National.

Some recommendations by the committee which investigated insurance matters in New York State are, —

New policies may not be written by a life insurance company beyond $150,000,000 in a single year; limit of salary for presidents of life insurance companies is placed at $50,000 per annum, and must depend upon the earnings of the company; standard forms of life insurance polices are provided, and a company can issue but one style of policy, straight life or conditional; fraternal societies may not hereafter be chartered in that State; borrowing from his company by an official is prohibited, and participation in syndicates for the purchase and sale of securities is also forbidden. Infringement of this provision is made a misdemeanor; mutual corporations must deposit $100,000 with the superintendent of insurance.

In connection with the visit to Wellesley College of the Chinese Commissioners who have been in the United States studying political, industrial, naval, military, and educational methods, announcement was made by President Caroline B. Hazard that the Board of Trustees had recently voted to establish in the college three scholarships for Chinese women who should be duly qualified for study.

There will be an international yacht race in American waters next September, off Marblehead. under the auspices of the Eastern Yacht Club. The trophy will be offered by that club and will be known as the Roosevelt Cup, permission having been obtained from the President to use his name for the trophy. The contesting boats will be three German and three American yachts, the winner to take the cup.

The Senate of South Carolina, by a vote of 21 to 14, has decided to strike out the enacting words of the Morgan bill, providing, among other things, for the abolishment of the State dispensary, which recently passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 63 to 47. The action of the Senate leaves the dispensary situation practically as it was.

Foreign

In 1899 the Geographical Congress. which met at Berlin, appointed a committee to prepare and publish a bathymetric (sea-depth) map. As the necessary funds were not available, the Prince of Monaco came forward and assumed the expense connected with the project. The map has just been published and a copy was recently presented to the Académie des Sciences. It shows the present knowledge of ocean depths, outlines or profiles of sub-marine lands, all the data being based upon the soundings so far taken by hydrographers and oceanographers of all nations. This map discloses many features of resemblance between the earth above and below the surface of the water — both possessing hills, plains, mountain peaks, valleys, ravines, etc. The sea-floor is covered mostly with mud or ooze instead of sand, red, green, and blue. This is composed partly of alluvial deposits from rivers, perished organic sea-life, and some volcanic material. In the Atlantic Ocean at one point the temperature, which was sixty-eight at the surface, had fallen to thirty-eight at a depth of 6.562 feet. Below that depth the temperature falls only slowly. being practically uniform and little affected by changes of season.

The Nile-Red Sea Railroad, from Atbara to Suakin, was formally opened by Lord Cromer on the 27th ult. in the presence of many official guests. The 325 miles of line have been laid across the desert in less than sixteen months of actual construction work. Practically every ton of new material had to be brought from England or countries no less distant.

The mill owners in the English Northern Counties have granted the cotton operatives an increase in wages amounting to two and* one-half per cent, commencing with May. The increase will affect 150,000 operatives. This is the first time in thirty years that they have been placed on the full wage standard adopted fifty years ago.

M. Tanno, Third Secretary of the Japanese Embassy at Paris, arrived at St. Petersburg last week to reopen the Japanese Legation, which was leased for a long term just before the outbreak of hostilities, and was in charge of the American Embassy during the war.

It is understood that the Canadian Pacific Railway Company has decided to plant large quantities of young trees at various points along its lines, so as to be able in future to supply its own ties and fence posts.

Industrial and commercial.

In all the New York diamond cutting and polishing factories a higher standard of wages is to be granted, and for the first time in ten years apprentices will be received, under the terms of a year's agreement signed last week by committees representing the Diamond Manufacturers' Association of America and the Diamond Workers' Protective Union. Under the new contract the two hundred and sixty polishers will receive an advance of four dollars a week, so that with two or three exceptions the weekly salaries will range from thirty-four to sixty dollars. When apprentices were barred in 1895. by an international agreement of the labor unions, there were practically no Americans who understood either the art of cutting or the art of polishing the gems. This left the industry in the hands of skilled workers, nearly all of whom have come from Antwerp and Amsterdam.

The Northwestern Miller gives figures showing the consumption of wheat by the flour mills of the Northwest for the year closed. Minneapolis used 64,647,000 bushels of wheat; Duluth, 3,569,000 bushels, and the fifty-three outside mills reporting to the Northwestern Miller, 34,030,000 bushels. The total amount of the Northwestern wheat crop consumed by those mills amounted to 102,246,000 bushels. Taking the Government figures for the total crop of the three Northwestern States, these mills ground 53.20 per cent of the wheat raised.

A valuable deposit of graphite has been discovered at French Vale, Cape Breton, at a depth of twenty-five feet in a thirteen-foot seam. Samples were found to contain seventy per cent graphite, an unusually high percentage. The location of the deposit is ideal. The deposit of graphite is found on the Island of Ceylon. The Ceylon product sells in New York at $120 a ton. A number of minor deposits are found in America. but both in quality and quantity are inferior to the Ceylon article.

A solar motor erected last summer at Willcox, Ariz., has proved a success. It operates a twelve-horse-power engine, which pumped a four-inch stream of water from a depth of forty-two feet. The safety-valve was so set as to blow off at one hundred and fifty pounds pressure, and the sun's rays were so concentrated by the great circular mirror that the pressure was steadily

The Lancet of London says whereas one hundred years ago the rustling of a silk dress was attributed to the high quality of the silk, it now sometimes rustles because of the thirty-six per cent of salts of tin incorporated into the fabric. Epsom salts give weight to flannels, and cotton filled with China clay, starch, and size passes for table linen.

Inability to accept new contracts for steel to be delivered at a specified time has made it necessary for the United States Steel Corporation to decline new business amounting to thousands of tons. The orders now on the books are nearly eight million tons.

The recently organized American Smelters' Securities Company have decided, it is reported, to build a $3,500,000 smelter at a point a mile back from Port Costa. California and ground will be broken for the big establishment early next summer.

The world's supply of platinum during 1904 was about 13,800 pounds. 13,200 pounds of which came from Russia. The United States produced two hundred ounces, valued at $4,160; all of this came from California and Oregon.

Union carpenters of Chicago have secured an increase of wages aggregating more than one million dollars a year, through a three-year agreement with the Carpenters and Builders' Association.

Trade of the United States with Spain and Portugal amounted in the fiscal year 1905 to over $34,000,000, against less than $20,000,000 in 1895, a decade earlier.

General.

A most remarkable find bearing upon the carboniferous age was made in Number Three slope of the Upper Lehigh Coal Company recently. The miners at work in the gangway uncovered a petrified tree trunk with roots attached. Although in blasting it was broken, a piece of the trunk three feet long, with petrified roots clinging to it, was taken to the surface intact. The interstices in the bark and grain about the heart of the trunk are clearly traced. It was found lying flat along the bottom rock, about eighteen inches below the coal seam. The elevation was nine hundred feet above the sea level and two hundred feet from the surface.

The production of aluminum in the United States has increased the past decade. The output of 1904 was 8.600.000 pounds, as compared with 7.300.000 pounds in 1903, The industry dates its beginning from 1883, in which year the production was eighty-three pounds.

The statement is made that the Southern Steel Company will soon begin developments in Alabama which will represent an outlay of $1,500,000.