hands of a general superintendent, with a salary equal that now paid to the head of the money-order department, assisted by six clerks and two laborers, and the bill includes a provision of $25,000 for the salaries of these employees for the next fiscal year.

Everything points to the successful working of such a plan-especially is the success of postal savings banks in England and Canada a guarantee. The Canadian institution has been carefully studied by the fathers of the bill now before Congress, and the provisions, some of which we have outlined, are not at all the mere output of philanthropic theories. In Great Britain the deposits amount to almost five hundred millions per year. The Canadian postal banks report about twenty-nine million dollars for 1896. But the British institution has been gradually increasing in its transactions for forty years, and the Canadian deposits have moved, very uniformly, from twelve million in 1868, to the present figures, so that the advocates of the bill before Congress are reasonable in estimating that the Government would not be embarrassed immediately with a huge sum of money to be quickly invested under the necessarily severe restrictions. They estimate that the deposits in the United States would not greatly exceed $25,000,000 in the first decade, and that the whole of this sum could be taken care of in national bonds which would give ample margin for the two and one-half per cent. interest. There are questions of detail which seem to have been well considered. The important point is the actual value of the postal banks. That they do practically stimulate small savings-with really no perversion of regular savings-bank deposits, according to English and Canadian experiences-has been proved. There really seems a place for the postal savings bank, and it is to be hoped that the bill we have mentioned will not suffer the fate that befalls a majority of measures which have not the stimulus of some personal advantage.

glasses now in existence give an image some
ten thousand diameters greater than the ob-
ject, which means an area one hundred mill-
ions greater. The
radical advance
which Dr. Gates's
programme affords
can be appreciated
very easily then. He
has, according to his
own account, which
seems to be authen-
tically supported, al-
ready magnified
parts of a diatom to
three million diameters. One of the essen-
tial difficulties of this scientific feat is that
the stupendous magnification of the orig-
inal object leaves such a small fraction of
it visible that the amount of light availa-
ble is divided until it is almost impossible
for the eye to discern the image.
before anything like three million diameters
has been obtained it is necessary to conduct
the entire operation in a room darkened to
all luminous rays. The presence," says Dr.
Gates, of the smallest leakage of light into
the two microscopes at any point along the
path of the rays from the object to the eye was
enough to render the image totally invisible."

A REVOLUTION

IN MICROSCOPY

Long

So that this method has not much success so far as the eye is concerned. But by using a photographic camera in place of the eye "the sensitive plate acts cumulatively. It collects, hour after hour, the weak rays too faint to be seen and thus makes visible the otherwise invisible picture." Even with the photograph the experiment must be conducted with the utmost delicacy. The least dust, or even aqueous vapor, will cloud the image fatally. Dr. Gates's own opinion of the value of his experiment is expressed in the following paragraph which he published:

"This ultra-microscopic domain commences where the best present microscope leaves off, and this new instrument opens a realm in the study of cellular life of profoundest importance to the human race. With the present microscope we can indeed see that a cell has a body, nucleus, granules, flagella, vacuoles, chromative filaments, and a foamlike structure, but of its minuter anatomy we know nothing. The new instrument promises to go as much farther into that unknown province as the present microscope goes beyond the province of the eye."

T

JAPAN
AS A

SEA POWER

ZZZZZ

HE Western powers are beginning to view Japan's activity in navy building with amazement. A generation ago she had literally no navy. Even at the beginning of the last war with China, her modern equipment was confined almost exclusively to a half dozen unarmored cruisers -the best of their class, to be sureand fifteen gunboats. The war brought many substantial additions to her navy, and now she has no less than forty-eight seagoing vessels in commission, including two first-class battle ships of 12,800 tons each. These figures are not so imposing absolutely considered except as an evidence of quick growth; but the additional modern war-vessels that Japan is building in England, Germany, and the United States are of such magnitude and excellent construction that Mr. Charles A. Cramp, our own famous ship builder, pronounces Japan's progress to be more notable than that of any other country in the world, except England. No less than fifteen sea-going vessels and twenty-four torpedo and gun-boats are in course of construction in the finest shipyards of the world. Four of these are battleships, three of 14,800 tons, and one of 10,000 tons; five are first-class armored cruisers of 9,600 tons, and three more are fleet protected cruisers of the commerce-destroying class, with a speed of twenty-three knots. When these vessels are finished there will be no doubt concerning the predominant naval power in the Pacific. Russia and the United States will be so far in the rear of the active little island that their Pacific squadrons will not be worthy the name of navies. For not only will the tonnage of the Japanese navy be first in the East, but every vessel will be modern; she will have the most homogeneous and thoroughly equipped fleet in the world, not excepting any. If any of the political questions of the Pacific are to be decided directly or indirectly by force, Japan is certainly at present the coming power, with a brilliant lead over her Russian and Ameri

can neighbors. Aside from their force and equipment on the Pacific, it must be remembered that the Japanese are the only people in the world who have yet had an opportunity actually to fight modern war-vessels; and the advantage of this experience should go far toward compensating for any natural inferiorities of her naval personnel, as compared with Caucasian sailors. Mr. Cramp, who has been in the East with a view to commissions for building some of these handsome war-vessels, reports in the North American Review the boast of a distinguished Japanese gentleman that "while Japan was forced, by circumstances, to yield much at Shimonoseki that she had fairly conquered, she still secured indemnity enough to build a navy that would enable her to do better next time."

O

NE way to shorten the trip to Europe is to go faster; but, in the attempt to attain a practical perfection of mechanical construction and a practical minimum of fuel, weight, and bulk, shipowners are not forgetting that a second way of economizing time exists-by going a shorter way. We spoke, last year, of the late Mr. Austin Corbin's plan of running transatlantic liners from Montauk Point, at the extreme end of Long Island. A more radical adjustment of the proportions of the railroad and steamship parts of the journey is contemplated in the Canadian route, with St. John or Halifax as a western terminus. An actual contract has been made between Messrs. Peterson, Tate & Co., of Newcastle, England, and the Dominion Government, under the terms of which this firm will send over the Atlantic route steamships of the highest standard, with a speed guarantee of five hundred knots in twenty-four hours. Canada gives an annual subsidy of $500,000 for ten years, and the British Government contributes $250,000 per year. Four of the vessels are to be ready in 1898, and after May, 1900, there will be a weekly service with a penalty of $1,000 for failure to make a voyage. Under these stipulations there is a considerable difference of opinion as to whether the new line will be able to

come out on the right side of the financial balance-sheet. Such fast steamers are no great cargo carriers, and must depend on passenger earnings to make their profits. Even the Cunarders often run at a serious loss in the winter, and the question is whether the Canadian steamers will be able to earn enough in the summer to make up for their losses in the winter. As to the geographical advantages, laymen will be surprised to realize that North America takes such a bold trend to eastward, as one goes north on the Atlantic coast, that a port like Halifax will save nearly a thousand miles over the route from New York to Liverpool. With steamers of the Lucania class, then, the ocean voyage should be easily reduced to four days, and our New York-London ocean lines will have a serious competitor in bidding for the sum

mer rush of tourists, especially for all those to whom the ocean voyage is not one of the pleasant features of a European tour.

Nor is this the last possibility in the hope of shortening the water route. It is already suggested that the eastern coast of Newfoundland should afford a terminus; this would knock over five hundred miles more from the water part of the trip, and would leave it entirely practicable to get to Cork with an ocean journey of only three days. Such a course would begin, say at Boston, on the Maine Central Railroad; by the Intercolonial Railway of Canada to St. John, New Brunswick; thence by fast steamer to the island of Newfoundland in six hours-the distance is ninety miles; and then across Newfoundland by rail (about five hundred miles) to the western port of the ocean steamships.