e squeezed out of the neediest, most hard-working of our
population $1,563,000 taxes on their "daylight" or window tax, which has
gone into the Treasury; but we have squeezed at least $5,000,000 more
and put it into the pockets of people who made similar glass. Our
Pan-American guests may reflect on the above statistics and come to the
conclusion that having flourishing window-glass industries may, after
all, not be the highest blessing.

I beg to assure Mr. Carnegie that I am "not" a grumbler, as I don't want
to run the risk of having the door of heaven shut in my face when he
succeeds St. Peter in office.

* * * * *

THE NATURAL-GAS SUPPLY.--At the recent meeting in New York of the
American Geological Society, Prof. Edward Orton, State Geologist of
Ohio, and a professor in the State University, in his paper answered
those who claim that the great natural gas fields of the country are
practically inexhaustible, and that nature is manufacturing the gas by
chemical combination in the subterranean cavities as rapidly as it is
consumed by man at the surface. He claimed that the supply of natural
gas in those States was not only limited, but was being exhausted very
rapidly and would be drained in less than nine years. The gas, he said,
is now being used as the basis of a varied line of manufactures, the
annual products of which aggregate many millions of dollars, and it is
driving, besides the iron and steel mills of Pittsburgh, potteries and
brick works, over forty glass furnaces and a long list of factories in
which cheap power is a desideratum. The gas is the product of ages,
which has been accumulated in the porous limestone of Ohio and Indiana.
It has been produced so slowly that when once exhausted it will take
many thousands of years for it to again accumulate in sufficient
quantities to be used, even if the elements necessary for its production
were preserved, which he thought was not at all probable. The pressure
which forces the gas out with such tremendous power that it sometimes
reaches 1,000 pounds pressure per square inch, is not due to the
pressure of the gas itself, but to the hydrostatic pressure brought to
bear by the column of salt water that enters the porous stratum of rock
containing the gas at the sea-level, and which by its weight tends to
force the gas out. To the explanation and elucidation of this
phenomenon, Professor Orton's paper was more especially devoted. Th