The largest dam in Europe has just been completed near Barcelona, Spain. It is built across the chasm through which the Noguera Pallaresa River flowed. Abutting on almost perpendicular cliffs, the dam is constructed of concrete, and measures 330 feet in height and 700 feet in length. The thickness is 230 feet at the base, gradually decreasing to 14 feet at the top. The valley above the dam was bought from the various landholders at a cost of nearly one million dollars, and now filled with water forms an artificial lake fifteen and one half miles long and three and three fourths miles wide. The water that now passes through the power house yields an electric current of 20,000 horse-power. Later it will be increased to 40,000 horse-power. The water is carried by a system of canals into an arid district, where it irrigates a surface of nearly one hundred square miles.

The new administration of Panama is thinking seriously of giving one side of the single tax plan a trial. There are immense holdings of land throughout the republic that are neither producing incomes nor paying taxes to amount to anything. Nearly every revolution in former days produced a crop of generals to be rewarded with land grants, since there was nothing else to give them. Then outsiders began to acquire large estates when the canal promoted speculative purchases. Holdings of from twenty to one hundred thousand acres are fairly common. There is a tract near Panama City of some fifty thousand acres owned by absentee landlords that does not, it is claimed, earn $500 a year, and practically pays no taxes. The total amount of land owned in Panama of this sort mounts up to several million acres.

Queensland, Australia a very large state in area, has three distinct ports of entry—Townes ville, Rockhampton, and Brisbane. Sydney serves for New South Wales, Melbourne for Victoria, Adelaide for South Australia, and Perth for West Australia. South Australia, although not nearly so large as the states of West Australia and Queensland, is some 50 per cent larger than Texas. Its population, corrected to the year 1914, is 441690, or about one tenth the population of Texas. Only 2 per cent of the land is under cultivation. The Broken Hill mines of New South Wales are large producers of lead, silver, and zinc concentrates. Adelaide, which controls the distributing trade of the big back country and of the rich mining districts, is a prosperous city, with a population of two hundred thousand within a radius of ten miles of the Town Hall.

The Pennsylvania state department of forestry and the state highway department have completed arrangements for cooperation in planting shade trees and fruit trees along the state highways. The trees will be grown from seed by the forestry department in its nurseries, transplanted in areas set aside for the purpose, then turned over to the highway department when they have attained suitable size. Good roads organizations will also assist in the planting at that time. The species already transplanted are Scotch, white, and pitch pines, Norway spruce, Douglas fir, sugar maple, white ash, white elm, black cherry, honey locust, and European larch.

The Canadian Pacific Railway will save $256,000 annually by the construction of its $12,000,000 tunnel under Roger's Pass in the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia, in that part of the mountain system known as the Horseshoe. The new tunnel will be put into use on Dec. 1 next. Heretofore the trains over the mountains above this new tunnel were forced to run through four and one half miles of snowsheds in winter. The 17,400 trains passing over this dangerous mountain railway each year were always in danger of mountain rock, dirt, and snowslides, but with the new tunnel all this will be averted.

Russia, after fourteen months of prohibition, reports: Crime (all kinds) has decreased 62 per cent; absenteeism in factories has fallen 60 per cent; suicide rate has dropped enormously; hospitals formerly overcrowded are not filled; efficiency in factories increased 10 to 15 per cent; practically every inhabitant is at work; savings deposits have increased 8 per cent; fire damage has fallen off 38 per cent; wages in some districts raised 500 per cent; people are eating better and costlier food; better clothing is worn by the poorer classes; agricultural implement sales are 60 per cent larger; imprisonment decreased 72 per cent.

One of the largest rubber companies in the United States has bought 9200 acres of land near Hackett, Ariz., and will at once begin preparations there for manufacturing rubber from the guayule plant, with which it has been experimenting for a number of years. The plans of the company provide for the expenditure of $1,000,000 on the factory and homes for employees. The guayule is a desert plant requiring a minimum of water. By offering a good market for it the company is encouraging farmers of the state to cultivate it on lands unsuited to crops requiring irrigation.

On July 28, 1916, by a decree of the National Government of Argentina, a joint stock company was authorized, formed by United States capitalists for the working of limestone quarries and the manufacture of cement, and it has taken over property in Sierras Bayas, Province of Buenos Aires, for this purpose. It is expected that the installation will be finished by the end of next year, and that in 1918 the factory will be producing Argentine cement at the rate of 1,000,000 barrels a year.

Military engineers are erecting a wireless station on Cape Juby, on the African coast. In cases of need at sea, the service will be available for ships in distress. As the big installation on Teneriffe Island is less than one hundred miles from the Cape Juby plant, communication with the Canary Islands will be possible, and through them with the Spanish mainland. Cape Juby is a sandy and practically barren projection into the Atlantic Ocean, some sixty-seven miles from the island of Fuerteventura of the Canary group and in the same latitude.

The manufacture of alcohol from sawdust and other wood waste has been proven by the Forest Products Laboratory at Madison, Wis., to be not only chemically possible, but commercially profitable. After nearly five years of experimentation a method has been evolved whereby, under reasonably favorable conditions, ethyl alcohol may be produced for twenty cents a gallon. The cost of making grain alcohol from corn is about forty cents a gallon.

The American public school system in the Philippine Islands has so encouraged the use of English, which is the only language taught in the educational institutions established by the Americans, that a long step has been taken toward obliteration of the many languages and dialects among the various tribes, and English is fast becoming the common language for the islands as a whole.

A delegation of six men from the Danish West Indies, who were chosen by the colonial councils of the islands at the request of the parliamentary sales committee in Copenhagen, has left for Denmark to report to the committee regarding the sale of the islands to the United States. The delegation has been instructed to recommend the sale.

The Clayton trust act, which went into effect on Oct. 15, prohibits directors, officers, and employees from serving more than one bank in an official capacity at the same time. The national banks and trust companies, with liabilities aggregating $5,000,000 or located in the same city with a population of 200,000, come directly under the act.

The new "Haraban" bridge, spanning the Mississippi River at Memphis, Tenn., said to be the largest structure on the river, is now open for traffic. Including the approaches it is three miles long, the bridge proper being 2600 feet. Its cost was approximately five million dollars. Construction was begun in 1913.

In the last year and a half there has been a considerable revival of interest throughout all the West Indies in the production of sugar, molasses, and alcohol. Areas that have not grown cane in many years are being brought into cultivation again, and much new ground is being put under cane.

The United States Bureau of Standards has completed a very careful determination of the freezing-point of mercury, using platinum resistance thermometers to measure the temperature. The result of this work gives —37.97 degrees Fahrenheit for this temperature.

Experiments at the University of Washington, at Seattle, have resulted in the discovery of a process of distilling mill waste, by means of which tar, a light oil, acetate of lime, and charcoal are obtained.

According to a statement just given out by the minister of public works, a total of $11,411,670 was expended during 1915 on public works in New Zealand.

In 1915 the total production of olives in Spain was 1,772,887 metric tons, while the amount of oil produced was 326,108 tons.