found that when they were subjected to the current for only two minutes the rapidity of their growth was nearly doubled. Electrifying the earth in which vegetables were grown had also a prodigious effect, the harvest of roots being four times superior to the ordinary, and that of the leaves, etc., two or three times.

In France the De Meriten system of treating wines by passing currents of electricity through them has been officially tested, and reported on favorably. This treatment is found to mellow and preserve healthy wines, and to arrest deterioration in those beginning to give way. Alcohol has also been experimented with, showing a considerable hastening of the maturing processes, the objectionable fusel oils, which render new spirits almost undrinkable, being rapidly converted into complete alcohols. Another industrial purpose to which electricity has been applied of late is tanning, in which it much shortens the time required in the ordinary way. Some measure of success has also attended experiments in purifying sewage by its use.

The well-known attraction which light has for fish has induced ingenious fishermen to utilize the electric light as a bait, and it is said that this never fails to bring together large shoals of fish, which swim round the illuminated globe, and are easily caught.

The ingenious Yankee is never be hindhand in odd adaptations, and a patent has been taken out in the States for a mechanical pickpocket and coat-thief detector-an electrical apparatus which automatically rings an alarm bell when the bearer's personal property is tampered with. Another inventive genius so combined electricity and photography as to secure a flash-light photograph of thieves at work in his office. When they opened a glass case, they completed an electric circuit which exposed the camera, and simultaneously kindled the flash-light, to the great alarm of the depredators.

There was recently exhibited to the Royal Society an automatic harbor watchman, named the "hydrophore,"

which is so constructed that when a torpedo boat approaches within half a mile, or a man-of-war within a mile, the vibrations of the screw-propeller are detected and transmitted to the signalling station.

Electricity has further been used in the industrial processes of engraving, bleaching, dyeing, the reduction of ores, and the purification of metals. Mainly by its aid, aluminium can now be produced at a price which is no longer prohibitive. Prior to 1855 it sold at three hundred and sixty shillings per pound; by 1862 it had fallen to twenty shillings per pound, while now it costs only a shilling or two. The cheapest chemical methods of producing it cannot compare with the electrical. By the use of electricity for welding, what is in effect a new power has been put into the hands of mechanicians and constructors. It was formerly considered that only iron, steel, and platinum could be firmly welded, while now nearly every known metal and alloy has been successfully welded by the help of electricity.

An electric ventilator has been devised for supplying buildings with fresh air, cold or warm, as may be desired. An electric motor sets the ventilator revolving, and the revolution sucks cool air in. When warm air is desired, a current of electricity is sent into a network of fine wire, through which the air must pass, heating the wires, and these impart their heat to the air.

66

For the detection of underground ores an electrical finder" has been devised. The mechanism of this instrument includes a telephone, which is silent in the absence of metal or magnetic ore; but if such be present, induced currents arise, which produce sounds in the telephone which are recognizable by experts.

What should prove a most useful industrial development is the application of electricity to the cleansing and preservation of boilers. The method employed is the sending of currents periodically through the shell of the boiler. By this means the scale formed on the shell and tubes is disintegrated and easily removed.-Chambers's Journal.

Tennyson's poetry, came appropriately on December 31st to the canto in "In Memoriam," the farewell to the old year-"Ring out, wild bells." Dr. Brooke, though he is certainly no laudator temporis acti, nevertheless thinks that the pleasures, alike of rich and of poor, are less simple than they were twenty years ago. There is, he says, an efflorescence of sensuality in amusements, in literature, and in art; and even in religion there is a sensuousness which is itself the child of excitement. Dr. Brooke declaimed, in his gentle way, against a world "which believes that man is half beast and half fool." He is specially severe on the decadent poets. Their verse he characterized as mean bowlings and cynic chillness," and added that the poetry that liked to sing of decay carried its doom within itself. He was confident, however, that great poets would

come soon.

"SELF-HELP" has been translated into every European language, including Czech, Croatian, and Turkish, and also into Japanese. In England alone about 180,000 copies of the book have been sold.

The

CARLYLE'S BIRTHPLACE AT ECCLEFECHAN.The house at Ecclefechan, and the room in which Thomas Carlyle was born on December 4th, 1795, are tended with pious care. furnishings of the tiny rooms, the bric-a-brac, and prints-to which there has recently been added a portrait group, consisting of Carlyle, his brother Robert, and his lifelong friend, Provost Swan, of Kirkaldy-enhance the oldworld aspect of the interior, which remains almost exactly in the condition it was a century ago. During the twelvemonth ending September 16th, as many as 580 persons have visited the place of Carlyle's birth. Of that number, two were Chinese, two Germans, one Frenchman, two Australians, and fourteen Americans. The house at Cheyne Row, Chelsea, where he lived so long, has a tablet on the outside to mark it.

"MARCELLA," Mrs. Humphry Ward's new story, which is to be published in England by Messrs. Smith & Elder, and in New York by Messrs. Macmillan, will be a shorter novel than " David Grieve," although, like it, it will be divided into four books.

A copy of Dickens's works, the de luxe edition in thirty volumes, was sold under the hammer last week for £11 10s. The auction

value of these once-coveted editions of books seems to be declining.

THE new volume of "The Canterbury Poets," which will be published toward the end of April, is to be an anthology of nature poems, edited by Mrs. E. Wingate Rinder. Unlike most compilations of the kind, it is to consist, not of a series of merely descriptive pieces, but of complete poems, interpretative rather than descriptive. Mrs. Wingate Rinder's idea has been favorably received, and she has already secured the assistance of many writers

of note. The selections are to be from the writings of living poets only, as the aim of the anthology is to exemplify the nature poetry of the later Victorians."

MR. FREDERICK DOUGLASS, the negro orator, and late United States minister in San Domingo, has, it seems, written an introduction for a translation of the life of Toussaint L'Ouverture by the late M Victor Schoelcher. The translation will be by Mr. Theodore Stanton, an American journalist in Paris.

THE famous story-writers of to-day, except the women, began life in other walks than literature. It is significant that most of them started in journalism-Kipling, Howells, Black, Matthews, Sullivan, Stockton, French, Farjeon, Barrie, and David Christie Murray. Conan Doyle was a doctor. Stevenson was an engineer. Walter Besant was a college professor. Thomas Hardy and Hall Caine were architects. Jerome K. Jerome was a plain every-day clerk.

Ar a sale at Messrs. Puttick & Simpson's the five volumes of the first edition of Mr. Ruskin's "Modern Painters" fetched £8 15s. ; 'Missale ad Usum Sarum" (Paris, 1515), £23; Savage Landor's "Poems" (1795) and “ "Simonidea" (1806), first editions, £16 7s. 6d. ; a Ms. collection of poems by Thomas, Lord Fairfax (about 1670), £5 5s.; Clarendon's "Rebellion," 4 vols., large paper, illustrated with 400 portraits, £21; Allot's "England's Parnassus" (1600), £10 15s.; and a vellum Latin Ms. Bible, written in a minute and clear hand (1400), £9 5s.

COUNT TOLSTOI, the novelist and philanthropist, recently said he is now able to live on five copecks, or two cents per day. When he ate meat the daily cost was $1.50, but now that he is a vegetarian his wants of the stomach are

abundantly supplied at one seventy-fifth of his former extravagance.

STATISTICS prepared in Paris show that the proportion of novels to serious works read in

the public libraries of the municipality is less than fifty-two per hundred. Of 1,583,000 volumes circulated from the district library rooms, only 817,000 were novels. Among the authors in popularity, Alexandre Dumas ranks first and Emile Zola eleventh.

MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN is going to bring out two volumes of short stories, one by the author of "The Heavenly Twins," the other by Mr. Zangwill. The former is to bear the title " Our Manifold Lives," the latter "The King of Schnorrers: Grotesques and Fantasies."

As instances of swiftness in literary production, it may be mentioned that Mr. Haggard does his 4000 words at a sitting; Mr. David Christie Murray thinks nothing of writing a three-volume novel in five weeks, and Mr. Henty has just been confessing to an interviewer that he produces his stories at the rate of 6500 words a day.

MISCELLANY.

CURIOSITIES OF DIAMONDS.-Since it was discovered that diamonds consist of pure carbon there is hardly any chemist who has not performed more or less extensive experiments and investigations into the nature and origin of this most highly valued of precious stones. These researches, however, have gone on in secret, and the common ear has seldom heard that there have been-and, for aught we know to the contrary, are yet-diamond seekers in the modern laboratory. That the results of such experiments have been published by few is no proof that few experiments have been made, for human nature and vanity prefer silence to publicity, where investigations have failed and hopes been disappointed. It was not only the incomparable splendor of this king of gems, and its being of such enormous value, that led chemists anxiously to experi. mentalize upon the origin of the diamond; but its isolation from every other substance in many other respects rendered the inquiry a peculiarly fascinating undertaking. anomalous composition of the gem, the singular localities in which it is discovered, and its unique physical characters, all seemed to set speculation in activity and at defiance.

The

The general physical qualities of the diamond are so well known that we may be very brief in their description. The figure of the stone varies considerably; but most com.

monly it is a hexagonal prism, terminated by a six-sided pyramid. When pure it is colorless and transparent. In its natural state it is covered with a dullish crust, often of a muddy color, on the removal of which the brilliant jewel beneath flashes forth in all its characteristic lustre. Its specific gravity is from 3.44 to 3.55. It is one of the hardest substances in nature, and as it is not affected by a considerable heat, it was for many ages considered incombustible. Pliny says, if laid on an anvil and struck with a hammer, the anvil will inevitably split, and in many instances the diamond has been known to indent the steel. Sir Isaac Newton, observing that combustibles refracted light more powerfully than other bodies, and that the diamond possessed this property in great perfection, suspected from that circumstance that it was capable of combustion at a very high temperature. This singular conjecture was verified in 1694, by the Florentine academicians, in the presence of Cosmo III, Grand Duke of Tuscany. By means of a powerful burning-glass they were able to destroy several diamonds. Singularly enough, Sir H. Davy employed the same lens many years afterward to effect the same purpose, directing the rays upon a diamond placed in a jar of oxygen gas. Francis I., Emperor of Germany, witnessed the destruction of several large diamonds by means of the burning-glass; and these experiments were repeated by Rouelle, Macquer, and D'Arcet, who proved conclusively that the stone was not merely evaporated, but actually burned, and that if air was excluded it underwent no change. Diamonds are not all the pure unsullied gems which glitter in our jewels; they appear in a variety of colors, some of which enhance, while others detract from, their value. Sometimes it is tinged with blue, yellow, green, or a beautiful rose color, and frequently it is brown, or dull yellow.

As usual upon disputed points, speculation has been busy about the origin of the diamond, and a large number of theories, all more or less probable, have been propounded to set the matter at rest. The two most reasonable expositions are, perhaps, the explanations put forward by M. Parrot and Baron Liebig. The former scientist, who has laboriously investigated the perplexing subject, is of opinion that the diamond arises from the operation of