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The Carnegie Institution at Washington has received from Prof. Pumpelly a preliminary report of the investigations which he is making under the auspices of the Institution on the ancient site of Anau, near Aschabad, in Russian Turkestan. He reports gratifying success, the expedition having explored over 136 feet of successive culture strata, containing at least four almost uninterrupted culture stages, extending apparently for thousands of years through the neolithic and bronze into the beginning of the iron age, and having correlated the stages of culture with important events in the physiographic history and with the introduction of irrigation.--N. Y. Evening Post. A series of interesting experiments with a new war kite for utilization with a newly-discovered system of wireless telegraphy were recently carried out with great secrecy before Kaiser Wilhelm. The inventor is a German-American professor, at present residing at Havre. The operations were carried out about a mile from the shore. No spectators Whatever, beyond the naval officials and the Emperor and his suite, were allowed to witness the experiments. Seven kites were flown on copper wires to a height of from 10,000 to 12,000 feet. The experiments were partly made from the Kaiser's dispatch boat Sleipner, traveling at the rate of thirty knots an hour, and several languages were employed. The feature of the invention is the possibility of transmission over the greatest distances without affecting any other wireless telegraphy station. The form of the kites used is that of two cubes side by side, similar to the Cody box kites. From the bark of trees and shrubs the Japanese make scores of papers, which are far ahead of ours. The walls of the Japanese houses are wooden frames covered with thin paper, which keeps out the wind but lets in the light, and when one compares these paper-walled doll houses with the gloomy bamboo cabins of the inhabitants of the island of Java or the small-windowed huts of our forefathers, one realizes that, without glass and in a rainy climate, these ingenious people have solved in a remarkable way the problem of lighting their dwellings and, at least in a measure, of keeping out the cold. Their oiled papers are astonishingly cheap and durable. As a cover for his load of tea when a rainstorm overtakes him, the Japanese farmer spreads over it a tough, pliable cover of oiled paper, which is almost as impervious as tarpaulin and as light as gossamer. He has doubtless carried this cover for years, neatly packed away somewhere about his cart. The rikisha coolies in the large cities wear rain mantles of this oiled paper, which cost less than 18 cents and last for a year or more with constant use. An oiled tissue paper, which is as tough as writing paper, can be had at the stationer's for wrapping up delicate articles. Grain and meal sacks are almost always made of bark paper in Japan, for it is not easily penetrated by weevils and other insects. But perhaps the most remarkable of all the papers which find a common use in the Japanese household are the leather papers of which the tobacco pouches and pipe cases are made. They are almost as tough as French kid, so translucent that one can nearly see through them, and as pliable and soft as calfskin, The material of which they are made is as thick as cardboard, but as flexible as kid.--David G. Fairchild in the National Geographic Magazine.
