284 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



annual rainfall, about two thirds, or eighteen 

 inches, are evaporated from the surface, 

 while of the remaining third, four inches 

 serve to maintain the river systems, and five 

 inches pass away as floods and freshets. As 

 the amount of evaporation is nearly a con- 

 stant figure, and the quantity required to 

 maintain effectually the river system neces- 

 sarily remains the same under all conditions, 

 the amount of flood or excess of water great- 

 ly varies. To make good the loss of this sur- 

 plus water, the author proposes that when- 

 ever the water in the river rises above a cer- 

 tain datum height recognized as the gauge 

 of its full service, the excess shall be divert- 

 ed out of the river-course on to filter-beds 

 formed near at hand. The outlet from these 

 filter-beds would be steined shafts or sumps 

 sunk down to the water-level beneath, and 

 into them the filtered water would pass after 

 it was freed from flocculent matter. The 

 steined shafts would be made water-tight and 

 sealed against all surface contamination. 



Monopolies. — In a British Association pa- 

 per on "The Growth of Monopoly, and its 

 Bearing on the Functions of the State," Prof. 

 H. S. Fox well pointed out that, whereas the 

 general expectations of Adam Smith and his 

 contemporaries were that the reforms they 

 advocated would introduce an era of free com- 

 petition and abolish monopoly, a century's ex- 

 perience had shown us that they had merely 

 shifted the basis on which monopoly rested, 

 and given it a secure seat. Liberty had not 

 led to equal'ty. Competition was a transi- 

 tional, not a permanent stage. It merely 

 substituted for monopoly based on privilege 

 monopoly based on natural selection. All 

 the most characteristic tendencies of the age 

 favor the growth of monopoly. Monopolies 

 thus arising were free from many of the de- 

 fects of the old monopolies, and presented 

 advantages over a state of unmitigated com- 

 petition. But they had their special dan- 

 gers, and required appropriate forms of state 

 control. There need be an extension of the 

 objects and principles of state control as 

 generally indicated by Adam Smith and Mill. 

 Whatever might be the case under a competi- 

 tive system, monopolies could not be wholly 

 self-regulating. The modern question was no 

 longer between laissez faire and legislation, 

 but between regulation and collecticism. 



The Telephone Two Hnndred Years ago. 



— How rare it is to discover anything that is 

 entirely new is freshly exemplified to us in 

 what Robert Hooke wrote about what has 

 become the telephone, as far back as 1664, 

 or two hundred and twenty-four years ago. 

 He said : " And as glasses have highly pro- 

 moted our seeing, so it is not improbable 

 but that there may be found many mechani- 

 cal inventions to improve our other senses, 

 of hearing, smelling, tasting, touching. 'Tis 

 not impossible to hear a whisper a furlong's 

 distance, it having been already done ; and 

 perhaps the nature of the thing would not 

 make it more impossible, though that fur- 

 long should be ten times multiplied. And 

 though some famous authors have affirmed 

 it impossible to hear through the thinnest 

 plate of Muscovy glass, yet I know a way by 

 which it is easy enough to hear one speak 

 through a wall a yard thick. It has not yet 

 been examined how far octocoustics may be 

 improved, nor what other ways there may 

 be of quickening our hearing, or conveying 

 sound through other bodies than the air; 

 for that is not the only medium. I can as- 

 sure the reader that I have, by the help of a 

 distended wire, propagated the sound to a 

 very considerable distance in an instant, or 

 with as seemingly quick a motion as that of 

 light ; at least, incomparably swifter than 

 that which at the same time was propagated 

 through the air; and this not only in a 

 straight line, or direct, but in one bended in 

 many angles." 



The Destrnctive White Ant.— There is 

 something terrible in the destruction which 

 the white ant, or termite, is capable of in- 

 flicting on whatever articles of wood it at- 

 tacks. There is, at the South Kensington 

 Museum, what is left of a heavy, square 

 door-lintel of teak-wood, after the ants had 

 operated on it at St. Helena. It was re- 

 duced to a mere skeleton of the heart- wood, 

 looking like a gnarled and knotty smaller 

 limb. Mr. John R. Coryell relates, in the 

 " Scientific American," that he once, in 

 southern China, attempted to have a large 

 hard-wood chest filled with books removed. 

 When the men tried to lift it by the iron 

 handles, it all crumbled and fell to the floor, 

 a heap of dust and splinters ; and the books 

 were in the same condition. The ants are 



