so many remarkable surprises, be inclined to question the
possibility of any further material change in the distributing system.
Improvements in the translating devices, such as lamps, may add
enormously to the capacity of the distributing system per unit of
light; but it does seem to me that the system itself, as originally
conceived, is to a large extent a permanency. Should any great
improvements take place in the medium employed for turning electrical
energy into light, the possible effect on cost, and consequently
selling price, would be enormous.

* * * * *

THE PROPOSAL of Gov. Black, which has now become law, to depute to
Cornell the care of a considerable tract of forest land, and the duty
of demonstrating to Americans the theory, methods and profits of
scientific forestry, has a curious appropriateness much commented on
at the university, since two-thirds of the wealth of Cornell has been
derived from the location and skillful management of forest lands, the
net receipts from this source being to date $4,112,000. In the course
of twenty years management the university has thrice sold the timber
on some pieces of land which it still holds, and received a larger
price at the third sale than at the first. The conduct of this land
business is so systematized that the treasurer of the university knows
to a dot the amount of pine, hemlock, birch, maple, basswood and oak
timber, even to the number of potential railroad ties, telegraph poles
and fence posts on each fourth part of a quarter section owned by
Cornell. Certainly, Cornell is rich in experience for the business
side of a forestry experiment such as Gov. Black proposes. The
university forest lands from which its endowment has been realized are
in Wisconsin.

* * * * *

Books may be called heavy when the qualifying term is not applied to
their writers, but to the paper makers. It is falsifications in the
paper that give it weight. Sulphate of baryta, the well known
adulterate of white lead, does the work. A correspondent, writing to
The London Saturday Review, gives the weight of certain books as: Miss
Kingsley's "Travels in Africa." 3 pounds 5 ounces; "Tragedy of the
Caesars," 3 pounds; Mahan's "Nelson" (1 vol.), 2 pounds 10 ounces;
"Tennyson" (1 vol.), 2 pounds 6 ounces; "Life and Letters of Jowett"
(1 vol.), 2 pounds 1 ounce. To handle these dumb-bell books, The
Saturday Review advises that