President Wilson has signed the national park service bill, and the sixteen national parks of the United States will in the future be administered under one management. The chairman of the conservation department of the General Federation of Women's Clubs Clubs says: "Our national parks are of little use to us unless they are developed with roads and trails, and provided with hotel accommodations so that the people may visit them. This will be the work of the national park service. Provision is to be made for people of all degrees of income. Those who require luxurious quarters will find them; and those who enjoy simple camp life and want to keep their vacation expenses down to a small figure will find the opportunity to do so, and still see just as much of the parks as the more luxurious traveler."

The Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway has just added 110 miles to its electrically operated lines in Montana. This section extends from Deer Lodge to Alberton, Mont., and is the third unit to be changed from steam to electricity, bringing the electrified mileage up to 336. The 226 miles of railroad between Harlowton and Deer Lodge were put under electric operation some months ago. Work on the fourth and last unit between Alberton, Mont., and Avery, Idaho, is being completed, and when that is ready, about the first of the year, the St. Paul will have 440 miles of electric line in operation, reaching an elevation in the Rocky Mountains of 6350 feet above sea level, in the Bitter Root Mountains of 4200 feet, and in the Belt Mountains of 5768 feet.

The Rhone Canal, which will be open to navigation within a few years, will connect Marseilles, France, with the Rhone River. The first section of the canal places Marseilles in direct communication with the Etang de Berre, a small lake. The second section connects the Etang de Berre with Port de Bouc, a small seaport town. From this point the canal proceeds in a northerly direction and joins the Rhone River at Arles. When the canal is completed, barges of 600 tons will be able to penetrate for a distance of 335.5 miles into the interior of France. Barges of lesser tonnage may continue northward to Paris, Havre, and the British Channel.

Two years ago the Kansas State Prison and the Kansas Agricultural College began an experimental course of correspondence for the men confined in prison. Over two hundred prisoners are now enrolled, and the prison is fitting up a vocational school where the prisoners can work out the problems presented through the correspondence study. Until this year none of the women prisoners was enrolled in the correspondence work. The agricultural college is now at work on a course of study in home economics which will be made available for the women prisoners about the first of the year.

Bulgaria devotes to rose culture about twenty thousand acres, on which are grown about eight billion roses. A one acre garden under favorable conditions produces about twenty-five hundred pounds of roses, from which ten to fifteen ounces of attar of rose may be distilled. The total production of the attar varies with the seasons, but it averages 175,000 ounces. The rose fields are on the southern slopes of the Balkan Mountains, the rose district being 80 miles in length, 30 miles in width, with an average height above sea level of 1300 feet.

The export article of greatest importance to Hankow, China, is tea, which was exported in 1915 to the value of $17,917,665. Next in importance are cow hides, which were exported to the quantity of 30,934,400 pounds. Next in rank, according to value in 1915, are raw cotton, sesame seed, nut and wood oil, peanuts, bean cake, beans, pig iron, vegetable tallow, antimony, ramie, miscellaneous silk products, prepared tobacco, and bristles—each valued at more than one million dollars.

The area under rubber cultivation in Madras Presidency, India, is 12,922 acres, and the number of trees is estimated at 1,636,476. The only other rubber producing regions in India are Assam, with 4681 acres and 137,430 trees, and Burma, with 29,544 acres and 4,911,399 trees. The yield of the Assam plantations is relatively small. The outturn in Madras in 1913 was more than double that of Burma, where most of the trees being less than six years old were still unproductive.

In Rio de Janeiro recently a good roads congress was held under the auspices of the Brazilian Automobile Club. There are relatively few highways in this vast republic, and until now no attempt has been made at anything like a continuous system of highways of interstate character. Transportation throughout the interior is consequently costly, and this is a serious obstacle to the development of the country in many ways.

The President of Panama has recently submitted to the National Assembly seven codes of laws that have been carefully prepared by a commission especially appointed for the purpose which has been working on this task for the last three years, and these codes have been approved and will take effect on and after Jan. 1, 1917. These codes relate to civil, penal, commercial, judicial, administrative, fiscal, and mining law.

The great barrage scheme of the Rand Water Board proposes to dam the Vaal River in southern Africa at a point about twenty-five miles below Vereeniging. The cost is at present estimated at £750,000, but it is probable that a scheme designed ultimately to impound 20,000,000 gallons of water and to pump 10,000,000 gallons to the Rand will involve a much larger expenditure.

The Texas peanut crop, now being harvested, will yield about twenty-one million bushels. The area planted is 350,000 acres. Each acre also produces a ton of peanut hay, now bringing twelve dollars a ton. The price for peanuts ranges from eighty cents to one dollar a bushel. This season's crop will bring Texas farmers $24,000,000.

The President of Peru has issued a decree directing the minister of fomento to organize a service of industrial statistics of the republic. By this decree all the industrial establishments of the country are obliged to furnish the minister with such data as he may desire. The information so collected will be published annually by the Government.

Ten thousand bituminous coal miners in the Fairmont region of Virginia were officially notified on Nov. 1 that their wages had been advanced 10 per cent. The new scale was decided upon at a meeting of the Central West Virginia Coal Operator's Association, and was without solicitation on the part of the miners.

Since gold was discovered in the Auckland province, New Zealand, in 1852 there has been exported from that district gold to the value of $116,796,000. Great progress has been made since the introduction of the cyanide process in 1906, when it became possible to work the lower grade ores and tailings at a profit.

More than two thirds of the world's supply of tin is mined in the Malay Penisula. Straits tin, as it is known in the trade, is of exceptionally good quality. The total exportation of tin from Malaya for 1915 was valued at $17,991,042.

At the United States mint at Philadelphia, Pa., in October, the total number of coins turned out was 45,231,413, or more than one fourth the coinage for any of the past five years, the yearly output having averaged around one hundred and fifty million pieces.

The area under sugar in British Guiana in 1915. was 73,108 acres, thirty-seven estates manufacturing it, and the total production was above 120,000 tons, of which 116,224 tons were exported. The local consumption of sugar is about 6000 tons.

On July 28, 1916, all clocks in Greece were set forward twenty-five to thirty minutes, depending upon the difference between mean local time and astronomically correct time at Athens. This brings Greece within the zone of eastern European time.

A plan has been broached to have the entire New Orleans-Houston Highway bordered by palm trees the entire distance between the two cities,—some 400 miles.

The amount of coal produced in Bengal and Bihar and Orissa, India, in 1915 was 15,686,816 tons. For the whole of British India the production was 16,352,480 tons.

The law which provides for the construction of port works at Antofagasta, Chile, was promulgated Sept. 8. The cost is limited to £1,700,000 sterling.

For the nine months ended Sept. 30, 1916, the total value of the exports of pottery from the United Kingdom was $9,473,800.

The French customs returns of exports of silk goods during the first half of 1916 give the total value as 210,966,000 francs.

Jamaica's foreign trade in 1915 reached a total value of $22,172,374.