n in my first
chapter, I invited the reader just to look round his own house and make
an inventory of the German goods it probably contains. I helped him with
a list of the toys in the nursery, the piano in the drawing-room, the
servant's presentation mug in the kitchen, the pencil on the study
table, &c., and then tried to give point and solidity to my little
excursion into the lighter style of writing by enumerating the yearly
national bill which Germany presents to us for these household items.
The correspondent (to use his own admirable verb) "twists" this into the
implication above quoted, and writes as though these were the only
figures I had adduced. Ingenuous, is it not?

THE ALKALI TRADE.

Now to another matter wherein the correspondent has superficially scored
a point, but has done so largely by the process of quoting me in
disconnected bits. I refer to his alkali trade section in the third
article. He quotes two or three sentences of mine commenting on some
startling English export figures I had just given. Then he misses out a
couple of most important pages, and finishes the quotation with two
sentences referring to the increase of German trade. This leaving-out of
the pith of the matter, and the bringing into juxtaposition of two sets
of unrelated semi-rhetorical remarks, gives to the quotation a forced
and rather _non sequitur_ air. The part that was left out is too long
for me to reproduce, but it comprises a number of most pregnant
instances of the havoc wrought in England's alkali trade, and of the
great progress made in the German trade. The correspondent might, with
advantage to the forwarding of public knowledge on the subject, have
made some reference to these facts, even had it cramped the space at his
disposal for inveighing against my "grossly inaccurate impressions."
Here is a case which illustrates the necessity of my appeal to the
reader to go direct to the incriminated book.

THE CHEMICAL MANURE TRADE.

Neither can I admire the correspondent's sudden and peculiar change of
method in dealing with the chemical manure trade. Anyone acquainted with
the trade in sulphate of ammonia knows how the Germans are capturing it,
their estimated annual production amounting now to 100,000 tons. It is
among the most startling instances of Germany's wonderful progress in
her chemical trades. Even the correspondent loses heart, and is fain to
confess the expansion here. But in order that he may at all