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A boiler furnace, as is known, works best when as little heat as possible escapes through the chimney. To some extent, says Technische Berichte, this escape is unavoidable, for if all the heat were utilized, the chim ney would not draw, since it is the heat in the chim ney which first produces the draft in the furnace neces sary for burning the fuel. Nevertheless, too much heat escapes by the chimney in most cases. A patent re cently granted professes to rectify this defect by bring ing the flue containing the products of combustion to the place where the steam is applied before it passes into the chimney. The air, steam, or hot water and feed pipes are passed through this flue, so that the heat contained in the gases of combustion prevents radi ation from the pipes in question and contributes to the heating of the air, water, and steam. There are interesting and suggestive symptoms of a wholesome reaction against the evils of the sedentary life. Parks and open spaces are being liberally pro vided; public and private gymnasiums are rapidly com ing into being; public playgrounds are thrown open in many of our cities, free of expense to the laboring, but, nevertheless, often sedentary, population; vaca tions are more than ever the fashion; sports and games are everywhere receiving increasing attention; while public baths and other devices for the promo tion of personal hygiene are more and more coming into being. All this is as it should be, but all is as yet only a beginning. Here the science of education is sadly at fault, and in the direction of educational re form as regards personal hygiene lies immense oppor tunity for a contribution to public health science. The growing of grapes in graperies furnishes quite a source of revenue in some countries, notably Bel gium and the Channel Islands, where large quantities are annually grown and exported, the United States being a good customer for them, as high as 35 cents to 75 cents per pound wholesale, and 2 lo 3 and even more per pound retail, being paid for the fruit. Grape growing in pots is much practised and in parts of Eu rope, and especially in France, where these are largely used for decorative purposes on festive occasions. The keeping of grapes in cool storage is deserving of more extensive practice and development. Shipping and keeping grapes in cork dust is quite an industry in some of the European grape districts, and a consider able quantity of such grapes, shipped from Spain, is annually consumed in this country. If electric phenomena are different from gravitative or thermal or luminous phenomena it does not follow that electricity is miraculous or that it is a substance. We know pretty thoroughly what, to expect from it, for it is as quantitatively related to mechanical and thermal and luminous phenomena as they are to each other; so if they are conditions of matter, the pre sumption would be strongly in favor of electricity being a condition or property of matter, and the question, ' What is electricity?" would then be answered in a way by saying so, but such an answer would not be the answer apparently expected to the question. To say it was a properly of matter would be not much more intelligible than to say the same of gravitation. At best it would add another property to the list of properties we already credit it with, as elasticity, at traction and so on. In any case the nature of elec tricity remains to be discovered and stated in terms common to other forms of phenomena, and it is to be hoped that long before this new century shall have been completed, mankind will be able to form as ade quate an idea of electricity as it now has of heat.
