A

agreed to call feminine, which, however, is very masculine. mannish trait it is to lament loudly under pressure of sorrow, and all these finely attuned souls sang their sufferings--the entire choir from Schubert to Brahms. He, the sturdy, the stolid, is in his works of larger form, the symphonies, concertos, and the German Requiem, the most contained, masculine of composers; but the songs are as romantic as a girl's. They are, some of them, masterpieces. Lyric and subjective, they range the gamut of a feminine soul. Is there anything more feminine than the 'Serenade' or the deep feeling of 'Wie bist du meine Königin'? With Schumann the rift in the lute was congenital. He was always a little morbid, tho a man of intellectual and artistic powers. His songs are dark in hue, beautiful as some of them are. He, too, had a soul full of feminine intuitions.

'Chopin's psychical delicacy need not be dwelt upon here. It is a thrice-told tale. Everything from the material envelope to his innermost nature was feminine, morbidly feminine. He stamped every bar of his mazurkas, valses, and nocturnes and impromptus with this feminine seal, fiercely masculine as are many other of his matchless compositions. And the womanly element played an important rôle in his life, more so than with any composer except Berlioz or Wagner. While the polonaises, scherzos, ballads, the greater of the études and preludes, are of heroic quality, the major portion of his music may be truthfully called feminine.

Mendelssohn is another of the slender, delicate men who wrote music. Hyper-refined, wealthy, he was an aristocrat in his habits and fastidious in his compositions. The distinctively feminine note is generally there, and his music is all nerve, motion, fire-but little substance.

"Tschaikowsky betrayed his feminine impulses by his choice of

His operas

forms of perfect, complete beauty in life and personality. But these elect are not the only children of the sun. The same great luminary had given life to the whole procession of the oppressed, weary, downtrodden, unhappy, and disappointed beings who pass before the eyes of the former; but for this great majority the light was extinguished and the warmth dissipated; for them the world was cold, dark, cheerless. There are said to be two remarkable, moving, overwhelming acts in the play. In the second act the chosen few eloquently, passionately, sincerely proclaim their hopes and dreams of universal brotherhood and peace and joy; they read noble poems, deliver inspiring speeches, and are full of faith and enthusiasm. In the fourth act, with painful realism and by way of contrast, Gorky shows a frenzied revolt of the masses, caused by the appearance of cholera, against the physicians and sanitary officials and self-sacrificing intellectuals, whose sole aim is to check the terrible epidemic and save the blind, ignorant, brutalized children of the sun, and who are misunderstood, hated, and feared by those for whom they would lay down their lives. There is, however, it is stated, no bitterness or irony in Gorky's deliberate contrast. He depicts the realities of life in this drama with a simplicity and philosophical calm born of profound thought and suffering. The style is chaste and austere.-Translation made for THE LITERARY DIGEST.

NATIONAL EXPRESSION IN ARCHITECTURE.

Greatest of all feminists, says Mr. Huneker, was Richard Wagner. No composer since Mozart has caught the vibrating echoes of woman's heart as has the composer of Isolde.

"Parsifal himself is the most successfully feminine of Wagner s characters, only it is not considered polite to say so. The crowning glory of Wagner's women is Isolde, Princess of Ireland and of Cornwall, betrothed to King Marke, and loved by and loving Tristan. Her soul is complex and feminine in its loving tenderness, masculine in its power of fierce hatred. She must have been her father's child, tho her mother was a weaver of spells. And she is the true child of that morbid, complex, feminine genius, Richard Wagner."

Gorky's Symbolical Drama.-It is announced in the St. Petersburg press that Maxim Gorky, who is under indictment on the charge of treason, has finished a play which will bear the title "The Children of the Sun," and which, the censor permitting, will be produced early in the coming dramatic season. It is not the work which Gorky wrote during his imprisonment last winter, but another and more thoughtful, artistic, and significant

one.

In fact, those who have seen the manuscript declare that in it the novelist-dramatist has revealed intellectual and creative qualities of the highest order and established new claims to artistic fame and influence. While the play is essentially symbolical, it is not without a realistic aspect of tragic intensity. It deals with the highest problems of human and social destiny, and is an outgrowth of the recent upheaval in sorely tried Russia. The Children of the Sun" are those gifted, devoted, exceptional men who live in their noble dreams and aspirations in the midst of proOne of these saic, dull, depressing, every-day surroundings. "children" in the play is a chemist-savant, who hopes to make mankind free and happy by means of scientific discoveries and labor-saving appliances. Another is an artist who ardently serves the cause of beauty, believing that morality is merely one of the

an unbiassed observer, equipped with architectural knowledge and highly trained perceptive faculties, but to whom London and Paris were names without definite significance, if invited to inspect and report upon those two capital cities as symbols of the countries they represent? The writer imagines this observer, deprived of all sources of other than visual information, liberated in Paris at midday, in the center of the Place de la Concorde, and allowed to stray for a mile in all directions from that point. He then pictures a repetition of the experiment in London, with Piccadilly Circus or Charing Cross as a center of departure, and acknowledges that the impression, derived from purely ocular evidence, would be "that Paris was, in every sense, the greater city, and the capital of the greater, richer, and more highly civilized empire." Mr. Edward Warren, the writer quoted, goes on to say (in the London Outlook):

"The impression of the broadly proportioned spaces, the fine architectural scale of the buildings, their happy distribution and well-ordered alinement, the finish of detail, the evidences of costly skill and assiduous upkeep, would suggest deliberate intention, obedience to a grand control, and the proud subjection of Art to the imperial ideal.

66

And London-how little could any such impressions be conveyed by the petty scale of her traffic-choked streets, the provincial paltriness of her open centers, the meanness of her public buildings, the haphazard medley of her incongruous façades, or her meager pavements punctuated by mud-spattered lamp-posts! If we are, as foreigners are apt to think us, a stiff and formal people, our formality is little declared in our architecture."

Mr. Warren finds an explanation of this in the theory that the Briton, in his heart of hearts, if he does not detest the town, at least finds his chief pleasures in the country. Enlarging upon this idea, the writer continues:

"This innate rurality impoverishes any civic ideal he may hold, by leading him to regard his capital as a social or commercial necessity, to be put up with as cheerfully as may be; to be endured for a period, with week-end relapses to rusticity, but whose visual presentment is of small importance to him by comparison with that of his own 'little place,' suburban or more definitely rural. This instinct is in sharp contrast to that of the ‘Latin ' peoples, who, for the most part, love the town, its intramural snugness and its social opportunities, and detest, except for an occasional sophisticated exodus, the country and all its attributes."

1744

SCIENCE AND INVENTION.

THE SURVIVAL OF THE UNFIT.

ACCORDING to Darwin's theory of natural selection, pecu

liarities that enable their possessor to gain an advantage in the struggle for existence, ultimately survive and become racial characteristics. A persistent unfavorable peculiarity is impossible under this theory, and if one is found, the theory requires that it be proved to be only apparently so, or that some secondary action negatives selection. In the Archives des Sciences Physiques et Naturelles (Paris, April 15) are described some recent observations bearing on these points, and favorable, on the whole, to the Darwinian theory. The account of these puzzling survivals of the unfit is thus abstracted and commented upon in the Revue Scientifique (Paris, July 29):

'Among the objections that have been advanced to the theory of selection, one of the most important is that many animals, in particular many lepidoptera, present characteristics that are unfavorable to their existence. Species that, according to commonly received ideas, should have been eliminated or at any rate transformed, have not only persisted, but have often considerably increased, in some cases disastrously for man. How shall we explain the persistence of species in the face of unfavorable characteristics? True, it may be said that these so-called unfavorable characters are probably not so much so as we might think, since the species continues to expand while retaining its peculiarities. The legitimacy of the judgment that names such characteristics 'unfavorable' may be called in question. It may also be noted, however, without calling this judgment in question, that, in the case of butterflies in particular, the adult life is so short that there is no time for selection to act. .. The time during which species with injurious peculiarities could be destroyed is too short for a selection to be made.

"On the other hand, butterflies present another difficulty. With dimorphous species, where the two sexes may be very dissimilar, it should be found that one of the sexes is necessarily at a disadvantage with relation to the other, and therefore more exposed to causes of destruction. Now if either one of the sexes is more exposed, the whole species is also exposed. Nevertheless we see many cases of dimorphism in butterflies. Generally the males are transformed in an advantageous direction while the females remain fixed. Why, in the same environment is it the males only that are modified? Experiments made by Arnold Pictet throw light on all these various problems.

"With many species... the males burst their cocoons earlier than the females, issuing from them several days before the latter. The males gain more advantage, therefore, from modification, for the time during which they may be destroyed is longer. Natural selection is therefore able to act; and it does act, for the males are modified. But in the males of the same species are often found important variations in the color of the wings. These may have an advantageous protective coloration, or they may resemble those of the female, which are disadvantageous. This phenomenon ought, theoretically, not to exist, and yet it is often found.

If we pass from the adult insect to the caterpillar, which, as every one knows, has generally a longer life than the adult, we find that with it there are important variations of coloration, and it would be interesting to know whether these variations are useful, whether selection may have some part in them. It seems that it is not without effect, and three reasons may be adduced in support of this view.

"In the first place the variations of which we are speaking are often hereditary and even atavistic; they are of two kinds, albinistic and melanistic [light and dark]. Now, the light caterpillars, which are also the smaller, live under the leaves; they are invisible from above and only slightly so from below, their translucent color merging with the light transmitted by the leaf. The darker ones, which are also the larger, live on the branches, so that their surroundings are darker.

"Secondly, among caterpillars brought up in captivity, where destruction is absent, and where there is no question of the elimination of aberrant types, there are observed many more variations than are found in a state of nature. This would seem to indicate

and in this case most worthily. Mr. Burbank's creations have been noted for the skilful elimination of ob

jectionable features. If seeds are in the way in a fruit, he works patiently for a few years, and lo! we have a seedless prune or apple. The American people are apt at drawing inferences, and in the present instance a sociological application. has been quickly made.

LUTHER BURBANK,

Why not eliminate some of the objectionable features from the human race in the same way? If Burbank gives us a seedless apple, why may he not with equal success produce a "seedless" man -that is, one without moral or physical faults? When this was suggested to Mr. Burbank, he is reported to have answered that to do this very thing had been, and still was, the dream of his life. But is it possible to treat men like seedlings-to select the best and eliminate the rest, as Burbank burns his piles of unsatisfactory plants in huge bonfires? An editorial writer in the San Francisco Call (August 4), points out some of the difficulties in the way. He says:

The "wizard" plant-breeder of America, who may yet add a "seedless" man to the list of his creations.

"The question of stirpiculture has before this occupied the attention of physiologists and biologists. But it was one wiser than the rest who, in discussing juvenile reformation and perfection, said that the only way to reform a boy and make him perfect was by beginning with his grandfather.

44

In developing plants and getting a higher quality of usefulness out of those already subjected to the use of man, and in directing weeds out of their class into the useful class, Mr. Burbank begins with the grandfathers, and even with more remote generations of the plant he is treating and guiding to a higher life. He can not in one season, in one generation, turn a white lily yellow, nor make a seedless prune, nor a walnut that grows like Jack's beanstalk. It is the patient work of many seasons, upon many generations, and by careful selection on a definite line that these marvels are wrought. The same is true in the breeding of cattle and other domestic animals. .

"In all these differentiations of animals and plants the subject was entirely in the control of man. Whole generations of plants were pulled up, killed, and thrown aside, and one was preserved. In perfecting neat cattle whole generations went to the butcher, except a few favored individuals that were saved for the transmission of the desired traits. Whole litters of puppies were sent to the millpond, except one or two that promised results. By pro

longed patience and by the sacrifice of the unfit, results were obtained.

"Who shall be bold enough to say that man can be subjected to the same processes? Regard for individual freedom forbids it. What we call civilization began with man uncounted generations away. It has dealt with the grandfathers, but has not yet perfected the grandsons. Families righteous through many generations have finally produced individuals of the worst sort. Atavism has worked its way, because, unlike plants and animals, man can not be subjected to the will of the stirpiculturist.

"If Mr. Burbank believes that limitation of crime and relief of poverty in this generation is likely to produce better results in the next he is entirely right, and that is just what society is trying all the time to do. If he or any one can direct its efforts more wisely and to greater effectiveness, that direction is needed. Plants and animals we can drive. But man must be led. He will not be driven. We can not even confine the transmission of life to the fittest, morally and physically. The effort to make all more fit is We are persuaded a noble occupation for the philanthropist. that every year it enlists the energies and devotion of more people, and that on the whole, considering the perversity of man, the race is progressing satisfactorily."

IN

AN ARCTIC GAS-FACTORY.

IN the course of a series of measurements of atmospheric carbonic acid which were made by a Danish physicist, Mr. A. Krogh, it appears that in Greenland the air contains twice as much carbonic acid as it does in the regions of the temperate zone. It would seem that this excess of carbonic acid is brought by the north and west winds from an adjoining region where an extensive production or setting-free of carbonic gas is continually taking place. The whereabouts and mechanism of this Arctic gas-works are discussed in La Nature (Paris, July 15) by Mr. Henry de Varigny, who also notes that the proportion of carbonic acid in the atmosphere has recently been found to have an important influence on vegetation, and he examines the bearings of these facts on one another. Says Mr. de Varigny, writing of the gas-laden Arctic province :

As there is no reason to suppose that the region in question is the seat of a special production of carbonic acid, we must suppose that there is a liberation of it in some way; we must believe, for instance, that the water of the deep sea, containing gas at high pressure, gives up when it rises to the surface a great quantity of carbonic acid. It will perhaps be asked what reason there is for believing that gas at high pressure exists in the deep Arctic seas. There is a reason, but it is indirect, and depends on physiological and zoological reasons. It is the fact that along Eastern Greenland the shells of marine mollusks are particularly thick. . . . On the other hand, in the same region, many shells are very thin and fragile and seem to have been attacked chemically. It would seem that some agent is destroying the shells; those alone resist that belong to creatures able to keep up a great increase in their production of lime. Now the only agent contained in sea-water that will dissolve carbonate of lime is carbonic acid; other acids merely decompose the carbonate, setting carbonic acid free. Direct observation strengthens the argument, for Mr. Krogh has shown that in the deep waters of this region the tension of the carbonic acid is very high. . . . On the other hand, in shaliow bays where there is abundant vegetation the tension of the acid is weak; there is plenty of light and the plants absorb much of the acid."

This richness of the deep water in carbonic acid, which might be expressed somewhat oddly by saying that it is a sea of sodawater," would explain, of course, why the gas abounds in the air of the Arctic. Soda-water, when the pressure is relieved, loses its gas in foamy bubbles, and when this deep-sea gas solution gains the surface it does likewise, altho, of course, quietly and unnoticeably, the amount of gas present being extremely small in comparison with that in ordinary carbonated water. This rising to the surface of the gaseous deeper waters is hypothetical, but it must either take place or there must be a superficial cur

But there is also one in our more temperate zone. know... that the living leaf assimilates carbonic acid, that is to say, makes substances with carbon as a base in direct proportion to the partial pressure of this gas in the atmospheric mixture, even when the atmosphere contains 10 to 15 times the normal amount. Small differences in the proportion of carbonic acid in the air thus have an evident influence on the growth of the leaf.

"Now Messrs. Brown and Escombe have shown, by observations made at Kew from 1898 to 1901, that the proportion of carbonic acid in the air varies continually. The extremes at Kew were 2.43 and 3.60 parts in 10,000. In these conditions it is proper to ask whether we should not find in the same region. a correlation between the proportion of carbonic acid and the size of the crops. Doubtless there is such a relation. Probably the amount of carbonic acid at some seasons of the year is unimportant, while at others it is important. And again, for the same crop, the importance may vary according as we desire to obtain, for example, more straw or more grain. In any case, it may be a factor of great importance in agriculture. Perhaps some day we may be able to foretell the autumn crops simply from our knowledge of the proportion of carbonic acid in the air during some particular month or fortnight. We can not now dream of increasing the proportion artificially; we only know, from the investigations of Messrs. Brown and Escombe, that the air is richer in carbonic acid in winter than in summer and during anti-cyclonic periods [the passages of centers of high barometric pressure].

"We can not regulate the movement of high and low pressure centers, and we can not yet direct into the neighborhood of cultivated fields waters from the deep sea that are capable of enriching the air in carbonic acid. But, altho we can not do this, we may at least clear up certain problems and understand certain facts better, and perhaps also turn these to better account.

"From the scientific standpoint, and perhaps practically also, the problems of carbonic acid are surely of great importance."Translation made for THE LITERARY DIGEST.

SEWERAGE SIX THOUSAND YEARS AGO.

THE

'HE dictum that there is "nothing new under the sun," if not quite true, seems often a pardonable exaggeration when we find how many of our modern improvements" are really very ancient. Now it is the sanitary drainage system of ancient Babylonia that is described for us in The Scientific American (August 5) by Prof. Edgar James Banks, field director of the Babylonian expedition of the University of Chicago. Professor Banks tells us that in the excavation of Bismya, the ancient Sumerian or preBabylonian city which flourished 4,500 years ago, a remarkable system of drainage, perfectly adapted to the alluvial plain of the Mesopotamian desert, has been discovered. He writes:

Babylonia is perfectly level; from Bagdad to the Persian Gulf there is not the slightest elevation, save for the artificial mounds or an occasional changing sand drift. In most places there is a crust of hard clay upon the surface, baked by the hot sun of summer time, so hard that it resembles stone. Parts of the desert are perfect for bicycle riding. Beneath the crust, which at Bismya is seldom more than four feet in thickness, and in places entirely lacking, is loose, caving sand reaching to an unknown depth.

'Drainage in such a country, without sloping hills or streams of running water, might tax the ingenuity of the modern builder. In constructing a house, the ancient Sumerian of more than 6,000 years ago first dug a hole into the sand to a considerable depth; at Bismya several instances were found where the shaft had reached the depth of fourteen meters beneath the foundation of the house. From the bottom he built up a vertical drain of large, cylindrical, terra-cotta sections, each of which is provided with grooved flanges to receive the one above. The sections of one drain were fortyeight centimeters in diameter and sixty in height; others were

larger and much shorter; the thickness of the wall was 2.7 centimeters. The tiles were punctured at intervals with small holes about two centimeters in diameter. The section at the top of the drain was semispherical, fitting over it like a cap, and provided with an opening to receive the water from above. Sand and potsherds were then filled in about the drain, and it was ready for use. The water, pouring into it, was rapidly absorbed by the sand at the bottom, and if there it became clogged, the water escaped through the holes in the sides of the tiles.'

The temple at Bismya, we are told, was provided with several drains like these, while one palace had four. Some were found filled with drifted sand; others were half full of the filth of longpast ages; in one at the temple were discovered many terra-cotta drinking-cups, doubtless accidentally dropped in. To quote fur

ther:

"In the Bismya temple platform, constructed about 2750 B.C., we uncovered a horizontal drain of tiles, each of which was about a meter long and fifteen centimeters in diameter, and not unlike in shape those at present employed. It conducted the rain-water from the platform to one of the vertical drains. One tile was so well constructed that for a long time it served as a chimney for our house.

"The Babylonians of a later period, who buried, instead of cremating their dead, carefully provided their cemeteries with drains. The graves were small, house-shaped structures entirely or partly above ground, and whenever they were found upon the sloping side of a mound, they were protected above by a breakwater, while along the sides were square, open brick drains. The result was that some of the graves, altho thousands of years old, and constructed of unbaked clay, are still in a perfect state of preservation.

"To the student of architecture it may be surprising to learn that the arch, until recently supposed to have been unknown to the ancients, was frequently employed by the pre-Babylonians of more than 6,000 years ago. Such an arch, in a poor state of preservation, was, a few years ago, discovered in the lowest stratum, beneath the Babylonian city of Nippur. More recently an arched drain was found beneath the old city of Fara, which the Germans have excavated in central Babylonia. The city, altho one of the earliest known, was built upon an earlier ruin, and provided with an arched drain constructed of small, plano-convex bricks. It measures about one meter in height, and has an equal width.

"While delving among the ruins of the oldest cities of the world, we are thus finding that at the time when we supposed that man was primitive and savage, he provided his home and city with 'improvements' which we are inclined to call modern, but which we are only reinventing."

"What Standfuss has done is this: He has taken the cocoons of central European butterflies and bred them at various temperatures. When the temperature is very low, a butterfly emerges which is quite different in coloration from the species of central Europe and which is exactly like the varieties of that species found in cold climates. On the other hand, when the temperature is high, the same European cocoons produce varieties which are to be found in Sumatra, Ceylon, and other torrid regions. By varying his temperatures, Standfuss has succeeded in breeding butterflies which probably existed thousands of years ago and which are now extinct, as well as butterflies which are without a counterpart on this earth and which would normally have made their appearance thousands of years hence.

'Many species of butterflies are dimorphic-that is, they breed twice in a year, each brood wearing a dress different in color from that of the other. These very divergent forms are constant in nature, the one never transgresses on the other. Still, by breeding the cocoons at temperatures directly opposed to those which would naturally prevail, Standfuss has succeeded in producing the lighter colored form when the darker form was actually flying about in the fields.

"The males of many species have been gorgeously painted by nature, while the corresponding females are unattractively dull. The difference in hue is fully as great as that which prevails between the plumages of a peacock and a peahen. By subjecting the cocoons containing females to high temperature, Standfuss has bred specimens that bear all the colors of the males. Cold, on the other hand, produced males clad in the modest dress of females.

"Are these new varieties permanent? To answer that question

Standfuss conducted an elaborate propagating experiment in a specially constructed enclosed flower-garden, for the purpose of ascertaining whether the offspring of the new varieties inherited the hues of their parents. Unfortunately, disease carried off many of the specimens; rapacious spiders, too, wrought havoc among them. Still, the attempt was not unsuccessful. Altho the few butterflies that did live and breed produced the normal varieties, one butterfly was obtained that did inherit the characteristics of its abnormal mother. This single success is in itself sufficient to prove the possibility of creating permanent new species in a way that is vastly different from the method supposed by Darwin."

THE

STEEL-MAKING BY ELECTRICITY.

'HE use of the electric furnace in the manufacture of steel is arousing much interest, altho steel-makers and engineers seem by no means to be of one mind regarding it. On the one hand, it is claimed that electric smelting will revolutionize the manufacture of structural steels as at present made by Bessemer and the open-hearth process, and, on the other hand, that it can not compete either with the crucible process or the open-hearth furnace. F. W. Harbord, who writes on the subject under the head of "Electric Steel" in The Times (London, August 2; Engineering Supplement), believes that the truth lies between these two extremes, and that the manufacturer who takes advantage, with judgment and knowledge, of the great possibilities of the electric furnace will be in a most exceptional position. He goes on to say:

"During [the past year] very considerable quantities of electric steel have been made both in Sweden and in France, and have been used with most satisfactory results for all classes of tools and cutlery, and for various other purposes for which the highest class crucible steel was formerly employed. . Considerable quantities of this steel have been supplied to Sheffield firms, who have thus been able to convince themselves of its exceptionally high quality. . . . The manufacture of crucible steel for tool purposes, important as it is to the country, owing to the world-wide reputation for quality which it has acquired, is, however, only one comparatively small branch of our great steel industry; and perhaps the most important question is to what extent electric smelting can be employed for the manufacture of the numerous classes of steels between this and ordinary Bessemer, or open-hearth steel."

Even without attempting to compete with the latter quality of steel, Mr. Harbord concludes, there is an immense field for the electric process in the production of steel for tubes, large forgings, axles, tires, special wires, ordnance, and weapons, and especially for dynamos, "in which direction," he says, "the electric furnace promises great things," owing to the great purity of its product, particularly the small percentage of carbon and manganese. He adds:

'Numerous experiments have shown that electric steel is not only extremely pure, but it is also exceptionally homogeneous, and this is a most important point in the manufacture of large steel castings. When it is remembered that, for special purposes, castings, sometimes of 50 to 60 tons, have to be made by mixing the contents of a number of crucibles not containing more than one hundredweight each, the advantages of being able to make steel equal in all respects as to quality, in quantities of 15 tons and possibly more, will readily be apparent.

"That steel made in an electric furnace should possess superior properties to steel of similar composition produced either in a Swedish Bessemer converter or in an open-hearth steel furnace, may seem at first to be claiming a great deal, but such appears to be undoubtedly the fact, and this is due probably to its production in what may be regarded as a practically neutral atmosphere, under conditions in which the occlusion of gases and overoxidation is reduced to a minimum.

'It is frequently urged that the cost of electric energy in this country makes the production of steel in anything like quantities a commercial impossibility; but . . . by using the gas furnace for

the melting, and the electric furnace only for the final operation, the difference in cost, as regards electric energy, will probably be more than met by the lower price of our raw material and our proximity to markets for the sale of the finished product. "In the electric furnace of the Resistance type, the highest-class steel can be made from ordinary English scrap, such as rail ends, but against the saving effected in this direction has to be set the cost of the electric energy required. The electric furnace, even under the best conditions, is not a cheap melter, but as a refining furnace toward the end of the operation, when a very high temperature is required, it is far more efficient; it therefore seems probable that the future development of the electric furnace will be in combination with some form of continuous open-hearth process, in which molten pig-iron is first converted into what we may term 'molten scrap steel' in a gas-fired furnace, and then transferred in the molten state to the electric furnace for final purification. By this means the additional cost over ordinary openhearth steel would be comparatively small, the melting and preliminary refining having been done in the gas-fired furnace, and the electric furnace being employed only to do the final refining at such high temperatures as those at which it alone is able to work most efficiently and economically."

A New Method of Sepulture.-A new method of disposing of the bodies of the dead, which is neither burial nor cremation, has been proposed by Karl Schott, an engineer of Cologne, according to Cosmos (Paris, May 20). He would, in the words of this journal, "reduce the cemetery to its simplest expression" by surrounding the bodies with masses of cement. Says the writer:

"Nothing would be simpler; the coffin itself would be of concrete, reinforced with steel, if you will; it might be made even more simply, for it would serve only as a mold. The coffin is furnished with an opening, through which when the body is interred, is poured a liquid cement that sets rapidly. The hardening is immediate and the body is thus impregnated with silicic acid and lime from the cement, bringing about an actual petrifaction. This is a process of preservation superior to embalming, even to that of the Egyptian mummies. This mode of disposal of the dead evidently involves nothing contrary to the rules of the Church. But the inventor does not stop here; his utilitarianism appears in the proposition to build with these blocks of cement vast monuments that shall be the future cities of the dead. He leaves it to the architects to design artistic forms for these modern hypogea." -Translation made for THE LITERARY DIGEST.

SCIENCE BREVITIES.

"CULTIVATION seems to offer the best prospect for keeping up the supply of rubber in the future," says The Electrical Review (New York, July 29). It is true that there have been some unfortunate undertakings in cultivating rubber, but that this can be accomplished has been pretty well demonstrated, and it is to be hoped that the work will be taken up energetically and in a sound business way at once. There is the greater need for this, as it appears that the production of rubber has passed its limit and is now decreasing."

"THE advantages of the electric light are so evident," says The Electrical Review in an editorial on the illumination of railway cars," that it would seem worth a greater effort on the part of the railway engineer to test out different systems, and to assist in this way in developing a satisfactory one. So far as securing the best results is concerned, no other method can be compared with the electric, and in case of accident it does not introduce any danger. On the other hand, that the gas-lighting systems are hazardous has been only too well demonstrated within the last few months by several bad railway accidents, in which the horror of fire has been added to that of collision. Although it is admitted that the outlook for the electric systems is hopeful, we wish that we could see, in the near future, the end of the gas-lighting systems."

"IN connection with an exhibition to be held next year at Milan," says Nature "there is to be a competition of appliances designed to safeguard against accidents, and the following prizes will be offered: a gold medal and £320 for a new device which will suppress the danger to life coming from a contact formed between the primary and secondary circuits of an electric transformer; a gold medal and £40 for a crane or hoist provided with a simple and practical device preventing the rotation of the cranks on the descent of the load; a gold medal and £20 for a simple, strong, and effective apparatus for automatically stopping cars which are moving upon an inclined plane in case the traction cable should break; a gold medal for a practical device for exhausting and collecting the dust formed during the sorting and cutting of rags by hand; a gold medal for an apparatus for localized exhaust and successive elimination of dust produced during the cardage of flax, tow, hemp, jute, etc.; and a gold medal for an effective device to prevent the diffusion of dust in places where the preparation of lime and cement is carried on. The competition is to be under the auspices of the Association of Italian Industries."