While the average man knows that the coaster brake saves a deal of pedaling in a day's ride or a week's ride, authenticated records of such savings are rare. The most extended record of the sort of which there is knowledge has but just seen the light - the record of Teddy Edwards on a Bar-west coaster brake from New York to Buffalo and return, a matter of 996.6 miles. Of this distance Edwards coasted 210.4 miles, or about 22 per cent, say one mile in every four and one-half, or twenty-two miles in every one hundred. It would be valuable if more records of the sort were available ; the record of a season's saving, for instance, would be particularly interesting.

Merchant (to new boy) : Has the bookkeeper told you what to do in the afternoon ?

Youth : Yes, sir; I am to wake him when I see you coming. - Exchange.

The officials of the Canadian Pacific Railway have at present under consideration an immense scheme for the irrigation of the northwest of Canada, by which it is proposed to make good farming and grazing country out of the millions of acres which are dry and arid between Calgary and Medicine Hat, on the North Railway line. James Anderson, one of the leading irrigation engineers of the world, has recently traversed this area, and reports that there is nothing to prevent this work being successfully carried out. His report is being considered by the Canadian Pacific authorities, and it is understood that, as an experiment, 300,000 of the 3,000,000 barren acres will be put under irrigation.

In some of the mines in Pennsylvania the owners are providing for the safety and convenience of their employees by installing telephones at regular intervals along the shafts of the mines. In mine accidents it has often happened that the whereabouts of imperiled men could not be found out, and thus the work of rescue was delayed and lives were lost. It is believed that the telephone will remove much of this trouble.

A cable dispatch from Paris of March 1 to a New York daily newspaper reports a curious law-suit pending between the Nice Observatory and a local electric tram car company using the Thomson-Houston system. The observatory authorities say that the electric instruments in their magnetic department were so much disturbed by the electricity of the tram cars that they were obliged to transport all the instruments to another observatory on Mount Mounier, at a cost of $20,000. They contend that the company ought to pay the cost, and the company is fighting the case.

A stone which a workman was dressing exploded recently at the Cartnell quarries, Thorold. Several accidents of similar character have occurred there. The quarry is leased by the National Contracting Company of New York. It is thought moisture had got into the blocks, which, freezing, caused them to burst with great force.

The wax wire is made by squeezing beeswax through a hole of suitable size drilled in a piece of sheet steel. H. D. W.