Secretary Lane of the department of the interior, in his statement of classification activities of the department for the month of March, shows that during this month the lands restored to entry exceed those withdrawn by more than one half million acres. The total restorations for March were 623,799 acres, and the total withdrawals 120,464 acres. The principal restorations were of lands heretofore held in coal and phosphate reserves. Nearly one hundred and twelve thousand acres in Colorado, more then three hundred and fifty-two thousand acres in Montana, and twenty-eight thousand five hundred acres in Utah were released from coal withdrawals and restored to unrestricted entry. Twenty-one thousand five hundred acres in Idaho and one hundred and six thousand acres in Wyoming, that had been held in phosphate reserves, were classified as non-phosphate lands and were likewise restored to unrestricted entry. Minor restorations were those of two thousand acres in Idaho and one thousand acres in Utah, that have been held heretofore in water-power reserves. The principal item in the withdrawals for the month of March was the creation of a reserve of one hundred and nineteen thousand acres in the Black Rock desert in Nevada, to be withheld from entry by the government while it continues explorations for potash that have been authorized by Congress. These lands have no agricultural value, however, and the creation of the reserve therefore does not affect agricultural development.

The net result of these actions has been to reduce the total area included in withdrawals to a little more than fifty-eight million acres; but of this total more than fifty-five million five hundred thousand acres are in coal, oil, and phosphate reserves on which agricultural entry may be made with a reservation of the withdrawn minerals to the government, so that less than three million acres are actually withheld from settlement.

Extensive deposits of alunite, a potash-bearing mineral, have been discovered near Marysvale, in southern Utah. They are high up in the Tushar range, outcropping on the crest of a ridge that leads from the main divide at an elevation of approximately eleven thousand one hundred feet above sea-level and extends down to about nine thousand nine hundred feet, the lower and being four thousand feet above the railroad at Marysvale. Capitalists recently have filed upon these deposits and are preparing to develop them; thirty-five thousand acres of potash lands have been taken up by one company, the filing fees amounting to three thousand dollars. Another company has several thousand acres in the same district.

A recent report of the United States geological survey states that outside of Germany there is no known commercial supply of potash salts. The importation of these salts in round numbers for the three years of 1912, 1913, 1914, has averaged six hundred and thirty-five million pounds in quantity, and eleven million dollars in value. These figures, however, represent only a part of the potash salts entering the United States, as they do not include the imports of salts used as fertilizers. The quantity of this class of material imported for consumption in the United States during the same period has averaged about seven hundred thousand tons, valued at four million three hundred thousand dollars, annually.

Speaking at the meeting in England, of the Birmingham and District Allotments and Small Holdings Association, Frederick Impey, who presided, referred to the good results which had issued from the allotments and small holdings act of 1908. From last year's report, he said, he was pleased to notice that two hundred thousand acres of new small holdings had been secured by the act of 1908. That would equal a strip of land three miles wide extending from Birmingham to London, or nearly half the area of the county of Worcester. There were fifteen thousand tenants, and at least sixty-five thousand had their circumstances improved in consequence of the working of the act. He was glad to note, from the reports of the various county council land agents, that the unanimous view was that in almost all cases the land was better tilled and yielded more because of it being cut up into small holdings.

Recently there have been interesting tests in Washington, D. C., of a new searchlight, which it is possible the United States coast and geodetic survey may adopt for its triangulation work in the survey of large areas of land. The light is said to present several new and important features, and to be marvelous for the distance at which its concentrated rays are visible. It is also said that it develops a minimum of fifty thousand candle-power at the burner, and can be made visible for triangulation work at a distance of one hundred and fifty miles, provided it is raised sufficiently to overcome the curvature of the earth. The apparatus weighs only forty pounds, fully equipped. The gas used is a mixture of oxygen and acetylene, dissolved and compressed in tubes. The source of the light is a pastil of rare earths, which become incandescent and are reflected by a mirror through a frontal fresnol lens.

To obtain the cooperation of the public in preventing forest fires, which are doing a great deal of damage in the East this spring, the United States forest service has prepared the following ten "dont's" to be observed in the woods:—

Don't throw your match away until you are sure it is out. Don't drop cigarette or cigar butts until the glow is extinguished. Don't knock out your pipe ashes while hot or where they will fall into dry leaves or other inflammable material. Don't build a camp-fire any larger than is absolutely necessary. Don't build a fire against a tree, a log, or a stump, or anywhere but on bare soil. Don't leave a fire until you are sure it is out; if necessary, smother it with earth or water. Don't burn brush or refuse in or near the woods if there is any chance that the fire may spread beyond your control, or that the wind may carry sparks where they would start a new fire. Don't be any more careless with fire in the woods than you are with fire in your own home. Don't be idle when you discover a fire in the woods; if you can't put it out yourself, get help. Where a forest guard, ranger, or state fire warden can be reached, call him up on the nearest telephone you can find. Don't forget that human thoughtlessness and negligence are the causes of more than half of the forest fires in this country.

Russia continues to bear testimony to the good results following its prohibition of the sale of vodka. The imperial order forbidding the sale has now been in effect about six months. A statement of the sale of vodka by months from July to October, 1914, in Moscow, compared with corresponding months in 1913, shows the decrease: July, 1913, 612,686 gallons; July, 1914, 359,124 gallons. August, 1913, 667,926 gallons; August, 1914, 23,373 gallons. September, 1913, 759,947 gallons; September, 1914, 7,314 gallons. October, 1913, 707,588 gallons; October, 1914, 2,913 gallons. Labor has become much more productive than before. Formerly at the Moscow mills many workmen did not appear on Monday, and a number of those who did appear were unfit for duty because of their Sunday excesses. This, it is said, is no longer the case, as both the quality and the quantity of labor have improved in a wonderful

It is said that in a few years the largest walnut packing and cleaning house in the world will be in operation in California, where walnut culture has been making great strides forward for some time. The crop of that state has exceeded twenty million pounds a year for a number of years, and in one section of the state twenty-two hundred acres are just now beginning to bear, while a large additional acreage is being planted. Imported walnuts are dutiable at two cents a pound not shelled, and at four cents shelled. Imports of the unshelled totaled twenty-eight million pounds, and of the shelled nine million pounds in 1914. Their total value was four million three hundred thousand dollars.

With the opening of spring in the West, brief inspection tours were made of the different sections of the new national parks highway, the great automobile highway from Chicago and the Great lakes to Spokane and the cities on Puget sound. On May 15 the cities and towns all the way from Chicago to Seattle took part in a simultaneous inspection of the 2,315 miles of road. Trial runs were to be made from the fifty cities in the different road districts. In one month the formal dedication of the trail will take place, with appropriate ceremonies, conducted by good roads associations in each of the districts.

A million dollar peach crop in the famous Brandsville district of the Ozarks, Missouri, is predicted. It will equal if not surpass the record of 1913, when fifteen hundred expert packers and pickers harvested enough Elbertas to keep eleven hundred and twenty cars filled and moving East.

Negotiations of the Argentine government with New York and London bankers for a loan of approximately fifty million dollars in gold are progressing favorably, and it is expected a contract will be signed soon.