402 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



ware and kitchen vessels. In Germany it has been introduced 

 experimentally into the equipment of soldiers. Its alloy with the 

 rare metal titanium, while still light, is very hard and tough. 

 Could not picks, hayonets, sabers, and mess plates, imposing 

 lighter loads on foot-soldiers, be made of it ? The Russian army 

 tried horseshoes of aluminum, and the horses of the Finnish 

 dragoons, on which the experiment was made, are said to have 

 gained perceptibly in speed by it. It has been introduced into 

 machines, to reduce the dead weight a gain of special value for 

 aerial navigation and for cyclers. A canoe entirely of aluminum, 

 hull and machinery, has been launched on the lake of Geneva, 

 and suggests a new resource for the bold explorers of rivers with 

 numerous rapids in Africa and elsewhere. Its application to 

 aerostats is talked of. 



The supposition is consistent with past experiences that new 

 wants will arise as the means of satisfying them increase, and 

 that the new metal, without infringing upon the domains of its 

 predecessors, will in some way create the uses for which it will be 

 employed. A salient fact in the history of the aluminum in- 

 dustry is the rigorously scientific character of the progressive 

 steps in the discovery and production of the metal. Nothing has 

 come about by chance, but all is the work of human intelligence. 

 Translated for The Popular Science Monthly from the Revue des 



Deux Mondes. 







ELISEE RECLUS AND HIS OPINIONS. 



By Miss HELEN ZIMMERN, 



EDITOR OF THE FLOKENCE GAZETTE. 



IT is strange how sometimes two men distinctly different seem 

 to reside in the same person. Who would believe it at first 

 sight that Elisi^e Reclus, the eminent geographer, the careful, accu- 

 rate, and scientific writer, should also be an anarchist of the most 

 pronounced and uncompromising type the man who actually re- 

 gards Ravochal, the perpetrator of the outrage last winter at the 

 Cafd Very at Paris, as a great man who died for his principles 

 without betraying his friends ? This great, large-brained enthusi- 

 ast and kindly human being has unfortunately got this bee in 

 his bonnet, a moral twist, that hinders him from seeing that the 

 wrongs of mankind can not be righted by laws or lawlessness, 

 but are inherent in the very constitution of our globe and of our 

 imperfect organization. In a perfect world, with perfect inhab- 

 itants, a perfect society, perfect conditions would follow as a 

 necessary corollary. But when a great man goes astray it is al- 

 ways interesting to try and discern the why and wherefore. It 

 is on this account that in this article we deal rather with Reclus 



