200 



SCIENCE. 



LVoL. IX., No. 213 



bounties and tariffs, and the growing effect of 

 directly or indirectly subsidized foreign competi- 

 tion. These are not natural, but artificially cre- 

 ated difficulties. They will increase rather than 

 diminish. To counteract them it is not recom- 

 mended that a like system of import duties be es- 

 tablished, but the minority believe that " a slightly 

 preferential treatment of the food-products of In- 

 dia and the colonies over those of foreign nations 

 would, if adopted as a permanent system, grad- 

 ually but certainly direct the flow of food-grow- 

 ing capital and labor more towards our own de- 

 pendencies and less towards the United States than 

 heretofore. When it it is noted that in the year 

 1884 the Australian colonies, with only 3,100,000 

 inhabitants, purchased £23,895,858 worth of our 

 manufactures, while the United States, with about 

 55,000,000 inhabitants, purchased only £24,424,636 

 worth, it will be apparent how great would be the 

 effect of a policy which should lead to the more 

 rapid peopling of the Australian colonies in giving 

 fuller employment to our working-classes at home, 

 and thus increasing the healthful activity of the 

 home trade, as well as the import of raw materials 

 for our various industries to operate upon." 



It is thought that "specific duties, equal to 

 about ten per cent on a low range of values, im- 

 posed upon the import from foreign countries of 

 those articles of food which India and the colo- 

 nies are well able to produce, would sufficiently 

 effect this purpose. Their adoption would, of 

 course, involve the abolition of the heavy duties 

 on tea, coffee, cocoa, and dried fruits, which are 

 now levied on Indian and colonial, equally with 

 foreign, produce. It would widen the basis of our 

 revenue, and render us less dependent upon the 

 sustained productiveness of the income-tax and the 

 duties upon intoxicating liquors ; and, what is 

 even more important, it could not fail to draw 

 closer all portions of the empire in the bond of 

 mutual interests, and thus pave the way towards 

 a more effective union for common objects. For 

 there would be no exclusion of foreign food-pro- 

 ducts : they would come in on payment of the 

 duty named ; and we are convinced, that, if any 

 effect were produced upon the prices of the articles 

 in question, it veould be very slight indeed, and 

 limited in duration to the time required, under 

 the stimulus of preferential treatment, to increase 

 the production of them in India and the colonies." 



Besides this, a duty of 2s. 4d. per hundredweight 

 on sugar is advocated to offset the sugar bounties. 

 "Its effect would be to restore to the producers of 

 sugar incur colonies and in India, and to the re- 

 finers in this country, the just right of competi- 

 tion on practically equal terms, and to transfer to 

 our own exchequer the export bounties given by 



foreign nations. The position of the British con- 

 sumer would be the same as if we had by negoti- 

 ation obtained an equivalent reduction of the 

 bounties, while in his quality of tax-payer he 

 would be a gainer by the diversion of foreign 

 money into our exchecquer so long as the bounty- 

 receiving importations continued." 



These are the main features of the reports 

 which have been looked for with considerable in- 

 terest by the commercial classes and economists 

 both in this country and in England. How far 

 future legislation will embody their recommen- 

 dations, and how successful they wiU be if enacted 

 into laws, remains to be seen. 



As a substitute for gunpowder, dynamite, or 

 other explosive requiring ignition, Dr. Kosman 

 proposes, for use in mines containing inflammable 

 gases, cartridges filled with dilute sulphuric acid 

 and zinc-dust (the mixture of finely divided zinc 

 and zinc oxide that collects in the condensers of 

 the zinc retorts). The cartridge-case is a glass cylin- 

 der divided into two chambers, one beingfour times 

 the capacity of the other. The larger chamber 

 contains the acid, the zinc-powder being placed in 

 the other when the cartridge is about to be used. 

 The cartridge is inserted in the shot-hole in the 

 usual manner, a ' shooting-needle ' being first passed 

 through the zinc-powder to a plug in the partition 

 separating the two chambers. The shot-hole is 

 them tamped in the ordinary way, the end of the 

 needle projecting at the surface. A tap on the 

 needle displaces the plug and breaks the glass par- 

 tition, when a rapid evolution of hydrogen takes 

 place with sufficient expansive power to do the 

 work of the explosive cartridge, but without its 

 danger. 



— General Lefroy, formerly director of the 

 Toronto observatory, who is considered to be the 

 best authority on terrestrial magnetism in Canada 

 and the British possessions, pays the following 

 compliment to the work done by the United States 

 in tbis direction : " The United States appear to 

 be in advance of most European countries in cur- 

 rent knowledge of the facts of the earth's mag- 

 netism, but the magnetic survey of the British 

 Islands is again in progress, and we shall soon be 

 up to date again." In this connection it may be 

 well to state that France has just made a magnetic 

 survey of its area, and in England the third one 

 is now being made ; central Europe had but one 

 magnetic survey ; the Russians are alive to this 

 important work ; and Japan has just completed a 

 fine survey, 200 stations occupied, with the curious 

 result of a connection of the magnetic curves 

 with the lines of folding of the geological strata. 



