Dat. Neer. 
FRIDAY, MARCH 21, 1884. 
COMMENT AND CRITICISM. 
Tue work of the census has again, and for 
the third time, come to a stop for lack of money. 
This time the suspension is more serious than 
ever, the working-force being reduced to the 
chief clerk, who is also acting superintendent, 
and an assistant. The public printer has been 
notified to stop printing the reports; and, un- 
less some extraordinary step is taken, the whole 
work of the bureau for four months to come 
will be confined to opening the daily mail. 
Several volumes of the final report have been 
published, and have been received with un- 
qualified satisfaction, both here and in Europe ; 
demonstrating, as they do, that this census is 
the most complete and the best organized ever 
yet attempted by any nation. The remaining 
fifteen or twenty volumes are understood to be 
ready for printing. The causes of delay are 
two,—the modesty of the superintendent in 
his requests to Congress for money, and the 
overcrowded state of the government printing- 
office. Surely Congress will not refuse to make 
apropriations of the most liberal dimensions to 
carry on this work, and to secure the printing 
of the reports before they have lost part of their 
interest through age. Let the demand be for a 
quarter of a million, if necessary ; and let the 
office staff be increased in efficiency by the ap- 
pointment of a special staff of experienced edit- 
ors, who shall aid the superintendent in bring- 
ing the publication to an early termination. 
Tue fourth number, for March, of the pilot 
chart of the North Atlantic Ocean, issued by 
the Hydrographic office, differs from the earlier 
sheets of the series, notably in the number 
of icebergs reported for February south-east of 
Newfoundland. An aberrant berg appears 
about three hundred miles west-south-west of 
Ireland, in latitude 51°, longitude 18° west. In 
No. 59. — 1884. 
the legend concerning the weather reported for 
February, we are glad to see the term ‘ straight- 
line gale’ of the previous charts reduced to the 
more non-committal ‘ gale ;’ but the absence of 
‘cyclones’ is still insisted upon. Whatever be 
the meaning attached to this word by mari- 
ners, its ordinary use to include all large rotary 
storms, whether from within the tropics or not, 
is now so general and so proper, that the re- 
peated statement, ‘no cyclones are reported ’ 
for the winter months of the stormy North 
Atlantic, surely needs qualification. The in- 
tention is, no doubt, to state that no tropical 
cyclones have come up along our coast from 
the West Indies: if so, it should be more ex- 
plicitly worded. 
The compilation of observations on wrecks 
and abandoned vessels promises valuable re- 
sults for the determination of currents. In 
only four months’ records, over sixty exam- 
ples are given, in many cases identified by 
name, and in a few cases reported by two or 
more observers on different dates. When the 
wrecks are floating almost awash, presenting 
little surface for the wind to blow upon, they 
will move only with the surface-drift, and, as 
noted in sucessive positions, will give excellent 
data for measuring the direction and velocity 
of currents. By thus keeping track of their 
movements, it will be possible to avoid the 
error of the old-fashioned bottle-experiments, 
in which only the beginning and end of the 
course were determinable, and time of passage 
was unknown. At the end of the year we 
shall hope to present a résumé of the results 
thus attained. 
THE various local sub-committees of the Brit- 
ish association at Montreal seem to be push- 
ing the work in their special subjects with an 
energy which promises much for a successful 
meeting in August. In the section of econom- 
ics especially, the committee is taking advan- 
tage of the opportunity presented, by bringing 
