In Algeria, steps are now being taken for the production on a large scale of natural soap from the tree known as Sapindus utilis. This tree, which has long been known in Japan, China, and India, produces a fruit which, when ripe, is about the size of a chestnut, smooth and plump. The color varies from yellowish-green to brown, and the inside is of a dark color and contains an oily kernel. If carefully chosen, a cutting from this tree in the course of two years reaches the height of 6 ft. It does not, however, reach maturity until its sixth year, when it bears from 25 to 100 kilogrammes of fruit, which are ready for picking towards the end of autumn. The methods of treating the fruit to obtain from it its saponaceous properties are varied, water or alchohol being generally used.

It is reported that some students of Missouri University, at Columbia, Mo., have discovered that if an ordinary telephone transmitter be connected in a certain manner with an electric arc lamp, the latter will produce whatever sounds are made before the transmitter, and with greatly amplified volume. The arc lamp appears to act as a giant receiver, reproducing speech, shouts, laughter, etc., with immense volume.

It is stated that during the recent conflagration at Baltimore, a watchman remained locked in a bank vault located in a building which was burned to the ground. It was the custom to lock the watchman in the vault Saturday night, with food sufficient to last till Monday. The fire prevented his release; when the debris was cool enough to admit of opening the vault on Tuesday, the watchman came out smiling.

Mr. Blaikie declares that if every schoolhouse had a simple running track just around it or in its basement, asphalted like those in some of the later up-to-date schools in New York City, and, if every pupil ran there at a moderate pace for five minutes each day, it would do more for the American lungs and American health than all the other minutes in the day put together now do.

The gasoline engine is rapidly replacing steam as a motive power for automobiles and launches, as shown by recent exhibitions of same.

The power of a steam engine should not exceed requirements if economy is to be studied. "Power" says that in reading accounts of steam engines one constantly finds statements that the engines supplied by a certain firm are capable of an overload of, it may be, 20 or 30 per cent. But if an engine rated at 100 H. P. will actually work at 130 H. P. with equal economy, it is clear that the engine has been wrongly rated. The value of a machine depends upon its economy, efficiency, and durability, and there is no worse fault than that exemplified in the phrase "making it big enough," meaning usually too big. Many a steam engine if smaller would do its work with better economy. Sometimes a man gets hold of an engine which is in first cost really cheap, being perhaps half the price of an engine of half the power; but it is really dear to him, for it is losing heat in excessive radiation, and wastes every year more in coal than was saved in the first cost.