The Interior of Canada.—The country between Lake St. John and James Bay is under survey by the Department of Colonization and Mines of Quebec, in furtherance of a scheme for a transcontinental railroad to tap the Hudson Bay country and Lake Winnipeg. As to the commercial advantages of a railway center established at the head of James Bay or at the limit of tide water on the Nottaway River, Mr. O'Sullivan, the surveyor, shows that the shore line of Hudson and James Bay, following the east coast from the mouth of the Nottaway to the southern entrance to Hudson Strait, measures, in a line running due north, eight hundred miles, or about the same distance as the former point is north of the city of Washington; and the western shore line, measured in the same way to Rowe's Welcome, is about sixteen hundred miles, while the area inclosed amounts to more than three hundred and fifty thousand square miles. While Hudson Strait is blocked with ice during nine months of the year, the bay itself is navigable from June till November, and James Bay is generally open early in May. All the large rivers—the Albany, Moose, Hannah, Nottaway, Rupert, Main, and Big Rivers—converge along these shores, and the forest wealth of the thousands of miles drained by these and lesser rivers can be concentrated at the mouth of the Nottaway or Rupert. The land along the line from Lake St. John is good dry land fit for settlement. The Nottaway at the crossing point is fourteen hundred and fifty feet wide, and admits bridge spans of five hundred feet. Thence, a direct line to Norway House, at the foot of Lake Winnipeg, would pass through the gypsum beds on Moose River, and give access to a vast area of rich agricultural land in the north part of the province of Quebec. The straight line continued would strike about the forks of the Peace and Smoky Rivers, near the center of the northwest wheat-growing region, and thence follow the valleys of the Peace and Skeene Rivers to the Pacific Ocean, crossing the Rocky Mountains at a point where the summit is two thousand feet lower than that of the Canadian Pacific Railway. As to the resources of this northwestern country, there are, according to a Dominion official report, an area of six hundred and fifty-six thousand square miles along the Mackenzie River suitable for the growth of potatoes, four hundred and seven thousand suitable for barley, and three hundred and sixteen thousand for wheat, with a pastoral area of eight hundred and sixty thousand square miles, two hundred and seventy-four thousand miles of which may be regarded as arable land. "The difference in latitude makes no corresponding difference in the climate. Flowers bloom as early in the spring and as late in autumn at Great Slave Lake as at Winnipeg or St. Paul and Minneapolis. The prevailing southwest or Chinook winds render the climate along the Peace and Liard Rivers as mild and salubrious as that of western Ontario. Wheat ripens along the Mackenzie River under the Arctic Circle, a thousand miles farther north than Rupert House."
[MINOR PARAGRAPHS.]
Mr. W. H. Huddleston, in his presidential address to the Geological Section of the British Association, spoke of the geology of the southwest of England, and began with supporting the claim of Bristol, where the association was meeting, to be regarded as the cradle of British geology, and even more; for, he said, Devonshire, Cornwall, and West Somerset first attracted the attention of the Ordnance Geological Survey. "Thus it comes to pass that the region which lies between the Bristol Channel and the English Channel claims the respect of geologists in all parts of the world, not only as the birthplace of stratigraphical paleontology, but also as the original home of systematic geological survey. The city of Bristol lies on the confines of this region, where it shades off northwestward into the Palæozoics of Wales and northeastward into the Mesozoics of the midland counties."
A committee of the English Society of Arts, appointed to inquire into the matter, attribute the doubtful quality of modern paper to "revolutionary" changes which the industry has undergone, including the introduction of new substances of varying qualities and chemical properties, in the working up of which there is still room for much improvement. The committee have examined many books, as evidence, on the question of the deterioration of paper. They distinguish two tendencies—to disintegration and to discoloration—which are independent but may be concurrent effects, and are notably concurrent in papers containing mechanical wood pulp. Disintegration, which has been brought to light in papers of all grades, is generally the result of chemical changes in the fibers, produced by acids in the rag papers, and by oxidation in the papers made of mechanical wood pulp. Discoloration of ordinary cellulose papers, as distinguished from papers containing mechanical wood pulp, is dependent upon the quality of the sizing, and particularly the proportion of rosin in it. The committee define as the normal standard of quality for book papers, required for publications of permanent value, fibers not less than seventy per cent of the cotton, flax, and hemp class, sizing not more than two per cent rosin, the paper to be finished with the normal acidity of pure alum, and the loading to be not more than ten per cent mineral matter.
Colonel G. E. Church, president of the Geographical Section of the British Association, pointed out in his opening address, which was on Argentine geography and the ancient Pampean Sea, that the drainage area of the Plata basin was, according to Dr. Bludan, 1,198,000 square miles, or more than two and a half times that of the Pacific slope of the Andes. The minimum water discharge into the Plata estuary would, every twenty-four hours, make a lake one mile square and 1,650 feet deep. About seventy-four per cent of it would represent the flow of the Paraná, and twenty-six per cent that of the Uruguay River. These interlaced with the affluents of the Amazon along a line of fourteen degrees of longitude. The author sought to show that the Plata drainage area was, in a recent geological period, much more extensive than it is to-day; that its extreme northern limit was in 10° 44' south latitude, and that nearly all the waters that now unite to form the Madeira River, the main affluent of the Amazon, once flowed southward into a Pampean sea that penetrated north over the plains of the present Argentine Republic to about 19° south latitude.
Dr. Le Neve Foster, who nearly met his death in 1897 from carbonic-oxide poisoning while investigating a mine accident in the Isle of Man, discussing, in his report on the disaster, the origin of the gas, points out that although it occurs occluded in certain rocks and minerals, it has never been found as a natural constituent of the atmosphere of the mines. He had, therefore, to seek an artificial source, and found it in the burning of the timber in the mine. It appeared that the combustion of a cubic foot of larch, the wood used in the timber construction of the Snaefell mine, gives rise to enough carbonic oxide to occupy four hundred and seventeen feet of space at a temperature of 60° F. and a pressure of thirty inches. Twenty-five cubic feet of timber will yield sufficient to infect the atmosphere with one per cent of the gas all through the mine—enough to cause almost immediate loss of consciousness and speedy death. It is important, therefore, to avoid as much as possible the use of combustible material in the shafts and roadways of mines, unless they are constantly wet or damp. It is also well to have compressed oxygen at hand for the restoration of asphyxiated persons, and also apparatus for penetrating noxious gases.