Insurance and police regulations vary for every country. As a rule, restrictions are put on the use of liquid acetylene, and on the amount of carbide to be kept in storage. Generators must stand in separate buildings, which, in towns, must be fireproof.
The Willson patents cover the manufacture of crystalline carbide in the United States, Canada, and the South American states; and, as all carbide made by the electric furnace is crystalline, no carbide can be made independently of these patents in these countries.
In conclusion, it may be predicted that within the next few years acetylene will prove a factor in giving us an improved and cheaper light. Whether this will be an acetylene-Welsbach light or whether the acetylene will be chiefly used as an enricher of cheaper gases the future will show.
THOUGHTS ABOUT UNIVERSITIES.
By WILLIAM KEITH BROOKS,
PROFESSOR OF ZOÖLOGY IN THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY.
You are aware that the pedagogue is no longer treated with that deference and respect which he feels to be due to his love of learning. Past is all his fame. Past is the day when the village all declared how much he knew. Nowadays he is accustomed to be told by the rustics, who once gazed and wondered, that he is old-fashioned and out of place in our modern world; that he does not represent the nation; that the love he bears to learning is at fault; and that the university the people want must be universal like an omnibus, with a place for all, either for a single square or to the end.
He is also used to hearing from those successful people of whom all must speak with reverence—those who have demonstrated their superiority by laying their hands on everything they think worth the getting—that he is a mere "bookish theorist," and that they are much more able to show him the path to success than he to tell them anything to their advantage.