As a result of three years research, Prof. Burgess, of Wisconsin University, aided by an assistant, has, it is said, found a method of making pure iron at a cost of a cent a pound. The process is stated to be somewhat similar to that of refining copper electrically. Pure iron, on account of its electrical properties, is very valuable, and in great demand for the construction of electrical apparatus.

Paper stockings and gloves are now said to be in progress of manufacture. They are said to last as long as those made from more ordinary materials, which is not saying very much.

There is at Durango, Mexico, a great mass of iron ore which has figured in story and fable for 300 years, and was thought to be a meteorite by Humboldt, who, however, did not quite reach Durango in his explorations. Mr. Le Roy, the United States consul at Du-rango, now reports that the mass proves to be a remarkable dyke emerging from a rocky plain at the elevation of 6,300 ft., rising from 400 ft. to 650 ft. in itself, and forming a mass of iron ore a mile long and one-third of a mile wide. It has been calculated that it contains 500 to 600 million gross tons above the surface, while there are no means of knowing what may be below. The ore is a hard specular hematite, with, on an average, 60 per cent of metallic iron, much of it going up even to 67 per cent.

The Niagara Falls electricial output is so enormous, that nearly one-half of the horse power required to operate the vast amount of machinery within the limits of Buffalo City comes from this one source. And yet the present system of supplying electrical energy from Niagara Falls to Buffalo was inaugrated barely five years ago.

The system of identification by finger prints, which was introduced into use recently, has been used in Korea for many centuries in the deeds for the sale of slaves. The slave was required to place her hand - all the slaves were women - upon the sheet of paper on which the deed was written, and the outlines of the fingers and thumb were traced, after which an ink impression of each of the fingers was taken.

The preservation of creosoted piles is very striking. Some of those driven in 1876 as piers for iron bridges in the neighborhood of New Orleans are today in perfect condition, whereas the metal bridges which, they support have now to be renewed.

Water is nearly incompressible, but for all that, says Professor Toit, if the water in the ocean were not compressed as it is by its own weight, the level of the sea would be 116 feet higher than it is at present. In that case, 2,000,000 square miles of what is at present dry land would be submerged.

Prof. John Milne has suggested that the displacement of the position of the earth's poles, which is of an irregular kind, and which can be traced to no known law, may be due to movements of the earth's crust, and that, therefore, the magnitude of the change in position of the poles might be expected to correspond in some way to the number and frequency of great earthquakes.