FRENCH PROPERTY OWNERS.

The financial strength of the French is a constant marvel to other nations. Political economists point to the single standard of coinage or to the double standard, according as they consider France to adhere to one or the other of these systems, as the source of this strength. But the difference between that and other nations is probably more conspicuous in the management of government loans than in any other thing. The French government does not depend on syndicates. More than four million French men and women have subscribed to the public debt, and whatever arrangements are made with great bankers, the common people of France are always invited to take a part of the bonds at a fixed and fair price. That country is noticeably distinguished from Great Britain by the equally wide distribution of land. There are more than five million peasant proprietors in France, while the United Kingdom is owned by about 200,000 persons. In England one person in 130 probably owns land, as distinguished from mere house property, and outside of London one in 30 owns a house. In Scotland one in 400 is a landowner, and one in 28 has a house in his name. In Ireland one in 315 owns land, but only one in 120 has t.i.tle to a house.

TRIGONOMETRICAL SURVEY OF NEW YORK.

The board of commissioners in whose charge is placed the projected trigonometrical survey of New York State report that preparations have been made for beginning the work in ten counties westward from the line of the upper Hudson river to Seneca lake. The starting points are the four United States Coast Survey stations at Mt. Rafinesque, near Troy, Helderberg, Princetown, and Greenwich. The position of these points has been very accurately ascertained by means of two independent lines of triangles carried from New England and Fire Island through Connecticut and Ma.s.sachusetts. The State Survey, therefore, enjoys the advantage of starting from points that belong to the great chain of stations established by the general Government, and these are so placed that the first line of triangles which crosses the State will connect directly with another chain of similar stations on the great lakes. The plan followed includes the selection of prominent elevations of land for princ.i.p.al stations. An earthen vessel of peculiar shape and markings will be sunk below the first line, and its centre clearly marked. Above this will be placed a squared stone projecting from the ground. The latter will be the visible base of operations in common use, but the former will be the permanent and authoritative reference in case of any difficulty or doubt. It is intended to establish these points about twelve miles apart, and their positions will be determined by careful astronomical observations, checked by accurate measurements of their distance from neighboring stations. Wherever the nature of the ground compels the placing of these stations at distances inconveniently great, subordinate points will be established in the intermediate ground. In the present working ground the highlands which bound the Mohawk valley on the north and south afford admirable positions for these stations.

The director of the survey reports that the work is well received by farmers, and he gives some excellent reasons why it should be. Boundary marks have so generally disappeared that in tracing the boundaries of eleven counties where sixty corners had been made, only two were found.

It is a part of Mr. Gardner's plan to preserve these old lines, marking them in a permanent manner. The cost of bad work appears to have been very large to the people. The citizens of the State spend $40,000 for maps that are really worthless. Designing persons obtain aid for improper enterprises by exhibiting false maps, and there is no means of disproving their a.s.sertions. Counties and towns have contributed large sums to such projects, and the total is estimated at forty million dollars. Half of this was paid for the Oswego Midland railroad, which Mr. Gardner says would never have been built had its supporters known the character of the country it would cross and the ruinous original cost and running expenses involved in its heavy cuttings and high grades. The cost of surveying the whole State is estimated at $200,000 for the trigonometrical work, which is all that is now projected. To this must eventually be added topography and mapping, though these are not necessary for fixing boundaries. Still, the whole sum required, distributed as it would be over ten years' time, would be a light burden and a remunerative expenditure.

THE USE OF AIR IN ORE DRESSING.

A correspondent, Mr. M. F. M. Cazin, writes us that the article on "Hot Water in Dressing Ores" in the March number "is another good ill.u.s.tration of how great men will stumble over little things. Permit me to express a principle with regard to the same matter, by which without Rittinger's profound calculations, without Ransom's laboratory experiments, the entire question about the best medium (liquid or fluid) for separating two equal sized particles of solids according to their density (specific gravity) can be settled for every special case." His "principle" is that the ideal fluid for this purpose is one that is more dense than the lighter of the two particles and less dense than the heavier. But this is no new revelation. The difficulty is that there is but one fluid of the kind, and only one metal (disregarding the very rare ones) to which it can be applied. The fluid is mercury and the metal gold. The latter has a specific gravity of say 19, and therefore sinks when it is carried upon a bath of fluid quicksilver, with a specific gravity of say 13.6. The sand with which the metal is mixed has a specific gravity of only 2.6 to 5, and floats over the mercury bath and away into the waste, thus effecting the desired separation. This operation, and the fact that there is such a thing as a theoretically ideal fluid, was clearly pointed out by Rittinger, for whom Mr. Cazin appears to have so little respect. The latter gentleman does bring forward one new point, and it is an important one. He a.s.serts that air can be made to act as an "ideal" fluid, in the sense referred to here, by imparting motion to it. This conclusion depends on the consideration that "motion of the fluid in an opposite direction to the fall of the solid particles is equivalent (by friction, adhesion, resistance) to an increase of density of the fluid. Therefore air may by imparted motion have the same separating effect, in a specified case, as water would have without motion."

If Mr. Cazin would state his case differently, he would see more clearly the place that air has as a separating medium. It cannot be made an _ideal_ fluid, but it is comparable with water, which also is never an ideal fluid, for there is no ore of common occurrence that is lighter than water. The question in ore dressing really is whether air can be made to work as well as water. Theoretically we can see no objection, but in practice a great many obstacles arise. The cost is greater both for machinery and operating expenses; the ore has to be dried either before or after crushing, and the efficiency of the apparatus is still doubtful. It may be possible to save more fine dust than by the wet methods, but this point remains unproved.

This subject is a very important one, and involves very great interests.

It is a singular fact that the mechanical treatment of ores, which is a fundamental part of mining science and practice, is not taught in any of the American mining schools. English scientific men occasionally point to America as the land of sound and general scientific teaching, but we fear that a nearer acquaintance with our schools would rob us of that reputation. It is difficult to imagine a less complete system of instruction than that in some of our technical schools, or a more erratic sense of industrial needs than among some of our school managers.

POLAR COLONIZATION.

Congress did not appropriate the $50,000 asked for by Capt. Howgate, but from the peculiar state of politics in the last Congress this is not thought to indicate an unfavorable reception of his scheme. The bill was not reported from the naval committee. It will probably be brought up next December. That will of course be too late to accomplish anything this year, so that the summer is lost to the main expedition, but Capt.

Howgate now proposes to send out an agent to settle upon a site for the proposed camp, engage Esquimaux, and make other preparations. In fact, it is proposed to spend as much as $17,000 in preliminary work and stores, and it is thought that this can be done without increasing the ultimate cost of the expedition more than four thousand dollars. We regret to see that the newspapers are apt to talk about "a dash to the pole" when they speak of this scheme. It is to be hoped that no such dash will be attempted. Capt. Howgate should start out with the fixed determination of making no attempt whatever to reach the pole the first year or two. The dashing style has been the only one used in the centuries through which the history of Arctic exploration runs. What is now of most importance is the inauguration of tentative methods. They are pretty certain to win in the end, and the other method of management is about as certain to fail.

The Government commission appointed to investigate the conduct of the English expedition has reported that its failure was princ.i.p.ally due to the omission of lime-juice from the provision of the sledge parties. The reason for leaving it out was that fuel would have to be carried to thaw it, and with a load of 237 pounds to the man, the sledge parties were already weighted down. This shows how the most labored and extensive preparations for a "dash" may be defeated by failure in even one apparently small item.

Now that the subject of Arctic colonization is so energetically discussed in this country, it may be worth while to republish the recommendations of a German government commission appointed to consider the scheme, when it was first proposed by Weyprecht. These were as follows:

"1. The exploration of the Arctic regions is of great importance for all branches of science. The commission recommends for such exploration the establishment of fixed observing stations. From the princ.i.p.al station, and supported by it, are to be made exploring expeditions by sea and by land.

"2. The commission is of opinion that the region which should be explored by organized German Arctic explorers is the great inlet to the higher Arctic regions situated between the eastern sh.o.r.e of Greenland and the western sh.o.r.e of Spitzbergen.

"Considering the results of the second German Arctic expedition, a princ.i.p.al station should be established on the eastern sh.o.r.e of Greenland, and at least _two_ secondary stations, fitted out for _permanent_ investigation of different scientific questions, at Jan Mayen and on the western sh.o.r.e of Spitzbergen. For certain scientific researches the princ.i.p.al station should establish temporary stations.

"3. It appears very desirable, and so far as scientific preparations are concerned, possible, to commence these Arctic explorations in the year 1877.

"4. The commission is convinced that an exploration of the Arctic regions, based on such principles, will furnish valuable results, even if limited to the region between Greenland and Spitzbergen; but it is also of opinion that an exhaustive solution of the problems to be solved can only be expected when the exploration is extended over the whole Arctic zone, and when other countries take their share in the undertaking.

"The commission recommends, therefore, that the principles adopted for the German undertaking should be communicated to the governments of the States which take interest in Arctic inquiry, in order to establish, if possible, a complete circle of observing stations in the Arctic zones."

It will be observed that the Germans looked forward to occupying the adjacent parts of Greenland and Spitzbergen as their share of a line of outposts to be established by different nations around the Arctic circle. In any such scheme America would necessarily be called on to bear a part, and by Captain Howgate's plan her station would be the line of Smith's Sound and its northern prolongations. This is certainly her natural field, and is not only the roadway by which most of our explorers have made their attempts to reach the pole, and therefore hallowed by their historical struggles, but it is also that portion of the Arctic region which lies nearest us. It is emphatically a _home_ field to us.

Twenty-seven meteors fell in the United States, and two earthquake shocks were experienced, in February.

When the Great Eastern was recently cleaned 300 tons of barnacles were sc.r.a.ped from her bottom, an area of more than 52,000 square feet.

During the hurricane of January 30 the waves in the British channel were forty feet high as measured by a mareograph.

In December, while the snow was blocking the roads of this country, Australia enjoyed a temperature of 110 to 116 in the shade.

Search has again been made for the planet Vulcan, the existence of which is indicated by Leverrier's calculations, but without success.

Among the results of Nordensjold's last trip to the Jenisei river in Siberia was a piece of mammoth hide found with some bones of that animal.

Hygeia, "the city of health," is to be built on the Courtland's estate, about a mile and a half west of Worthing, Suss.e.x, England. Work will be commenced this spring.

The "Big Bonanza" yielded $20,108,958 gold and $25,700,682 silver from its discovery to September 30, 1876. In this deposit the usual preponderance of gold over silver is reversed.

The Mammoth Cave is but one among many caverns in the subcarboniferous limestones of Kentucky, the total length of which Prof. Shaler thinks is at least 100,000 miles.

During the continuance of the Centennial, the Pennsylvania railroad carried nearly five millions of pa.s.sengers to Philadelphia, and out of their 760,486 trunks, valises, bags, boxes, and bundles only 26 were mislaid.

The opening of the safes, more than twenty in number, which were exposed in the great fire at the American Watch Company's New York building proved that safes, as now made by good firms, are really fire-proof under ordinary circ.u.mstances. Watch movements, bank bills, diamonds and jewelry, all came out in good order from most of them, though in some cases the outside plates were red hot. In one safe was a delicate lace shawl, worth $1,500, which was quite uninjured.

Two French astronomers, MM. Andre and Angot, have asked to be sent to San Francisco to observe the transit of Mercury on May 5, 1878. They hope to obtain data which will make the next transit of Venus more fruitful.

During the last year the Signal Service extended its telegraph lines across the Staked Plain to San Diego, California. Two continuous lines of telegraph now extend across the country, one in the northern and one in the southern region.

Additions of interesting animals are frequently made to the New York Aquarium. The blind Proteus from Austria, Axolotl from Mexico, Salamanders from Germany, and some curious fish from China are among the latest additions to the tanks.

The combined Signal and Life-Saving Service at Cape Henry is reported to have saved $500,000 worth of property in the storms which marked the end of March. Telegraphic connection is found indispensable to efficient work in watching the coast.

The bullion product of the United States from July 1, 1875, to June 30, 1876, was about $85,250,000, of which $46,750,000 was gold and $38,500,000 silver. The annual gold product of the world is supposed to be about $25,000,000 greater than that of silver.

The copper-bearing rocks of Lake Superior are reported by the geologist of Wisconsin to extend almost uninterruptedly across that State. In the Nemakagon river ma.s.ses of native copper have been found, and that country may become a rich copper region.