Kindly inform me if the literary partnerships continue, or, if not, please say when they were severed, between the French writers, Erckmann and Chatrian, and between the English novelists, Besant and Rice.

The literary collaboration has in both cases ceased, death in each instance terminating the partnership. M. Chatrian died in 1890, and Mr. James Rice in 1882. Since the latter's death, Mr. (now Sir Walter) Besant has continued actively at work and published many very successful novels, among the best of which, is the one entitled "All Sorts and Conditions of Men," which, it is said, inspired the founding in the east end of London of that great recreation hall and technical school, the People's Palace. Sir Walter Besant, besides his work in fiction, has been industrious in many other fields of authorship, as historian, antiquarian and literary critic, and his eminence as a man of letters earned for him in 1895 the honor of knighthood. The opening article in the present issue of SELF CULTURE is from Sir Walter's well-informed and entertaining pen. He is also the author of the interesting article on Froissart, the early French chronicler, in the Encyclopædia

Britannica.

[CORRESPONDENCE]

Does the Mississippi flow up-hill?

The following letter has been received from a subscriber to SELF CULTURE Commenting on the reply we made in our May issue to the above interrogation. We take pleasure in publishing the letter, not only on the score of instructiveness and the lucid presentation of facts which our correspondent so interestingly sets forth; but as showing the intelligence to which the magazine in large measure appeals and the degree of interest taken in the discussion of topics currently dealt with in our pages.

The answer we made in our May number was, of course, that which the facts justified, when, as was the case, we defined the word "level" in its customary surface or sea-level sense, and affirmed that the Mississippi does not flow up-hill. The other view that taken by our correspondent is nevertheless correct, in stating that the river, in its course to the equator, does (if we regard the earth's spheroidal form) run up-hill as do all the long rivers flowing southward in the northern and northward in the southern hemisphere, their mouths being farther from the earth's centre than are their

sources. A complete discussion of the question involves mathematical principles too abstruse for reproduction in our columns. In the articles Gravitation, Mechanics, Hydromechanics, etc., in the E. B., will be found much that has a bearing on the subject.—ED. S. C.

I am very much interested in your answers to queries and trust you will pardon me for calling your attention to one which I do not think fully covers the point which must have been the cause of the question. The query referred to is this: "Pray, does the Mississippi river run up-hill? I have been told that its source is lower that its outlet."

One definition of "up," according to Webster, is "the opposite of down" or "a direction opposed to gravity." The corresponding definition of "down" is "in the direction of gravity, or towards the centre of the earth." Taking the meaning of the words "up" and "down" in this sense and considering the source and course of the Mississippi river it becomes apparent that the mouth of the river is farther from the centre of the earth than its source and consequently in a direction which may be described as "up" from its source.

The equatorial radius of the earth is about thirteen miles greater than the polar radius; hence a point on the equator is thirteen miles farther from the earth's centre than a point at either pole, and this distance from the earth's centre of any point on the earth's surface diminishes gradually as we pass from the equator to the poles.

The Mississippi river rises, approximately, in latitude 50°, flows almost directly towards the equator through a distance of about 30° or one third of the entire distance from the pole to the equator; hence its mouth is farther from the earth's centre by about 4 miles than its source, after deducting the one-third of a mile that its source is above sea level.

It is a fact determined by experiment that gravity exerts less force at the equator than at the poles, and if we consider this force alone as the cause of the fall of water, we would wonder why the waters of the ocean do not rush to the poles. There is another force to be considered, viz., the centrifugal force, caused by the earth's daily rotation, the same force which originally gave to the earth its ellipsoidal shape and which maintains the sea at its present level notwithstanding the force of gravity. The centrifugal force referred to, being exhausted in maintaining the sea level, it follows that the flow of water from any point above sea level is caused by gravity alone. Yours very truly,

E. T. BROWN, Chicago, Ill., May 22.

NEW INFORMATION NOTES.

The 132nd victim of the calamitous fire at the Charity Bazaar in Paris has just died. Some bodies are still lying at the Morgue in Paris for identification. The Minister of the Interior has distributed the awards to the persons who saved life on the occasion. The recipients include all classes of the population. The rewards consist of gold and silver medals and "mentions." One man only, the coachman Eugène Georges, who more than once entered the flames while a companion from the Rothschild stables opposite played the stable hose upon him and who thus saved several persons, has been made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. Altogether about 500 men and women have been rewarded.

The Russians in the Levant and in Syria are making vigorous efforts in the direction of a religious propaganda, and are subsidizing on an extensive scale Orthodox schools in centres such as Tripoli, Beirut, Damascus, and Haifa. Six new schools are to be established. One of the conditions of this liberality is that the Russian language should be thoroughly taught in the schools.

General Horace Porter on May 18 presented his credentials as American Ambassador to the President of France. He spoke of the bonds of sympathy between America and France resulting from a similar form of Government and common attachment to liberal institutions, as also from the alliance at the time of the birth of the American Republic and the blood shed in concert for the cause of liberty. All this, he said, had created imperishable ties of friendship. M. Faure, in reply, referred to the cordial relations, based on so many affinities, mutual sympathies, and historic recollections. With a common ideal of democratic and social progress, the two countries would always find a footing of friendly agreement.

Of late the subject of "Premature Burial" has been figuring somewhat extensively in the columns of newspapers. It is difficult to trace the origin of this anxiety over the probability or possibility of people being interred in a living state; and everyone will admit the truly horrible nature of the idea as it stands. A physician of note observes that he is inclined to regard this revival of the premature burial craze very much in the light of one of those passing excitements which are bound to crop up now and then in connection with many phases of our life and habits. Several of the accounts I have read boldly charge medical men with carelessness in certifying deaths- that is, with neglect in assuring themselves that the death has really occurred. This charge is a most unwarrantable one. If cases of trance were common events, no doubt there might be a frequent chance of some mishap in the way of premature burial; but such cases are few and far between, and, as a rule, the nature of such ailments is duly perceived and care taken that the simulation of death is not mistaken for the real cessation of vitality.

The subject of the "Craving for Salt" was discussed at a recent meeting of the Société de Biologie. M. Lapicque stated that sodium chloride was consumed as an article of necessity

by nearly all races, and that most of the lower animals were fond of it, although there were exceptions to the rule. The herbivora betrayed a greater liking for salt than the carnivora, and in the same way agricultural populations, who were more or less vegetarians, were invariably large consumers of it. The tribes who ate no salt led a pastoral or nomadic existence, whose regimen was almost exclusively animal. This, said the writer, had led a scientist to formulate the theory that as vegetables contained principally potassium salts, these latter replaced the sodium salts in the economy, and the vegetarian instinctively craved for common salt in order to compensate for its loss through the kidneys. This theory was, however, weak, for it did not explain why certain peoples who had not access to sea salt replaced it by salts of potassium obtained by the incineration of plants.

The City Council of Louisville, Ky., has under consideration an ordinance prohibiting the presence of boys and girls under fifteen years of age on the street after 9 o'clock in the evening. It is believed the ordinance will be passed. The curfew movement is growing. Petitions are now being sent to the President from various parts of the country, requesting him to appoint the president of the boys' and girls' national home and employment association as an agent in connection with the national bureau of education to visit the larger cities and urge the adoption of curfew ordinances. Among the reasons given in the request for the appointment is that in cities where curfew regulations have been adopted there has been a decrease of 50 per cent. in the arrest of juvenile offenders and in the number of commitments of such offenders to reform schools since the adoption of the ordi

nance.

The Industrial Society of Rouen, France, offers gold medals for a portable pyrometer indicating with accuracy temperatures above 300 deg. C., for a new method of utilizing the solid products of the distillation of petroleum, for the best lamp for burning acetylene, for the application of an industrial process for the extraction of sulphur from iron and copper pyrites, and for a rapid and accurate method of determining co

balt and nickel in the New Caledonia ores. The essays must be forwarded to the president of the society before September 30. They must be written in French. The competition is open to members and non-members of the society.

A British Parliamentary paper has just been issued containing Professor D'Arcy Thompson's report on his mission to Behring Sea in 1896. His main object was to collect information as to the effectiveness of the regulations for sealing prescribed by the Paris award. He found that, while alarmist statements as to the approaching extinction of the seals were altogether exaggerated, measures to prevent their numbers from being further decreased are certainly still desirable. He says:

A birth-rate which we estimate at 143,000 per annum is not great in comparison with the drain upon the stock. From one cause or another, a loss of over 20,000 is experienced among the pups ere they emigrate to sea; and though the dangers they there encounter are unknown to

us, we may take it for certain that the risks they run are great and the loss they endure considerable. When to the measured loss in infancy and to the unmeasured loss in youth and age we add the toll taken on the islands and the toll taken in the sea, it is not difficult to believe that the margin of safety is a narrow one, if it be not already in some measure overstepped. We may hope for a perpetuation of the present numbers; we cannot count upon an increase. A recognition of mutual interests and a regard for the common advantage should suggest measures of prudence which shall keep the pursuit and slaughter of the animal within due and definite bounds.

Mr. Mulhall, the eminent statistician, has recently been praising New England for the progress as well as the extent of its manufacturing interests. He calls attention to the fact that the value of the output from the factories has quintupled since 1850. It is pointed out that, relatively to population, no European country can vie with New England in respect of manufactures. The value of the annual output represents in her case $319 per inhabitant; in the case of Great Britain, $115; in the case of Belgium, $88, and in that of France, $74. The rate, moreover, at which manufactures have advanced has been incomparably greater in New England than in Great Britain. The annual value of manufactures per inhabitant in Great Britain was $III in 1850, and but $115 in 1890; during the same period it rose in New England from $104 to $319. In other words, British manufactures during the last forty years have done little more than keep pace with population, while those of New England show a ratio per inhabitant three times greater than that of 1850. Bootmaking is carried on in New England to a degree that eclipses all European nations.

Japanese competition in match manufacture is beginning to be seriously felt in Europe. After supplying the home market, the Japanese send 2,500,000,000 boxes to the rest of the world, mostly, however, to Asia. This has destroyed the European match trade in India, China and Hong Kong, but so far it has not affected the trade in America to any extent.

Why tempering hardens steel has recently been discussed in The Industrial World. It appears, says our contemporary, that after some five years' research, the metallurgical department of the Sheffield Technical School has solved a peculiar problem to students- namely: why a piece of red-hot tool steel becomes flint hard when suddenly quenched in water. The result of the researches in question showed, almost beyond a doubt, that the well-nigh diamond hardness of quenched steel is due to the presence of a remarkable subcarbide of iron, and that the action of tempering is due to the fact that far below red heat this compound decomposes and dilutes the mass with soft iron permanent magnetism of steel depending on the amount present of this compound. It was formerly supposed to be a satisfactory explanation of this phenomenon that the shock drove the molecules of the steel into closer contact, and hence the hardness- a theory invalidated by the fact that, as disclosed, the volume of the hardened steel was greater than that of the unhardened material.

the

The rapid rise of the land about Hudson Bay is said to be the most remarkable gradual upheaval of an extensive region ever known, Driftwood-covered beaches are now twenty to sixty or seventy feet above the water, new islands have appeared, and many channels and all the old harbors have become too shallow for ships. At the present rate this shallow bay will disappear in a few centuries, adding a vast area of dry land or salt marsh to British territory in America.

The plan to make Minneapolis the head of navigation in the Mississippi, as it was forty years ago when the river steamers came up to the old Falls of St. Anthony, is about to be realized. Within a month advertisments for bids for the construction of one of the two combined locks and dams between Minneapolis and St. Paul will appear in the public press and within two months the work will be under way. The river is now navigable to St. Paul for all river steamers but between the twin cities various rapids have made the trip dangerous for other than the smallest boats.

At last Nikola Tesla has reached a point in his investigation of the possibility of telegraphing without wires to make a postive announcement of his achievements. Mr. Tesla declares that he has produced electrical devices with which he can actually send and receive messages by a system which can be so applied as to make it possible for an operator in New York to communicate with ease and certainty with the people of any part of the earth, and, perhaps, even with those of the stars, if any of these are inhab ited. "The machines which I have completed," Mr. Tesla says, "will carry messages through the earth for a distance of twenty miles or so. I have sent and received signals with them, and I feel confident that I am not mistaken in saying that the problem upon which I have spent many days and nights is solved. Of course it is possible that I am mistaken. I have made mistakes before, but not many. I shall at once make machines which I expect will enable me to telegraph to any part of the earth as readily as I can within a limited distance by means of the ones I have."

Lord Kelvin, in an address upon the age of the earth as an abode fitted for life, has summed up the evidence into what must be accepted as the latest dictum of science. He affirms that geoglogists and biologists no longer consider the question of absolute dates outside their province. The old idea was of a solid earth nearly 20,000,000,000 years old. Modern science makes an immense reduction in this estimate. He is able to declare with confidence that the earth solidified between 20,000,000 and 30,000,000 years ago. The latest estimate of the time required for the formation of all strata since the beginning of the Cambrian rocks is 17,000,000 years. Lord Kelvin asserts that the earth cannot have been habitable more than 30,000,000 years.

The method of cremating or incinerating the body after death is, it would seem, much misunderstood by the public. A report of the United States Cremation Company says that "Cremation is erroneously supposed to be a burning of the body. It is not! No flame whatever touches the flesh or bones from the beginning to the end of the process. It is properly and strictly incineration, or reduction

of the human frame to ashes and absorption of all the gaseous elements, carried on inside a fireclay retort, three feet in diameter and seven in length. An eye-witness describes the process as follows: "As the door of the retort is opened the inrushing air cools it from white to red heat, and the whole interior is filled with a beautiful rosy light that is fascinating to the eye. The body, decently clad as for burial, is laid in a crib, which is covered with a clean white sheet soaked in alum. The crib is then put into the retort. The sheet retains its original position and conceals the form until nothing but the bones are left, and these gently crumble into dust as under the mystic touch of an invisible agent. There is nothing repulsive or painful about it; nothing which need shock the most refined tastes, nor offend the most delicate sensibilities." This ancient as well as modern method of disposing of the dead is treated of in the article on Cremation, in the Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. VI., page 567.

Admiral Makarof of the Russian navy has invented a species of ice-plough capable of breaking through ice from 12 to even 20 inches thick. The experiments have proved so satisfactory that the government has given orders for the immediate construction of two vessels of 10,000 horse-power each, armed with these ploughs, by means of which it is expected to keep not only the River Neva, but also the various Muscovite ports, open to navigation throughout the winter. The majority of Russia's ports and naval arsenals are ice-bound during more than four months of the year.

The longest bridge in the world, says the Scientific American, is that over the Tay, in Scotland, which is 3,200 metres=9,696 feet long; and the next longest is also in Great Britain, being that over the Firth of Forth, 2,394 metres=5,552 feet in length. The following table gives, in metres and in feet, the lengths of the principal bridges in various countries:

The greatest single span of the Forth Bridge is 521 metres = 1,725 feet; of the Elbe Bridge, 420 metres 1,378 feet; of the East River Bridge, 488 metres 1,601 feet between the towers; total length, 6,537 feet.

The Buffalo street car companies, says The Industrial World, are now receiving 5,000 horsepower daily of electricity from Niagara Falls, and it is said to work effectively, at a cost of $36 per horse-power a year. The company at Niagara Falls is doubling its plant, and by the Ist of October next will be ready to supply 30,ooo horse-power in addition to its present capacity. The wires are already being strung for the purpose of transmitting this power to Buffalo for commercial purposes, and the company is already making contracts to supply manufactories, printing offices, hotels and other patrons with both power and light. While the price is not yet permanently fixed, it is expected that the cost will be $50 per horse-power a year

in large quantities, and $60 in small quantities. This is claimed to be about two-thirds of the cost of ordinary steam with coal fuel, and only about one-half as much as it costs to generate electricity from an ordinary plant.

An authority (Prof. A. R. Elliot) has recently been highly commending the uses of fruit at table. Among these uses he enumerates the following: I. To furnish variety to the diet. 2. To relieve thirst and introduce water into the system. 3. To furnish nutriment. 4. To supply organic salts essential to proper nutrition. 5. To stimulate the kidneys, increase the flow of urine and lower its acidity. 6. To act as laxatives. 7. To stimulate and improve appetite and digestion. 8. To act as anti-scorbutics. Concerning the mode of preparation, ripe fruits as a rule do not need to be cooked, and are much more palatable and equally nutritious in the uncooked state. The proper time to eat fruits is either at the beginning of the meal or between meals, when they aid digestion and exert the greater laxative effect. Taken at the completion of a meal, they dilute the gastric juice and tend to embarrass digestion.

The population of the city of New York, according to the police census of 1895, is 1,851,060. The population of Brooklyn, according to estimates based upon the State census of 1892, is 1,142,728. The population of the future borough of Queens, as estimated in 1896, is 46,502 for Long Island City, 22,500 for Flushing, 24,500 for Jamaica, 25,000 for Newtown, and 8,200 for part of the town of Hempstead, or about 127,000 in all. The population of Staten Island was estimated at 65,000 in 1896. The aggregate population of Greater New York is therefore substantially 3,165,000.

The crop report of the Department of Agriculture says: "The estimates by States and Territories of the area, product and value of the principal cereal crops of the United States for 1896, made by the statistician of the Department of Agriculture, are as follows: Corn area, 8,627,ooo; product, 2,283,875,000; value, $491,007,000; yield per acre, 28'2 bushels; farm price per bushel, 21 ̊5c. Winter wheat area, 22,794,000; product, 267,934,000; yield per acre, 118 bushels. Spring wheat area, 11,825,000; product, 159,750,000; yield per acre, 13.5 bushels. Total wheat area, 34,619,000; product, 437,684,000; value, $310,603,000; yield per acre, 12:4 bushels; farm price per bushel, 72 6c. Oats area, 27,566,000; product, 707,346,000; value, $132,485,000; yield per acre, 25'7 bushels; farm price per bushel, 187c. Rye area, 1,831,000; product, 24,369,000; value, $9,961,000; yield per acre, 133 bushels; farm price per bushel, 40°9c. Barley area, 2,951,000; product, 69,695,000; value, $22,491,000; yield per acre, 236 bushels; farm price per bushel 32 3c. Buckwheat area, 755,000; product, 14,090,000; value. $5,522,000; yield per acre, 187 bushels; farm price per bushel, 39 2c. Potatoes, area, 2,767,000; product, 252,235,000; value, $72,182,000; yield per acre, 911 bushels; farm price per bushel, 28.6c. Hay area, 43,260,000; product, 59,282,000 tons; value, $388,146,000; yield per acre, 137 tons; farm price, $6.55 per ton. Tobacco area, 595,000 acres; product, 403,004,ooo pounds; value, $24,258,000; yield per acre, 678 pounds; farm price, 6c. per pound."

Mark Twain's Reverses of Fortune

The myriad readers of the type of American humor associated with the pen-name of Mark Twain - and we hardly know the writer by any other designation-will learn with unfeigned regret that this prince of humorists has, through business misfortune and domestic calamity, of late fallen upon evil days. Recently, death robbed him of a favorite daughter, and this following upon the wreck of his fortune, through the failure of a business house in New York which he financially assisted, has darkened his life with a great sorrow. When business troubles, for which, we believe, he was himself in no way responsible, came upon him, he bravely set forth on a tour of the world to pick up material for a new book by which he hoped, in some measure, to retrieve his fortunes. The tour completed, he is now in London, hard at work in the preparation of "The Surviving Innocent Abroad ”— but meantime the once joyous pen, by reason of the mental strain on the writer, jibes and halts, and the book, we believe, does not get on without more or less forced effort.

The pathos of the situation, as was the case with Sir Walter Scott after the failure of the Ballantynes, is increased by the fact that the necessity for the effort on Mark Twain's part is to relieve himself of embarrassing obligations to his creditors in this country, and by the further fact that work has now to be done under the stress of broken health and advancing age. So sore are the straits in which the great humorist finds himself that, though he has himself, with natural delicacy, withheld from the world any knowledge of his affairs, he has permitted himself to be interviewed in regard to them, and suffered a public appeal to be made on his behalf, through the instrumentality of the New York "Herald." That journal, in its issue of the 13th ult., makes public announcement of the opening of a subscription at its European and New York offices, and it generously heads the list with the donation of its proprietor to the extent of one thousand dollars.

It is now many years since the author of "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn" began his serious work in life, in the printing office of the Hannibal Courier, or, later in pursuing piloting on the Mississippi for a livelihood. Since then he has done a good deal of "roughing it," seeing and portraying life in many and real phases, and, on lecture or on world-exploring tours, been at once a tramp at

home and "a tramp abroad." What wealth of experience he has gathered in his vagabond life, and how inimitably and with such genuine and infectious humor he has set it forth in his books, we all know. But we can little know the toil undergone or the many vicissitudes in his career, still less the ache of mind and heart in pursuing the craft of letters-so real at all times is his mirth and hearty and jocund his mood. And yet to do the work he has done, considering the disadvantages from humble beginnings he has ever been at, must have cost effort of no slight kind; while to draw the characters he has limned and set them with such keen insight and side-splitting humor before the reader as studies of the crude civilization amid which his life has for the most part been spent, must have heavily taxed his powers of imagination and made large drafts upon his ingenious capacity for portraying the droll side of life. If his humor, at times, is a trifle coarse, and in one notable instance irreverent, we are compensated by its quaintness and drawn to him by his large humanity and close kinship with the people. Nor are his own true-heartedness, honest manliness, and hatred of shams and cant, the least real of the causes of our liking and attachment for the writer. These, no less than his pervasive and ever-bubbling humor, are the abiding charms of the man, and must bring him, more especially at such a time as this, into the inner recesses and closest folds of our hearts.

The English

and French Fur Traders

Few chapters in the unwritten history of the continent are more full of romance than those relating to the fur trade, and especially to the race rivalries of the two great companies that a century ago held sway in the arctic solitudes of North America. Browsing in an ample library the other day, we chanced to come across a French-Canadian work- "Les Bourgeois de la Compagnie du Nord-Ouest," par M. Masson (Montreal and Toronto), our interest was revived in the volume-for we had previously become acquainted with it- since we found it full of entertaining matter in connection with the operations of the Montreal Fur Company, composed of Scotch and French Canadians, of which Washington Irving has left us some account in his "Astoria." From the work we also gleaned a good deal about the great Eng. lish company of the "Hudson Rays," the vast area of its operations, and of some of its hardy