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electricity at the Munich exhibition. His generator was at Miesbach, 60 kilometers distant from his motor at Munich. I will quote from Por. Forbes' paper relating the experiment. "Let us see now whether an economy would then be introduced by burning coal at the pit mouth and transferring power, as in the Munich exhibition. Let us assume the cost of the machines at £100 together, then neglecting the cost of the telegraph wire, and allowing 15 per cent. for the interest and depreciation of the machines, neglecting also the extra cost of the large steam engine required at Miesbach, we have an annual expense of £17 19s for the power (12 horse power) delivered electrically at Munich, against £1 11s for the same power delivered by the transport of coal. Even if the machines cost nothing there would be a loss; if the power cost nothing there would be a loss. It is folly to use machines costing so much to produce only 12 horse power."
But if electrical prime movers cannot compete in this respect with the steam engine; if their employment in manufactures appears impossible, there are services of another form which they can perform, whenever we require not a particularly great force, but one of great regularity and velocity, and capable of acting at a distance. Under these conditions they have a superiority which is increased by the ease in which they are set in action and stopped, and the small space they occupy.
The article of last number headed "Quinine Proven Gas Tar" should have been "Quinine from Gas Tar."
Our professor of Physics a few days ago, astonished his dignified Juniors with a statement which would have made Darwin blush. He stated that the only use of the external
ear was to show man's connection with a lower animal. Of course this lower animal could be none other than the mule; and from this we would infer that the professor's theory is that men are descended from mules.
Each ensuing day makes more prominent the fact that we have come upon the time when the mechanic is master. We have crowded professions and ill-filled trades. A chance to fill the position of sub-assistant cierk in a wholesale house is eagerly grasped at by a hundred applicants though the wages received be scarcely more than "a chance to learn the business." Let a master workman try to obtain an apprentice at three times the salary offered the clerk, and his applicants will be poor alike in quantity as well as quality. A skilled workman in any trade need never want for hire; he is eagerly sought after by a hundred employers; he is independent of the condition of the market; the skill and cunning of his hand and eye are too valuable to lose, and he must be paid whether the products are slowly or rapidly consumed. If business ceases the master hand is eagerly seized by some rival house, which knows and values the products of his skill. He who would crush down the obstacles to success in our own day must have as well as the wit to see the crevice, the strength to deal the blow. This is an age of the steam engine, and it is the engineer, not the conductor who is master.—Boston Commercial Bulletin.
Captain Eades has made a proposal to the city government of Galveston to procure a depth of twenty feet on the Galveston Bar inside of two years, and to maintain this depth for twenty years for the total consideration of $7,500,000, the plans to be the same as those of the South Pass jetty system.