Effect of Sea Water on Soil.—In a paper read at the British Association, 1899, on the chemical effect of the salts of the salt-water flood of November 27, 1897, on the east coast of England, Messrs. T. S. Dymond and F. Hughes recorded the remarkable result that, although the proportion of salt left in the soil was insufficient to prove injurious to growing crops, the earthworms were entirely removed, with the consequence that very few crops were worth harvesting the following year. In the next year nine tenths of the salt at first present had disappeared from the soil, and young worms had again made their appearance, but still the condition of the soil remained unsatisfactory, the rate of percolation of water through the flooded earth being only one half as rapid as through the unflooded. The authors ascribe this to the action of the chlorides of the sea water on the silicates of the soil with the formation of silicate of alumina in a gelatinous condition.
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The War against Monopolies.—Mr. Robert Ewen writes, in the Westminster Review, demanding free bank circulation as likely to be a very effective weapon to be used in “the coming contest with monopolists.” The subject seems to have attracted official attention in England in 1875, when Sir Stafford Northcote was Chancellor of the Exchequer. As chairman of the committee appointed to inquire into the working of the Bank Acts, he submitted a memorandum showing that, while certain items of the monopoly enjoyed by the Bank of England had been withdrawn, a residuum of restrictions on issuing banks still remained unrepealed. Some other countries have found a way of giving elasticity to the currency by buying in and laying aside their bonds, as the United States has recently been doing. This can not be done in Great Britain, because the Bank of England and the other bank monopolists block the way. The bank is tied down by acts of Parliament to buy and sell gold at a fixed price, and this restriction has been a cause of panics, whereas had gold been allowed to rise and fall in price, according to supply and demand, and the bank got a free hand in dealing with that commodity and in issuing legal notes to supply the circulating medium, “all would have gone well.” Foreign protectionists now have the power to prevent British goods from getting into their markets by imposing heavy duties on them, and at the same time forcing their produce into British markets, because English laws allow them to get gold from the English cheaper than their goods can be obtained. “Suppose a merchant in Britain buys £100,000 worth of corn from America and gives a check on the Bank of England for the amount of the purchase. The American draws the £100,000 in gold and takes it home; he will have to pay no export or import duty thereon—indeed, the probability is he may get a premium on the gold in America. But reverse the transaction: Suppose the British merchant sold £100,000 worth of his goods to America, there would, in the first place, be the exorbitant duty imposed there upon our manufactures of from forty to fifty per cent. Or suppose our merchant wished to buy corn or any American produce in exchange for his goods in place of bringing money, the case would be different—it would tell against the American farmer, who would get a less price for his corn, etc., than he would have done by free trade.” This instance is given “to show how free trade in gold would bring about free trade and reciprocity between the United States and Britain, and is applicable to every other state with which we trade.... There should be full scope given to all good banks in the country, large or small, to carry on banking business in the best modern manner for the benefit of all parties, so as to encourage and develop all trades and industries.”
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Rats and the Plague.—In his introductory address at the opening of the London School of Tropical Medicine, Dr. Manson preached a war of extermination against rats with the vigor of Cato calling for the destruction of Carthage. “Were I asked,” he said, “how I would protect a state from plague, I would certainly answer, Exterminate the rats as a first and most important measure.” He added, “At the present juncture, were I the responsible sanitary head of any town in Europe, in anticipation of a possibility compared to which in horror and in destructiveness a general European war would be a trifle, I would do my best to have every rat and, if possible, every mouse in my district promptly exterminated.” Dr. Manson does not reveal his plan of campaign. Wholesale poisoning of sewers might have serious disadvantages, and there would be difficulties about inveigling the rodent population of these subterranean health resorts (as some enthusiasts consider them to be) into a lethal chamber. Are we to cry havoc and let slip the cats of war? or to hurl an army of snakes against the foe? In either case we might find ourselves in the awkward position of a king who had called a too powerful auxiliary to his aid. Already action is being taken on the rat theory of plague. The French Government has ordered that special precautions are to be taken to prevent the importation of rats in vessels from plague-stricken places. It is to be hoped that similar precautions will be taken in regard to the transports which convey the Indian contingent to the Cape, or the situation there may become complicated by the intervention of an enemy who will deal destruction impartially to Boers and to Britons.
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Forestry in California.—As a remedy for the devastation of the forest lands of California, Marsden Manson, having shown that Government administrations with politics in them can not be trusted in the matter, recommends that all forest reservations and public lands upon mountain slopes within the borders of the State be granted to the University of California in trust, for the purpose of maintaining, developing, and extending the water supply of those regions forever. For this purpose the regents should be empowered to lease, under proper control, the timber cutting and pasturage privileges of those areas, and to use the resultant fund to protect the catchment areas, to maintain a college of practical forestry, to construct reservoirs at such points as may be necessary to the industries of the State, and dispose of the water for the benefit of the trust, to acquire mountain lands to be added to the catchment areas, and to do all such things as may maintain wise systems of forest and water conservation and use. The extent of income-bearing property which can be made available for forest preservation and storage of flood waters, Mr. Manson says, is far beyond the general idea.
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Another New Element.—The mineral pitchblende is distinguished for its radio-activity, or the property it has of emitting the peculiar light-rays which have recently attracted attention. The property has been attributed to the presence of uranium, one of the most radio-active among the known metals. About a year ago the chemists M. and Madame Curie, examining the different substances in pitchblende, found among them two new radiant substances, both more active than uranium, which they called polonium and radium. Polonium was found to be closely akin to bismuth, accompanying that metal in all its reactions, but separable from it by fractionation. Radium resembles barium in its chemical reactions. Recently M. A. Debierne, examining one of the products of solution and precipitation of pitchblende, observed intensified radio-active properties in a portion containing titanium, and on further investigation found still another substance showing the principal analytical properties of titanium, but which emitted extremely active rays. While these rays were comparable with those observed from polonium and radium, the chemical properties are entirely different from those of these substances. Radium, however, is spontaneously luminous, while the new substance is not.