The inspector-general of the Paris, Lyons & Meditteranean Railroad Company, Lyons, France, says that his road uses large quantities of coal briquettes, about 10 per cent of its fuel consisting of them. Thus the road is enabled to utilize all the slack and coal dust from the mines. The engineers can get up steam more quickly with briquettes than with any other kind of coal without them. They form no slag or clinkers and tend to prevent the form-ation of clinkers when used with other coal. The company manufactures its own briquettes. About 95 per cent of its fuel consists of fine coal or slack. Coal briquetes are in very general use in France, hardly a household being without them during cold weather. They are more easily handled and more readily ignited, and they throw out more heat than coal and make no dirt at all. They are preferred to any kind of coal.

Holland has abolished ail restrictions regarding the speed of automobiles in the country, thus placing the entire responsibility upon the driver.

The use of blast furnace gas for engines has made considerable growth in the last ten years. It is estimated that a furnace making seven tons of iron per hour, or 168 tons per day, generates enough gas to furnish 5880 horse-power continuously, not counting the gas used for heating the blast and operating the blowing engines. Engines suitable for this work can now be obtained direct connected to electric generators of 6000 horsepower capacity, and it pould seem that tnis form of engine might come to be used extensively for power purposes.

The stationary gas engine, as power for small plants, is frequently replacing the steam engine.

William Henry Bishop, U. S. Consul at Genoa, Italy, reports: There was established here some five years ago by private parties an enterprise called the Con-trollo Permanente Italiano, the Italian Society of Permanent Chemical Inspection, for the analysis of food products and official certification of their purity. The commercial firms subscribing to it stamp their food products with its guarantee, and a purchaser has at any time the right to request free an analysis of any sample he may send in. The enterprise has obtained the adherence of a very considerable number of the best houses and controls food preparations to the number of 500 different kinds. It is expected that the confidence thus aroused will give the subscribers a great advantage over others in the market ; and should the system become general it would greatly smooth the way of the inspection of Italian food products in the United States.

The excavations at Pompeii have brought to light a piece of bronze wire rope nearly 15 ft. long and about 1 in. in circumference. The rope is now in the Musio Borbonico at Naples.

A new and ingenious piece of mechanism has been devised by the secretary of the London Hospital for a purpose not unfamiliar at that institution. A clock-face, bearing a statement that the hospital costs one penny per second to maintain, and inviting the visitor to take the entire cost of the hospital on to his shoulders for one second, contains a small automatic machine by which the clock-hand is advanced one second when the penny is dropped in. The secretary hopes shortly to add a grammaphone, which shall say "Thank you," in the King's voice for every gift.