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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



St. John is good dry land fit for settlement. 

 The Nottaway at the crossing point is four- 

 teen hundred and fifty feet wide, and ad- 

 mits bridge spans of five hundred feet. 

 Thence, a direct line to Norway House, at 

 the foot of Lake Winnipeg, would pass 

 through the gypsum beds on Moose River, 

 and give access to a vast area of rich agri- 

 cultural land in the north part of the prov- 

 ince of Quebec. The straight line continued 

 would strike about the forks of the Peace 

 and Smoky Rivers, near the center of the 

 northwest wheat-growing region, and thence 

 follow the valleys of the Peace and Skeene 

 Rivers to the Pacific Ocean, crossing the 

 Rocky Mountains at a point where the sum- 

 mit is two thousand feet lower than that 

 of the Canadian Pacific Railway. As to 

 the resources of this northwestern country, 

 there are, according to a Dominion official 



report, an area of six hundred and fifty-six 

 thousand square miles along the Mackenzie 

 River suitable for the growth of potatoes, four 

 hundred and seven thousand suitable for bar- 

 ley, and three hundred and sixteen thousand 

 for wheat, with a pastoral area of eight hun- 

 dred and sixty thousand square miles, two 

 hundred and seventy-four thousand miles of 

 which may be regarded as arable land. " The 

 difference in latitude makes no corresponding 

 difference in the climate. Flowers bloom as 

 early in the spring and as late in autumn at 

 Great Slave Lake as at Winnipeg or St. 

 Paul and Minneapolis. The prevailing south- 

 west or Chinook winds render the climate 

 along the Peace and Liard Rivers as mild and 

 salubrious as that of western Ontario. 

 Wheat ripens along the Mackenzie River 

 under the Arctic Circle, a thousand miles 

 farther north than Rupert House." 



MINOR PARAGRAPHS. 



Mr. W. H. Huddleston, in his presiden- 

 tial address to the Geological Section of the 

 British Association, spoke of the geology of 

 the southwest of England, and began with 

 supporting the claim of Bristol, where the 

 association was meeting, to be regarded as 

 the cradle of British geology, and even more ; 

 for, he said, Devonshire, Cornwall, and 

 West Somerset first attracted the attention 

 of the Ordnance Geological Survey. " Thus 

 it comes to pass that the region which lies 

 between the Bristol Channel and the Eng- 

 lish Channel claims the respect of geologists 

 in all parts of the world, not only as the 

 birthplace of stratigraphical paleontology, 

 but also as the original home of systematic 

 geological survey. The city of Bristol lies 

 on the confines of this region, where it 

 shades off northwestward into the Palaeozoics 

 of Wales and northeastward into the Meso- 

 zoics of the midland counties." 



A committee of the English Society of 

 Arts, appointed to inquire into the matter, 

 attribute the doubtful quality of modern 

 paper to " revolutionary " changes which the 

 industry has undergone, including the intro- 

 duction of new substances of varying quali- 

 ties and chemical properties, in the working 

 up of which there is still room for much im- 

 provement. The committee have examined 

 many books, as evidence, on the question of 



the deterioration of paper. They distinguish 

 two tendencies — to disintegration and to dis- 

 coloration—which are independent but may 

 be concurrent effects, and are notably con- 

 current in papers containing mechanical 

 wood pulp. Disintegration, which has been 

 brought to light in papers of all grades, is 

 generally the result of chemical changes in the 

 fibers, produced by acids in the rag papers, 

 and by oxidation in the papers made of me- 

 chanical wood pulp. Discoloration of ordi- 

 nary cellulose papers, as distinguished from 

 papers containing mechanical wood pulp, is 

 dependent upon the quality of the sizing, 

 and particularly the proportion of rosin in it. 

 The committee define as the normal standard 

 of quality for book papers, required for pub- 

 lications of permanent value, fibers not less 

 than seventy per cent of the cotton, flax, 

 and hemp class, sizing not more than two per 

 cent rosin, the paper to be finished with the 

 normal acidity of pure alum, and the loading 

 to be not more than ten per cent mineral 

 matter. 



Colonel G. E. Church, president of the 

 Geographical Section of the British Associa- 

 tion, pointed out in his opening address, 

 which was on Argentine geography and the 

 ancient Pampean Sea, that the drainage area 

 of the Plata basin was, according to Dr. 

 Bludan, 1,198,000 square miles, or more than 



