National.

During the past summer lookouts have been posted at fire observation and signal stations on four mountains in the Adirondack region of New York, and in consequence the territory under observation has been free of any dangerous fire, something which has not happened before in years. All forest fires originating this year were discovered in their incipiency by the lookouts, and extinguished by fire rangers before they gained enough headway to be destructive. So successful has been this plan that the forest, fish, and game commission has decided to build and equip about twenty more stations on minor peaks in the Adirondacks and Catskills.

Western Union Telegraph officials in New york city express satisfaction over the work done by the cable quadruplex, which is now being used on the ninety-mile cable line from Key West to Havana, and recently invented by Stephen D. Field of Stockbridge, Mass,, a nephew of Cyrus W. Field, who laid the first cable. The quadruplex has long been used on land wires, but Mr. Field is the first to invent an instrument to allow four messages to go over a cable at the same time. Two messages can be sent each way at the same time, but not four from one end, as some have been led to believe.

The American Telephone and Telegraph officials announce that they have obtained control of a substantial minority interest in the shares of the Western Union Telegraph Company. An officer of the company says: "There is much to be gained by the joint construction and maintenance of plant and by its common use to the greatest possible extent, but the greatest advantage will follow the placing of the millions of telephone subscribers in close and reliable connection with the receiving and despatching offices of the telegraph company."

Secretary Ballinger has issued an order withdrawing from entry eight thousand acres of water-power land, located as follows : Six hundred and eighty-four acres on Red Rock Creek, Montana; 1,627 acres on Clark Fork in Montana and Idaho, 3,584 acres on the Gunnison river and tributaries in Colorado and New Mexico, 1,498 acres on the Klicitat river in Washington, 200 acres along the Judith river in Montana, and 712 acres along the Green river and tributaries in Wyoming.

William Arnold Shanklin was inaugurated as president of Wesleyan University last week. President Taft, Vice-President Sherman, Senator Elihu Root of New York, Elmer Ellsworth Brown, commissioner of education of the United States, a score of leading college and university presidents, a dozen bishops of the Methodist Episcopal church were present. Sixteen honorary degrees were awarded.

Intimation of the coming use of oil as a fuel for ships of the navy is contained in the announcement that bids will be opened at the Navy Bureau of Yards and Docks Dec. 4 for the construction at the Boston Navy Yard of a concrete oil-tank storage-house, fifty feet by seventy-five feet and twenty-four feet deep. Similar tanks are to be constructed at other yards on the Atlantic coast.

A speaker before the homestead commission at the State House, Boston, favored organizing a company to raise one million dollars for the purpose of acquiring homes in the rural districts for the poor of the big cities, to cost about three thousand dollars each. He would sell these homes to applicants upon monthly payments equal to what they are paying for rent and insurance.

Thirty-six million dollars for river, and harbor improvements throughout the country is recommended for the next fiscal year by Brig.-Gen. W. L. Marshall, chief of engineers of the army, in his annual report.

The American Sugar Refining Company, which was found guilty of weighing frauds at its Williamsburg (N. Y.) plant, announces a recorganization of the entire working force.

The Arbuckle Brothers, large sugar importers of New York, are reported to be arranging for the payments of back duties on underweighed sugar on claims made by the Government.

International.

The budget with its radical, almost revolutionary proposals, which has been agitating England all summer, came before the House of Lords this week, and there is speculation as to what they will do with it. The chief proposals of its author, Mr. Lloyd-George, are : An increase of one per cent in the income tax on all unearned incomes and on earned incomes over fifteen thousand dollars, with a super-tax of two and a half per cent on all incomes exceeding twenty-five thousand dollars ; an increase in the inheritance taxes on estates of over twenty-five thousand dollars, so that the maximum rate of fifteen per cent will be reached at five million dollars instead of at fifteen million dollars ; a tax on motor cars, ranging from ten dollars for the smallest cars to three hundred dollars on a car of over sixty horse-power ; a tax of six cents a gallon on gasoline. The receipts from these last two taxes are to be spent in improving and extending the good roads of the country. A tax of twenty per cent on the unearned increment of land values—that is, that part of the increase in the value of a piece of land which is due not to the labor or improvements put upon the land by its owner, but to agencies outside his control, such as the improvement of neighboring land, the growth of population, and so forth ; a duty of ten per cent on the, benefit accruing to the owner of leased land at the termination of a lease.

The iron ore deposits of China are immense, and the manufacture of steel bids fair to become a great industry. There are also in China vast quantities of manganese ores that contain from ten to twenty-five per cent of manganese. At Hankow, six hundred miles inland on the Yangtse-Kiang river, are situated works which have manufactured steel since 1894. These works consist of two blast furnaces with a capacity of two hundred and fifty tons per day, and two hundred and fifty-ton furnaces are now being built. The present rail mill makes two hundred and fifty tons of rails per day. The work performed is said to be excellent, and the steel produced to be of good quality. This Hankow company employs a small army of people, numbering about twenty thousand, common laborers receiving seven cents a day and women five cents. The highest wages paid are those to blacksmiths, some of whom receive twenty dollars a month.

Baron Reys Kanda, the foremost mining engineer of Japan, is touring the mining districts of the United States. He is chiefly interested in the cyanide process, which he is anxious to apply to a number of low-grade propositions in Korea, and his visit means the purchase of the machinery necessary. "We come to America for all our mining machinery," said the baron, "for not only is it the best but it is the latest. We do not make it ourselves, for all we could do would be to copy, and by the time we had finished you Americans would have some improvement which would make ours obsolete."

The fourth of a series of great conferences that are steadily strengthening the bonds between the republics of the western hemisphere is to be held in Buenos Aires, Argentine Republic, between the 15th and 20th of next July, and already the Argentine government, which is to be the host in this case, has been doing much in preparation for the meeting.

Baron Liang Kwai, an uncle of the Emperor of China and a brother of the Empress, recently arrived in Washington on a special mission for his government, and at the same time, as the active head of the commision, authorized to buy twenty million dollars' worth of naval supplies and ammunition.

The Finnish Diet was dissolved last week because of its refusal to sanction a bill introduced by the Russian government, asking for an appropriation of four million dollars for the defense of the empire.

The Irish land bill was passed in the House of Lords last week with some change in the amendments recently proposed by the Lords, to which the House of Commons on Nov. 5 refused to agree.

King Manuel of Portugal has been paying a royal visit to England the past week.

Industrial and Commercial.

Two professors of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have perfected a new gauge for determining the depths of diamond drill holes which promises to become of universal use among engineers. It is capable of taking depths to over a thousand feet through a seven-eighths-inch hole, it can withstand almost any normal pressure which will be brought to bear at such a depth, is self-recording, and is independent of all varying temperatures.

Concrete and steel docks to cost more than four million dollars have been planned for Cleveland by engineers of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and work on them will begin early in 1910. The docks are to be built along the lake front and will be for the accommodation of ore shippers whose lake craft are too large to be handled with speed in the Cuyahoga river.

There has been an increase of nearly three hundred million bushels, or fully one sixth, in the production of wheat recently harvested in six countries of the northern hemisphere, which, in 1908, produced practically two thirds of the whole world's supply. These countries embrace the United States, Canada, France, Hungary, Russia, and Roumania.

The production of rice in the United States has grown from an average of less than one hundred million pounds per annum in 1885, at an average of five hundred million pounds per annum in recent years and over six hundred million pounds in 1908.