It is within the realms of possibility that the present form of generating station may be entirely dispensed with.  It has already been demonstrated experimentally that electrical energy may be produced direct from the coal itself without the intervention of the boiler, engine and dynamo machine.  Whether this can be done commercially remains to be proved.  Whatever changes may take place in generating methods, I should, were I not engaged in a business which affords so many remarkable surprises, be inclined to question the possibility of any further material change in the distributing system.  Improvements in the translating devices, such as lamps, may add enormously to the capacity of the distributing system per unit of light; but it does seem to me that the system itself, as originally conceived, is to a large extent a permanency.  Should any great improvements take place in the medium employed for turning electrical energy into light, the possible effect on cost, and consequently selling price, would be enormous.

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The proposal of Gov.  Black, which has now become law, to depute to Cornell the care of a considerable tract of forest land, and the duty of demonstrating to Americans the theory, methods and profits of scientific forestry, has a curious appropriateness much commented on at the university, since two-thirds of the wealth of Cornell has been derived from the location and skillful management of forest lands, the net receipts from this source being to date $4,112,000.  In the course of twenty years management the university has thrice sold the timber on some pieces of land which it still holds, and received a larger price at the third sale than at the first.  The conduct of this land business is so systematized that the treasurer of the university knows to a dot the amount of pine, hemlock, birch, maple, basswood and oak timber, even to the number of potential railroad ties, telegraph poles and fence posts on each fourth part of a quarter section owned by Cornell.  Certainly, Cornell is rich in experience for the business side of a forestry experiment such as Gov.  Black proposes.  The university forest lands from which its endowment has been realized are in Wisconsin.

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Books may be called heavy when the qualifying term is not applied to their writers, but to the paper makers.  It is falsifications in the paper that give it weight.  Sulphate of baryta, the well known adulterate of white lead, does the work.  A correspondent, writing to The London Saturday Review, gives the weight of certain books as:  Miss Kingsley’s “Travels in Africa.” 3 pounds 5 ounces; “Tragedy of the Caesars,” 3 pounds; Mahan’s “Nelson” (1 vol.), 2 pounds 10 ounces; “Tennyson” (1 vol.), 2 pounds 6 ounces; “Life and Letters of Jowett” (1 vol.), 2 pounds 1 ounce.  To handle these dumb-bell books, The Saturday Review advises that readers take lessons in athletics.