction of rolling. With the aeroplane set at an angle of 1 in 14—at such an angle that in passing ahead 14 inches it presses the air down 1 inch-every pound of screw thrust gives a lifting effect of 14 pounds. Run at a steam pressure of 275 pounds the aeroplane-which, for experiments, has wheels and rests on a track-is ready to rise, and with more power will leave the track and soar. With certain improvements the machine, Mr. Maxim thinks, will carry 50 pounds for each horse power and travel 500 miles. Within a short period, says the inventor, we shall have at least military flying machines which will not be more difficult to maneuver and steer than completely submerged torpedoes. In any case success, which so long seemed impracticable, seems at length to be within sight.-Baltimore Sun.

PROGRESS IN BACTERIOLOGY.

“I BELIEVE,” said M. Pasteur, many years ago," that we shall one day rid the world of all diseases which are caused by germs." He has done much to prove his faith by his works, and so have others who are laboring in the same field. The latest achievement in that direction, the discovery of anti-toxin, appears to be one of the most important yet made. There are indubitable reports from European hospitals, showing that the great claims at first made for it were not exaggerated. The use of it has cured a large proportion of cases of diphtheria, and insured immunity against the disease in others. Failures there have been, doubtless. But a comparison of the death rate among those treated with it with that among those not treated with it, but in all other respects similarly affected, satisfactorily demonstrates the value of the new remedy. And the disease thus dealt with is one of the most destructive. It has long been so familiar to us that mention of its name arouses no such horror as that of Asiatic cholera or smallpox or yellow fever. Yet its ravages, in

this and most civilized countries, are incomparably greater than those of the three put together. Only two or three diseases endemic here surpass it in number of victims. A reasonably sure cure for or prophylactic against it will be one of the most beneficent inventions of modern medicine.

There seems to be reason to believe, also, that the recently devised system of inoculation against Asiatic cholera will be productive of good. It was pretty carefully tested this last fall in India, and the results have now been published. The disease was accidentally introduced into the Gaya jail, where there were 433 prisoners. Of these 215 were inoculated. The remaining 218 were not. All were equally exposed, and, apart from inoculation, were treated exactly alike. During the first five days after inoculation no material difference between the two classes was observed. Among the inoculated there were 5 cases of cholera and 4 deaths; among the others 7 cases and 5 deaths. The next three days, the sixth, seventh and eighth after inoculation, showed some contrast. Among the inoculated there were 3 cases and 1 death; among the others 5 cases and 3 deaths. But after the eighth day the contrast was most marked. Among the inoculated there was not a single case of cholera, while among the non-inoculated there were 8 cases and 2 deaths. It will be remembered that Dr. Haffkine said the inoculation would only be fully operative after about ten days. The actual results are two days better than he claimed. It would be premature to say that an infallible preventive against cholera has yet been discovered; but certainly this showing is significant. A third series of researches in bacteriology has marked the year. Hitherto no specific bacillus has been discovered in the lymph of cowpox or smallpox, and the failure to find it has raised some doubts concerning the

validity of the germ theory itself. An elaborate series of experiments has convinced Dr. Klein that such a bacillus exists, and may be found if the lymph be examined at the proper time. But at the time when the lymph is taken for purposes of vaccination, the bacilli have already perished in the process of sporulation. Hence the lymph is found to contain no bacilli, but only spores. Dr. Klein believes he has discovered the actual bacillus, but his attempts to cultivate it have not yet succeeded. It is reasonable to expect, however, that these attempts will one day be successful, and the bacilli of smallpox, as are those of other communicable diseases, will be cultivated in an artificial medium, thus ridding vaccination of the most serious objections now urged against it.-New York Tribune.

Lord Kelvin holds that the internal heat of the earth has nothing to do with climates. The earth, he says, might be of the temperature of white-hot iron 2,000 feet below the surface, or at the freezing point 50 feet below, without at all affecting a climate.

A French railway has lately arranged its telegraph lines so that at a pre-arranged signal the wires are switched from the telegraphic instruments to telephones, thus enabling the operators either to talk verbally or to communicate by the telegraphic code at will.

Commodore Melville, U, S. N., expresses the opinion that not only speed but maximum economy in fuel will be attained through the use of the triple screw in steamships, each acting independently of the others, the center one alone being used for slow cruising. Other expert naval engineers concur in this opinion.

Referring to the decreased mortality among children in some countries, it is interesting to know that the sanitary condition of a region may in a measure be gauged by the infant mortality; that is, the death-rate of children in a district is a sort of hygienic barometer of the surrounding physical and moral atmosphere. -Popular Health Magazine.

Experiments are being made in France to concentrate wine into tablets for transportation. After the grapes are pressed the juice is pumped into an apparatus where it is evaporated and the vapor condensed. When it has the consistency of a sirup it is mixed with the grape pulp, producing a marmalade that contains 80 per cent of grape sugar. To make wine the cakes are mixed with the right proportion of water.

The important suit brought against the American Bell Telephone Company by the United States for the annulment of the famous Berliner patent has been decided against the Bell interests. On December 18, Judge Carpenter, of the United States Circuit Court, Boston, rendered his decision in the case and decreed that patent No. 463,569, issued November 17, 1891, to Emile Berliner, be declared void and delivered up to be cancelled.-Electrical Age.

Some time ago we copied from La Nature a picture representing a design drawn on glass by a pencil of aluminum. C. Margot now points out the fact that if the aluminum is dissolved away by an acid, the drawing is still quite visible with every appearance of an etching. He holds that true chemical union occurs between the aluminum and the glass. He has found that quartz, emerald, topaz and other hard crystals can be etched in the same manner, but the diamond is unaffected. This gives a new test for a genuine diamond.-Popular Science News.

The familiar "dancing beans," which have been displayed of late in the shop windows, have become a very popular novelty, and great quantities of them have been sold throughout the country at ridiculously high prices. The bean is the seed of the Sebastiana palmeri, a shrub which grows abundantly in Alamas, Sonora and other parts of Mexico. The curious movement or "dancing" is caused by the antics of a larva, the Carpocapsa saltitans, which is imprisoned in the hollow shell of the bean. The bean has no particular intrinsic value.-Scientific American.

RELIGIOUS:

MR. GLADSTONE ON PREACHING.

MR. GLADSTONE has just been putting forth in the columns of a London contemporary his views as to the best kind of a sermon." Possibly the term will be considered as involving a paradox, there being no "best" kind of a sermon as against any and every kind. But there certainly is a method of preaching which is more effective than others; the concrete and direct sermon is always preferable to the abstract and unpronominal discourse, which makes no appeal to the individual conscience. To return to Mr. Gladstone: writing in the columns of the Presbyterian of London on this subject of the most effective preaching, the great Commoner declares that he has "one thing against the clergy both of the country and in the town"-they are not severe enough on their congregations. "They do not," in Mr. Gladstone's view, “sufficiently lay upon the souls and consciences of their hearers their moral obligations, and probe their hearts and bring up their whole lives and

actions to the bar of conscience." The class of sermons which Mr. Glad stone thinks to be most needed are of the class which offended Lord Melbourne, of whom he tells this story:

Lord Melbourne was seen one day coming from a church in the country in a mighty fume. Finding a friend, he exclaimed, "It is too bad! I have always been a supporter of the Church, and I have always upheld the clergy. But it is really too bad to have to listen to a sermon like that we have had this morning. Why, the preacher actually insisted upon applying religion to a man's private life!"

Commenting on this singular episode Mr. Gladstone remarks-"But this is the kind of preaching which I like best-the kind of preaching which men need most; but it is also the kind of which they get the least."

To a large extent it must be admitted that Mr. Gladstone's criticism is justified. Theological essays, biblical criticism, social problems, are all popular subjects with many modern preachers; but of applied religion we have less than we could wish. The sermon which enlarges a man's mind or throws light on theological dogma has its place; but after all, the sermon which man needs most is one which appeals directly to the individual conscience. When, after listening to the words of a preacher, a man is induced to look inward at his own soul and say to himself "I am not living as I should, I am not doing as Christ would have me do, I must change it all here and now "-such a preacher has assuredly delivered a great sermon, although very likely it is not one he would put aside to preach to some other congregation upon occasion of exchange: in this respect ministers often show themselves to be the poorest judges of their own sermons. And perhaps we shall not be accused of offering a premium upon ignorance, if we say that eloquence, literary gifts and critical knowledge are poor substitutes for directness. The reader may here recall what a noted New England statesman of his day once wrote to his pastor, a divine equally distinguished of the time, and which was most infelicitously made public: "I can testify," wrote this statesman, "that in all the years during which I have attended upon your ministry you have never aroused a single resentment nor for one moment disturbed the perfect restfulness I have always found in your preaching." What an awful satire upon the pulpit! What pleased our Boston statesman would surely have delighted Lord Melbourne.

We would not for one moment underrate the efficiency that comes to the pulpit from finished education, from eloquence, from the literary faculty-these are all valuable accessories, but only valuable as accessories. Certain it is that unless the preacher can induce his hearers to probe their hearts and bring up their whole lives and actions to the bar of conscience he is of but little service to the Church of Christ. The pulpit orator does positive harm if he is wanting this power. Oratory is good; but in the pulpit it must not stand alone. That there are thousands of good preachers to be met with all over the country is indisputable; never, we honestly believe, was the pulpit so effective as it is to-day. Yet we fear Mr. Gladstone only drove home an evident truth when he declared that the kind of preaching which men need most is the kind which they get the least. It is to be hoped the great man's hints will be appropriated wherever they are needed. Such preachers may, in doing this, offend at times some of their hearers, just as the preacher of fifty years ago offended Lord Melbourne. But if they hesitate to "declare the whole counsel of God" because of this, they show themselves unworthy ambassadors of Him whom they profess to serve.—Christian Work (Evangelical).

THE UNITY OF CHRISTENDOM.

THE unity of Christendom is something higher and better than the uniformity of Christendom. The unity of Christendom is an inner, immaterial, spiritual bond, the cement of sympathy and love, attaching to each other those held in a common allegiance to the one Lord and Savior; the uniformity of Christendom is outward, formal, a shadow or type, often a pretense, a deception, standing for what is not. In this case the form is substituted for the inner bond, the shell for the life-principle which has fled. The difference between the two things is very wide. There may be one without the other. There is unity in the human organism, the purpose and plan of the Creator running through the entire economy; but it is a unity which consists with, and finds adequate expression in, the utmost variety. The design and plan are one, the working out is manifold. No two parts are alike, yet all are united in the vital center, the life-force which pervades the system giving animation and expression to the whole. In nature is unity; there is also diversity— unity in plan, and infinite variety in form and methods of outworking. Uniformity would destroy the beauty and charm of the cosmos. In the republic unity marks the governing center and supreme head; but we see variety in office and administration, in the civil, military and ecclesias