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♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[April 3, 1885. 



large amount of roofing-slate produced, a great deal is used 

 for other building purposes, such as window-sills, steps, 

 floors, and mantels. Billiard-table beds are now made 

 exclusively of slate, and it is also used largely for flagging. 



Most of the quarries are in eastern Pennsylvania — in 

 Northampton and Lehigh counties. More than one-half 

 of the total product of the United States comes from that 

 region. Maine and Vermont produce small quantities. 

 There are also small beds of slate in Michigan and Vir- 

 ginia. The quarries at Bangor, Pa., in Northampton 

 County, are considered superior to any, as the slate is 

 tough, durable, and of an unfading dark, blue-black colour. 

 The quarries there are valued at from 50,000 dols. to 

 500,000 dols. each. 



Over 3,000 men are employed in eastern Pennsylvania, 

 and the number is fast iucreasing, as new quarries are 

 opened and developed. The workmen are mostly Welsh 

 and English. They earn good wages, have comfortable 

 homes, and are a happy, sober, and industrious class. 



The slate is first blasted out, then hoisted by steam- 

 power in large irregular-shaped blocks to the bank. These 

 blocks are then broken or " scalloped " into smaller blocks ; 

 then split into sheets of required thickness. For that pur- 

 pose, a chisel or knife, about 18 in long, resembling a lai-ge 

 putty-knife, is used. The slate splits readily, whenever the 

 knife is put in, if inserted when the block is wet, or "grceu," 

 as it is called. 



The workmen speak of the original moisture in the slate 

 as "sap." After the blocks are dry, they harden and cannot 

 be split. 



After the blocks are split, the sheets are dressed or 

 trimmed with a machine worked by foot-power to the 

 required size, which is from Gin. by 12 in. to 14 in. by 

 2J: in. They are then shipped to all parts of the Union 

 and to the Old World. A great deal of slate goes to 

 Australia. 



When beds are found, the slate is in inexhaustible quan- 

 tities, and improves in quality as the depth of the quaiTy 

 increases. — A^o. Chatauqua News. 



TnE death is annonnced of B. B. Hotchkies, the inventor of the 

 world-famons Hotchkiss machine-gun. 



Probuctio.v of Copper in- the St.ates. — Official statisticg show- 

 that the total production of copper in the United States last year 

 was about 150,(100,000 lb., against 115,500,0001b. in 1883, an in- 

 crease of 30 per cent. The gain -ivas largest in Montana, that terri- 

 tory having turned out 44,500,000 lb. against 24,000,0001b. in 1883. 

 The increase in the Lake Superior region -was 8,800,0001b., and the 

 Arizona 2,700,0001b. 



Sixpenny Telegrams. — In the House of Commons on Monday, 

 Mr. S. Lefevre brought in a Bill to amend the Telegraph Acts, 1803 

 to 1878. He said that it was now arranged that the new tariff 

 should come into effect on Aug. 1 next. The telegraph service had 

 not improved, but very much tho reverse, since 1881, as since that 

 year there had been a reduction in the profit of nearly £200,000. 

 The present tariff led to unnecessary and superfluous work, because 

 under the Telegraph Act of 1808 the address must be sent free. 

 The number of messages now sent by the telegraphic service was 

 24,000,000, the average receipt of each message was one shilling 

 and a penny, while the average cost of each message was tenpence. 

 If the Government gave for sixpence what they now gave for a 

 shilling, that would entail a loss to the department of £050,010 a 

 year. He had, therefore, come to the conclusion that the best tariff 

 both for the public and the department would be one giving twelve 

 words for sixpence and a penny for each additional two words, and 

 that this should include the words in the address. The free address 

 would, in fact, be abolished. The tariff, therefore, would be a word 

 rate of tno words for a penny, at a minimum charge of sixpence. 

 He estimated that the addresses would average five words, which 

 would leave seven words for the message. He believed that tho 

 receipts would be reduced from Is. Id. to lOd. per message, and 

 that the average cost would be reduced from lOd. to SJd. He esti- 

 mated that this reduction would cost £180,000 a year, and that the 

 actual profit would not be more than £250,000. 



eiiitorial ^os^fp. 



Of all the survivals of monkish superstition and me- 

 di;eval folly extant, the shifting about of the Festival of 

 Easter in the Calendar is one of the most senseless and 

 indefensible. Either the momentous event it is intended 

 to commemorate actually occurred — or it did not. If it 

 did not, there is no reason why an arbitrary date should 

 not be fixed to celebrate what is typified. On the other 

 hand, if (as is believed by an overwhelming majority of 

 Christians) that event did actually occur, it must have 

 happened at some specified date, which there should be no 

 insuperable difficulty in recovering. Under existing cir- 

 cumstances Easter Day may fall on March 22 (as it did in 

 1818), or on divers intermediate dates between that and 

 April 2.5 (as it will do next year). Five minutes' consi- 

 deration of the way in which it is fixed will suffice to show 

 how needless this is. Our present mode of determining 

 Easter Day dates from a.d. 325, when the Council of Nice 

 decided that it was "to be kept on the Sunday which falls 

 next after the first Full Moon following March 20," 

 i.e., the date of the Vernal Equinox. Now, any person 

 possessing merely ordinary common sense might imagine 

 from this that he had nothing to do but to look at the 

 Almanac for the first Full Moon sequent on the Sun entering 

 ty^, to find that the Sunday following that must be Easter 

 Day. Oh, dear, no ! Pope Hilarius in a.d. 4G3 took care 

 that no such obvious interpretation as this should be placed 

 upon the rule. That " infallible " potentate decreed that 

 the Paschal Moon should be the fourteenth day of the 

 Moon b}- "the Metonic Cycle." I may perhaps just add 

 here that this Cycle was discovered by Meton, at Athens, 

 B.C. 432, and consists of 235 Lunations (or periods from 

 Full Moon to Full Moon again). 235 Lunations occupy 

 6,939 G9 days, an interval so very close to 19 years of 3G.5-| 

 days each that 322 years must elapse before the Cycle gets 

 a whole day wrong. But quite evidently in 19 years there 

 may be either four or five leap-years whence a day's difference 

 may arise : hence the real Cycle is 4 times 19, or 76 years 

 long. 



But practically we may say that the Full Moon falls on 

 the same days of the same months every 19 years. 

 Hence it will be seen that there are only 19 out of the 30 

 days subsequently to March 20 on which the Equinoctial 

 Moon can be Full, and the "Golden Number" in the 

 Prayer-book indicates that the day against which such 

 number is placed is the day of Full Moim next before 

 Easter Sunday. Moreover this Pa>chal J\Ioon is not the 

 real Full Moon, but, as I have previously said, the 14th 

 day in the Metonic Cycle, and as this does not exactly 

 coincide with any number of years, the Ecclesiastical 

 Moon and the real one may differ by a day or two, and 

 Easter may be five weeks earlier — or later — than it would 

 be if determined by the actual Moon we see in the sky. 

 And even an appeal to the phases of our own Satellite 

 would not help us much under certain circumstances ; for 

 suppose the (real) Moon to be Full at Greenwich two minutes 

 after midnight on March 20, i.e., in the very beginning of 

 the morning of March 21, then, using this real Moon, 

 March 22 would be Easter Sunday at Greenwich. But 

 in Dublin the Moon would evidently be Full at llh. 37m. 

 p.m. on March 20, so that following this precept, the Irish 

 Easter Day would not be celebrated until April 26 ! To 

 which illustration of the hopeless muddle in which we are 

 lauded by any attempt to determine Easter from Lunar 

 Phenomena, I would merely add the obvious inference 

 that if we cannot and do not speedily make it a fixed 



