National.

According to a decision by the Commissioner of Patents, any label bearing the inscription, "Guaranteed under the pure food and drug acts, June 30, 1906," where such inscription is intended to imply that the Government is responsible for the purity of the goods, will be refused registration. It is held by the officials that the Government simply accepts the assertion of the manufacturer that the goods are pure, and then investigates.

Vermont has contributed $25,000 and New York $50,000 for the celebration, July 4-9 next, of the tercentennial of the discovery of Lake Champlain. The events will center on successive days at Crown Point, Ticonderoga, Plattsburg, Burlington, and Isle La Motte, the first day, Sunday, being marked by religious services in the various towns.

At a recent dinner at the White House, at which representatives were present from the cabinet and from labor organizations, there was an after-dinner discussion of labor in its various phases and desires, and especially in regard to legislation. It is thought that some of its fruits may be embodied in the next message of the President.

The Government has brought six suits against the American Sugar Refining Company to recover forfeitures and customs duties amounting to $3,624,121 on sugar delivered at the Havemeyer and Elder refineries in Brooklyn during the last six years, on charges of alleged fraud in weighing the shipments.

The State of Ohio, through its ouster case brought at Lima, O., against the subsidiary companies of the Standard Oil Company, is seeking to annul the charters of the Ohio Oil Company, the Solar Refining Company, and the Buckeye Pipe Line Company, on the ground that they constitute a trust.

Receivers have been appointed for the Municipal Traction Company, the holding company of the Cleveland Railway Company. A court decision held that the holding company was insolvent and that its franchise had been revoked by the referendum in the recent election.

The senior vice-president of the New York Central Railroad lines says that the railroads, after a careful review of their tariff sheets and a comparison of figures, have agreed to accept a three per cent increase in freight rates instead of the ten per cent as at first announced.

The approval of the Navy Department has been given for the construction at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, of the largest dry dock in the world. It will be eleven hundred feet in length and will form a basis for the maintenance of naval efficiency in the Pacific.

As the imposition of a tax on imported works of art has not netted the revenue expected, it is likely that the tax, which was not intended for protection, will be removed.

The 26th annual meeting of the American Ornithologists' Union has just been held in Cambridge, Mass., with an attendance of about two hundred delegates.

The question of a nine-o'clock curfew law is being agitated in Chicago by a citizens' committee and by the pulpit.

International.

The International Institute of Agriculture, which has the hearty sanction of King Victor Emmanuel of Italy, inaugurated its labors at Rome in a meeting attended by delegates from forty-six of the countries that have signified their intention to participate. The aim of the institute is the creation of an international and authoritative bureau of information as to all statistics which affect the supply and demand of raw material. While some countries are already provided with systems for obtaining such statistics, it is contended that no separate national system can attain either the thoroughness or the authority of a great international center of information supplied officially by all the great producing nations. It is hoped that the great fluctuations in the supply and cost of raw materials can be regulated.

Mr. Fisher, one of the radical labor leaders of Australia, will form the new Australian cabinet. The House defeated the premier, Alfred Deakin, on the division. The Laborites withdrew their support because the government has not pushed labor measures radical enough to suit them. This will be the second time the Labor party has been in power in the Australian Federal Parliament. J. C. Watson, another of the labor leaders, was premier for a short time in 1904.

Winston Spencer Churchill, president of the London Board of Trade, is making a supreme effort to prevent future disputes in the cotton trade. To this end he has invited the representatives of every interest concerned to meet him in conference at the Board of Trade and discuss the question, on the understanding that the government will bear the expenses of any necessary inquiry, and that any resultant agreement should in a way be binding to all parties.

In a book just published by Prof. Luigi Righetti of Italy, a closely reasoned argument is presented which declares that Canto XI, of Dante's "Divine Comedy" is an interpolation. This would leave thirty-three cantos for the whole poem, and the argument finds much support in the fact of the great poet's well-known liking for the number three and its multiples. This view, if tenable, will greatly interest Dante scholars.

The Shah of Persia, it is reported, has notified the British and Russian ministers that he can convoke Parliament only on condition that the two ministers guarantee the safety of his life and the throne. The ministers were unable to accept the proposal, and the Shah definitely refused to revive the constitution. Moral suasion has been exerted from the outside and the Shah is changing his mind on the matter.

Simplified phonetic spelling is to be introduced in the public schools by M. Dougmergue, the minister of public instruction of France. This reform received the approval of the French Academy, the arbiter in all matters pertaining to the orthography and construction of the French language, so long ago as 1893, but has not heretofore received government sanction.

The installation on the throne of the new emperor, Pu Yi, and the naming of the era will take place, it is expected, on the Chinese new year, Jan. 21. The Emperor of China and the notable Empress Dowager have just passed away.

In New South Wales, during the past seven years, out of a total number of passengers carried on her railways of 258,620,836, only one person was killed in a railway accident.

Manila's new water system, constructed during a period of three years at an outlay of $2,000,000, has just been completed and put into operation.

King Haakon of Norway has headed the public subscription for Captain Amundsen's polar expedition with a donation of $5,000.

July-4 has been set aside as American day at the Danish Exhibition to be held at Aarhuus, Denmark, in 1909.

Industrial and Commercial.

The plant of the United States Steel Corporation at Gary, Ind., will begin the manufacture of steel on Jan. 1. At that time two of the gigantic furnaces will be blown in. The opening of the works will be gradual, one department at a time beginning operations.

About ten million dollars a year will be added to the freight revenues of railroads by the increase in westbound transcontinental freight rates, which become effective Jan. 1.

Since the beginning of its fiscal year, July 1, contracts have been made by the Boston and Maine Railroad for more than $3,000,000 worth of new equipment.

The attempts to reorganize the four pigiron syndicates of Germany and weld them into one national body have finally failed.

The idle cars in the United States Oct. 30 were 110,912, a decrease of about five thousand within the fortnight.

General.

The workings of a telescope with possibilities of greater power than any now in use, were explained by the inventor, a Johns Hopkins professor, at a recent session of the Academy of Sciences at Baltimore. The fundamental principle of the new telescope is that a liquid surface, such as mercury, when set in rotation becomes concave, assuming the form of a perfect paraboloid, the form of surface best adapted to telescope mirrors. The mirror already constructed has a diameter of twenty inches, and consists of a shallow circular basin filled with mercury and mounted on a vertical shaft and set in rotation by an electric motor.

A substitute for marble, which answers many of its purposes satisfactorily, is made of a mixture of waste slag from blast furnaces and lime, pulverized, compressed, and then treated with carbonic acid.

In 1905 the production of olive oil in Italy reached a total of 90,134,800 gallons, while in 1899 it amounted to only one fourth that amount, so great are the fluctuations from various causes.