GEOGRAPHIC MISCELLANEA 525 



The area under wheat in Argentina for 1898-'99, from which the crop 

 was recently gathered, has been officially estimated at 6,150,319 acres. 

 No official estimate of production has been received, but its aggregate 

 amount has been put at 70,000,000 bushels. 



Plans are being made for the construction of a tunnel under the Hooghly 

 river at Calcutta. The river at this point is ahout 36 feet deep, and ac- 

 cording to one of the plans the tunnel will pass 12 feet beneath the bed 

 of the river. The length of the tunnel proper will be 6,S75 feet. 



The construction of the Nicaragua canal would reduce by about two- 

 thirds the distance by water from New York to San Francisco. By the 

 Cape Horn route the distance is 14,870 miles, by the Nicaragua route 

 4,916 miles; hence there would be a saving of 9,924 miles — about 26 days 

 time. 



Tins construction of the trans- Alaskan military road, with which Capt. 

 AV. R. Abercromhie, commanding the Copper River exploring expedition, 

 has been so prominently connected, is now completed through the Coast 

 range of mountains into the Copper River valley. It is entirely free from 

 glaciers, and is believed to be as cheap a piece of work as was ever under- 

 taken by the War Department in opening up a new country. 



A Russian author, according to The Independent, appears to have proved 

 in a book recently published that Bering strait was not first discovered 

 by Bering, who found the passage in 1728, but by Semen Deschnef, a 

 Cossack, who was in Siberia from 1638 to 1659, and on his return to Mos- 

 cow reported the existence of the strait, which he had discovered while 

 exploring the country adjoining it on the west. 



The Tide Tables for 1900, issued by the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Sur- 

 vey, contain, for the first time, as a part of the annual tables, the pre- 

 dicted tides for St Michaels, Alaska, during the season of navigation. 

 The times of slack current for each day of the year at Sergius narrows, 

 Peril strait, Alaska, are also given. This is the first time full predictions 

 of slack currents have been made and published for the localities. 



Ax interesting article on the subject of Liverpool and its docks appears 

 in a recent number of the Windsor Magazine. The docks, the most ex- 

 tensive in the world, occupy the north shore of the Mersey for nearly 

 eight miles. Their total water area is 385 acres, affording over 25 miles 

 of wharfage. The largest dock, the Alexandra, covers upward of 33 

 acres. The principal graving dock is 950 feet long and is the largest in 

 the world. 



Tun reports circnlated in several western newspapers during the past 

 month of the breaking up of a tornado at Hennessey, Okl., by the dis- 

 charge of a cannon, has recalled to attention a " tornado breaker " pat- 

 ented by W. S- Blunt, C. E., several years ago. The principle of this ma- 

 chine rested upon the theory that an explosive discharged into the midst 

 <>f an approaching tornado would immediately dissipate the cloud. The 

 Chief of the Weather Bureau emphatically states, however, that the dis- 

 charge of the most powerful cannon would be utterly inappreciable in its 

 effect upon a tornado cloud, and that it is impossible for such clouds 

 to be dissipated by any explosive that man may invent. 



