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popular surgeon of the day, and belongs to the generation of practitioners who are carrying to such wonderful perfection the advanced surgery of the internal abdominal organs which has been rendered possible by Lord Lister's antiseptic treatment. He, like the veteran surgeon, has worked with persistent enthusiasm to gain extended knowledge in his art, and stands unrivalled in the class of surgery which the King's case required. The one ambition of every budding young surgeon is to see Treves operate, and the corridors of the London Hospital are thronged with eager faces at every such opportunity.... He has had enough hero-worship and success to spoil him, but knows too much of the possibilities of increased knowledge to be unduly affected by adulation on account of present achievements.

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LIEUTENANT PEARY'S ARCTIC WORK.

LIEUTENANT PEARY'S

recent return

from his last Arctic campaign has occasioned a renewal of interest in his achieve. ments in the far North. His official reportdated Sydney, September 7,-is an exceedingly modest statement, covering his work during the past year. It appears in the National Geographic Magazine for October, followed by a brief summary of Lieutenant Peary's explorations during the past twelve years, which runs as follows:

"The results of his long labors in the far North are most important. He has proved Greenland an island, and mapped its northern coast line; he has defined and mapped the islands to the north of Greenland, known as the Greenland Archipelago; he has shown that an ice-covered Arctic ocean probably extends from the Greenland Archipelago to the North Pole; he has accurately defined the lands opposite the northwestern coast of GreenlandGrant Land, Grinnell Land, and Ellesmereland he has reached the most northerly known-land in the world; he has gained the most northerly point yet reached on the Western Hemisphere, 85° 17'; he has studied the Eskimo as only one can who has lived with them for years; he has added much to our knowledge of Arctic fauna and flora, of the musk ox, the Arctic hare, and the deer; the notes he has made during the past years will benefit meteorology and geologyall these are some of Lieutenant Peary's achievements during the twelve years he has so valiantly battled in the far North. But, above all, Mr. Peary has given the world a notable example of a brave and modest man who, in spite of broken limbs and most terrible physical suffering and financial discouragements, has unflinchingly

forced to a successful end that which he had decided to accomplish.

"To Mrs. Peary, the able seconder of her husband's plans, and to Mr. H. L. Bridgman, the efficient secretary of the Peary Arctic Club. and the loyal members of that club, much credit is due."

THE DANGERS OF THE ALPS.

IT is stated on good authority that the Alpine death-roll is not so serious as is commonly imagined. Mr. Harold Spender, writing on this subject in the Pall Mall Magazine, says that the

causes of accident are far more often rashness, such as trusting to luck that a possible avalanche will not overwhelm you, snowstorms, and even lightning.

"The stock generalizations about guideless climbing are quite beside the mark, and this practice is now confined, in Switzerland, to a small number of men who are for the most part better than any guides. The best guides themselves are no more infallible than any other skilled mountaineer, while the worst are very much more dangerous than none at all."

The three most serious catastrophes this year were all due to the weather, a snowstorm, an avalanche, and lightning. The parties had plenty interesting detailed accounts of Alpine accidents, of guides. Mr. Spender gives a number of very from which the only conclusion is that a little more care, a little more prudence, would have avoided all, or nearly all. A Swiss doctor at Berne has made a full list of all Alpine accidents, from 1890-1901:

In all, the deaths numbered 305, of whom 218 were tourists, 73 guides, and 14 porters. Taking these figures of nationalities, we get the following result:

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Considering that about 100,000 people go to the Alps every year, and that some 10,000 of these either climb mountains or cross passes, the number of killed is very small. The Austrian Alps have about half the accidents, they being the most crowded, and with the poorest class of tourists.

The intrepidity of the young Austrian climbers places the performances of cautious Englishmen in the shade. A Tyrolese guide told Mr. Spender once that they had only one fault,they thought they had two necks, "But they fall like ripe apples."

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coal miners, in particular, are now engrossing a large share of the public attention on account of the trouble in the Loire mining region. The dominant idea gleaned from M. Benoit's "Coal Mines" in the Revue des Deux Mondes is the great dissimilarity existing between French and American mining methods and conditions, and the difficulty of making a serious comparison between them.

The rule in regard to wages is that men actually engaged in the tunneling of passages and the coal digging are paid by the piece (the piece being either the quantity of coal extracted, or the meter of advancement made in the tunneled gallery), and that those employed for the repairing are paid by the day, as a general thing, though they are paid by the piece if the work is regular and of considerable duration. On the whole, in the determination of the wages, a wide margin is left for the 'will, intelligence, and industry of the individual miner; no uniform price being given indifferently to all as purchaseprice of a certain amount of brute force. fines imposed are rather heavy in proportion to the wages; but the heaviest ones only apply to cases where the common safety of the underground workmen is concerned; and the profit of all fines invariably goes to the aid-fund for the disabled and superannuated.

The

No miner can be discharged without a fifteen days' notice unless he insult his superiors, or forcibly interfere with his comrades. The first exception may seem much too vague and allow too much scope for arbitrary dealings; but, as the engineer only has power to discharge, the miner is safeguarded against the anger or hastiness of subordinate officials.

M. Benoist's investigations have led him to a favorable conclusion as to the way in which the fines and severer penalties are administered. He tells an anecdote about a miner who had been transferred as a punishment to a less productive and more arduous vein: "I happened to meet him after his return, and he spoke of his exile as of Siberia; but, with the confiding candor which is one of the characteristics of his class when not influenced by the politician, he gaily told us he had been convicted for theft.

You didn't steal, did you?' asked the engineer who accompanied me. His whole face twinkling with mirth, the man slyly replied, 'Oh, certainly I didn't!' Such perfect resignation is surely a sign that the justice is without injustice, and even the severity not excessive."

"Comparing past wages with present, though statistical comparisons are as misleading historically as geographically, in time as in space,-the increase is certain; and in this, as in the reduction of the working hours, and in the mitigation of hardships, there is a material betterment of the miner's condition. It must be conceded, however, that (although the average wages in the coal mines are not bad, as compared with other industries), from diverse causes-some exterior and beyond his control, others intimate and personal-the average miner is generally on the debit rather than the credit side. And this is true, notwithstanding the gratuitous allowance of coal; the possibilities of additional revenue from small accessory occupations; and the opportunities for economy afforded in many districts for those who wish to profit by them. Yet the very great majority, if not all of the miners, have debts, or, at most, have saved nothing."

This dismal outlook is perceptibly brightened by the citing of incidents like the following. When questioned as to his daily earnings, a miner answered, "About seven francs." And, while complaining that because of his large family he could not take a holiday, he did not seem discontented with the pay in itself; his good-natured grumblings were directed against life rather than against his trade.

"Why the miner generally saves nothing, on the contrary getting into debt, whether it is the pay which is too small for the living which is too dear, or whether it is he who is incapable of adjusting his living to his pay, is the social and moral question combined for the miner. But social facts, even when one is prudent or presumptuous enough to limit their application to a single domain, are of such great abundance, richness, and complicity, that it is beyond our power to embrace them as a whole-to grasp and to present the ensemble. Let us be contented with this makeshift. As regards labor in the coal mines, we can conclude that the work is divided there into a quantity of professional categories, or specialties, entailing as many dif ferent treatments and conditions; that miners above fifty-five years of age are rare, and that the working population is migratory; the working hours are shorter than in other similar industries, and the hardships less than in the mines of former times; and moreover, that these working hours are shorter and the pay better in the great mines than in the medium or small ones; and that the scale of wages cannot be considered as low, in any event, having doubled, and more than tripled, since the end of the eighteenth century."

THE PERIODICALS REVIEWED.

THE CENTURY MAGAZINE.

HERE is a thorough article on "The So-Called

TH

Beef Trust" in the November Century, the first of a series on "The Great Business Combinations of To-Day." For many years the beef industry of this country has been controlled by a half-dozen powerful corporations. They have made enormous profits, and have unquestionably furnished the consumer with better and cheaper meat than the small operator could produce. Mr. George B. Fife, the writer, describes the processes of the slaughtering and packing of beef, and the determined effort of the packer to centralize his business. As to the attacks on the alleged Beef Trust, Mr. Fife says that, whatever the Government may succeed in proving, there is no doubt that a working "agreement" has long existed among the large packing corporations. He believes that this agreement is, in effect, that they are not-to their own loss and the destruction of their good will,-to send more beef to a market than it reasonably requires. Another allegation against the so-called Beef Trust is that it has attempted to maintain the price of beef under appearance of establishing a uniform rule for the giving of credit to dealers. These two understandings certainly exist among the packers ; but they call them protective, and not oppressive,

measures.

IN A NEW YORK POLICE COURT.

The Century opens with a readable descriptive article on "The New York Police Court," by Edwin Biorkman. He describes some of the pathetic and humorous scenes in the court of a police justice, and explains the procedure by which magistrates are persuaded to issue warrants. The principal advantage of the summons is that it gives the magistrate a chance to act as peacemaker, rather than as judge, in a number of instances, when, if settlement were not reached through his mediation, a criminal process would be the final outcome. Two-thirds of the applicants for summonses are women, a majority of whom hail from the big tenements, where all sorts of discordant elements are crowded together without elbow-room. The magistrates often dispose of such squabbles-with a group of women on each side hurling charges and countercharges against each other, - by threatening to arrest every one of them, on the spot, unless they go home and live in peace. It is significant that less than one-half of the summonses granted are returned in court.

This number of the Century has refrained from the usual features of colored illustration; there is a delightful description of "The Grand Cañon of the Colorado," by John Muir, and a considerable first chapter of an historical series, "The Prologue of the American Revolution," by Prof. Justin H. Smith, which will give the most complete account yet published of the invasion of Canada in 1775.

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complished the 2,000 miles to Yakutsk in a sleigh drawn by horses. From Yakutsk on, northeast, the next lap of 1,500 miles was accomplished behind reindeer to the last Russian outpost on the Kolyma River. From this point on to the Bering Sea dog-sleds were the programme. With five sleds, drawn by sixty-three dogs, the party set out for Bering Sea, with a very scant three weeks' provision, and arrived on May 20, 1902, at East Cape, on the Strait. The expedition had traveled about 11,263 English miles. Mr. De Windt's original idea was to cross over the frozen Strait at Cape Prince of Wales, where the distance from shore to shore is about fortyfive miles; but he found that the strait is never completely closed, and that even the Eskimos rarely succeed in getting across.

WHAT IS LIFE.

In "The Newest Conceptions of Life," Mr. Carl Snyder gives an interesting account of the various stages of the physiologists' work to solve the riddle of what life is. He tells us that they have decided that life is a series of fermentations. Biological chemistry has demonstrated that there is for every vital function -even the brain and the nervous system,-a specific ferment. Now, the further question is, What are these ferments? This has, so far, baffled inquiry. "Their activity seems bound up rather with the peculiarity of their atomic structure and their chemical architecture, so to speak, than with any mystery of ingredients. They are compounded of the simple elements of water, air, and carbon. It is how these are put together that is so puzzling." The puzzle, however, Mr. Snyder tells us, is near solution, and we may be on the verge of manufacturing life in the laboratory.

THE ASTONISHING INFLUENCE OF RAINFALL.

A brief article on "The Distribution of Rainfall," by Dr. A. J. Herbertson, tells us that the deductions made by meteorologists in the matter of rainfall are drawn from about 50,000,000 observations taken at nearly 9,000 stations. The influence that the question of rainfall has on animal and vegetable life is extraordinary to the layman. Expressed in the terms of sheep, it is shown that in Australia,-land receiving less than ten inches of rain per annum is worth next to nothing unless it can be irrigated,-with ten inches of rain, eight or nine sheep can be kept per square mile; with about twenty inches of rain, 640 sheep per square mile (eighty times as many); and with thirty-four inches of rain,-in Buenos Ayres,-a square mile will support the enormous number of 2,560.

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Mr. George W. Smalley, in "Personal Recollections and Appreciations of Men of Letters," deals with Robert Browning, John Morley, William Dean Howells, Anthony Hope, Henry James, Matthew Arnold, Swinburne, Lowell, and Alfred Austin. Mr. Smalley says of John Morley: "He looks like a Puritan, and talks like a philosopher." While, as a historian, he finds John Morley austere, unbending, uncompromising, at times narrow, and at all times a fanatic, "on the personal side he has a sweetness of nature and a sweet reasonableness in talk which I can only call loveable." Mr. Morley's "Life of Gladstone" is about to appear. "It will be a unique piece of biography,—the biography of a believer by an unbeliever; of the real, adroit, professional politician of his times by a political amateur; of an Imperialist by a Little Englander; of a bon-vivant by an ascetic." Mr. Morley is to receive no less than $50,000 for this piece of work. He was for many years the reader to the Messrs. Macmillan, and is still their literary adviser.

There is a brief sketch by C. Whibley of the late George Douglas, author of "The House With the Green Shutters," and a further note on the same subject by Robert Barr.

THE

SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE.

HE November Scribner's contains the most delicate and beautiful examples of color printing,— the pictures drawn by Sarah S. Stillwell for the pretty little fairy story, "Princess Pourquoi," by Margaret Sherwood.

THE OUTLOOK FOR OUR MERCHANT MARINE.

Mr. Winthrop L. Marvin contributes an article on our merchant marine, "The American Ship in 1902." He divides our merchant marine into two classes: First is the immense fleet, of over four and a half million tons, engaged in the coasting trade of our Atlantic and Pacific seaboards, including now Porto Rico, Hawaii, the Great Lakes, and the rivers. For more than a century this magnificent traffic has been reserved to American ships and American seamen; and it now employs the largest, most efficient, and most prosperous coastwise tonnage in existence. The other half, the part engaged in over-seas trade,-now stands at only 879,595 tons, only one-third the tonnage of thirty-one years ago. Mr. Marvin says American shipbuilding is not increasing, but is rather falling off. Mr. Marvin argues that this over-seas shipping-trade is the proper object of national solicitude; he says there is nobody whom the Government has so systematically forgotten in the past fifty years as the owner of the American steamer, or sailing vessel, on the high seas; and, that conditions are now such that a great merchant tonnage can spring into existence as soon as the American people give the word.

OUR IMMIGRANTS,-COMING AND GOING. The magazine opens with Mr. James B. Connolly's article "In the Paths of Immigration," in which he pictures the journey of Russian immigrants from their homes to New York. Mr. Connolly complains that the steamship people are very rough on the ignorant immigrants, assuming them to be an inferior kind of creature, dull brutes,-on whom consideration would be thrown away. When these same immigrants make the trip back, after living in the United States a few years, there is a difference. It is common talk "below decks"

on ocean-liners that steerage going west and steerage going east are not to be handled in quite the same way.

THE ARTS OF THE SPELLBINDER.

There is a highly amusing and interesting article on "The Spellbinder," by Mr. Curtis Guild, Jr., who speaks from experience in the art, and places much emphasis on the necessity of clear and distinct enunciation, which is more valuable than a merely powerful bellow. This has been the secret of the success, as an orator, of the Hon. Thomas B. Reed. Nowadays, mere rhetoric no longer convinces ; sarcasm is a bad weapon; the professional vendor of comic stories does not accomplish much; and the savage partisan, "who preaches on the text attributed to Horace Greeley, 'that every horsethief is a member of the opposite party,'" only hurts his own cause.

TH

THE COSMOPOLITAN.

HE articles on the St. Louis world's fair, on Robert Hoe, of printing press fame, and "Mankind in the Making," that appear in the November Cosmopolitan, are quoted from, among the "Leading Articles of the Month."

Other "Captains of Industry" dealt with in this number are the late Winfield Scott Stratton, on whom Mr. Samuel E. Moffett writes; Mr. James R. Keene, whom Mr. Edwin Lefèvre describes as "the greatest stock gambler that ever lived;" Mayor Tom L. Johnson, called by Henry George, Jr., "a monopolist who is spending his wealth to destroy the sources of monopoly;" and F. W. Roebling, the head of the great wiremaking industry in Trenton, N. J., which puts out $15,000,000 worth of wire a year.

PERILS OF MODERN BALLOONING.

Mr. Samuel E. Moffett, writing on "Dangerous Occupations," puts first the profession of ballooning, lately come into vogue. The plain balloonist has dangers enough, but Mr. Moffett explains that the man who runs an airship by a machine has infinitely more perils. There is always more or less gas escaping from a balloon, and it seems inevitable that some should find its way to the motor and end the career of the aëronaut. However, this particular kind of catastrophe has not yet come, although Santos-Dumont has experienced almost every other. A dirigible balloon is peculiarly liable to wreck from the fact that its fragile structure is forced against the wind instead of being carried along with it. There is also the danger of explosions from expansion of the gas. It was this that wrecked Severo's Pax on May 12, and dashed its rash designer to the ground from a height of nearly 2,000 feet at three times the velocity of the Empire State Express.

MILTON'S PLACE AMONG THE POETS.

There is a posthumous essay by John Fiske on John Milton, which ends with a clean-cut classification of the blind poet. "By common consent of educated mankind, three poets-Homer, Dante, and Shakespearestand above all others. For the fourth place there are competitors: two Greeks, Eschylus and Sophocles; two Romans, Lucretius and Virgil; one German, Goethe. In this high company belongs John Milton; and there are men who would rank him first, after the unequaled three." Other articles in this number deal with the recent United States naval manoeuvres, "German Court Beauties," "What Women Like in Women," and other lighter subjects.

THE

THE WORLD'S WORK.

HE November number of the World's Work contains the address delivered by Mr. Andrew Carnegie at the University of St. Andrew, Edinburgh, which we have quoted from among the "Leading Articles of the Month."

THE REAL RULER OF RUSSIA.

The "Real Rulers of Russia," by Wolf von Schierbrand, attempts to explain the limitations of the Czar's power, and to analyze Russian character. This writer says the Czar is not the sole ruler of his people; that three other autocrats divide the power, and that these are three words in the Russian language: Nitshewo, Winowat, and Natshai. The first of these words means "nothing," ," "never mind." Every disquieting thought is dismissed with a “nitshewo,” which perhaps means more nearly "What are you going to do about it?" The second word, winowat, means literally "I am guilty," "I own up to it," but also implies "What is the use of my denying it ?" The third fatal word originally stood "for tea,"-like the French pourboire,-then came to be used to mean "for vodka" (corn-brandy); and, finally, it rose to imply the very essence of corruption, probably akin to our "graft." This last autocrat Herr von Schierbrand thinks the mightiest of them all. "Without natshai you would be unable to accomplish anything in Russia, all the orders and the decrees of the nominal Czar at St. Petersburg to the contrary notwithstanding."

THE FISHERIES OF THE GREAT LAKES.

W. S. Harwood has a well-illustrated article, "Saving the Fisheries of Our Inland Seas." He tells how more than 100,000,000 pounds of trout and whitefish are taken from the Great Lakes in a year, and of the Government restocking to repair the ravages of wasteful fishermen. It is a pretty big task to restock Lake Superior, an inland sea 400 miles long, 1,500 miles in circumference, and averaging 1,000 feet deep; but the Government seems to be accomplishing it. The fish are caught in huge nets and chiefly by Americans. They were pursued so constantly that they would soon become extinct but for the governmental aid in stocking. Thus, in Lake Ontario, the catch of whitefish-the most delicious of the lake fish,-fell from 1,156,200 pounds in 1868 to 126,650 pounds in 1895; and the catch of trout, for the same period, from 612,000 pounds to 109,300 pounds. The basis of the governmental work is collecting the eggs and hatching them artificially. The artificial hatch is very much more prolific than the natural hatch.

THE COMING DELUGE OF GOLD.

Charles M. Harvey calls attention to "Another Revolutionary Increase of Gold," from the mines of South Africa. He says that, by 1904, a complete resumption of mining in the Transvaal-together with a like increase in the rest of the productive countries,-will send the world's output up to $400,000,000 a year, as compared with a little over a quarter of that amount in 1890. Mr. Harvey says America will be the largest gainer by the gold deluge, as America is the best field for the investment of money that the world affords, having the most varied, extensive, and profitable of the world's industrial activities.

OTHER ARTICLES.

Mr. M. G. Cunniff, in a series of first-hand studies of labor problems, writes on "The Human Side of the

Labor Unions," and finds suspicion the prevailing mood of employer and union. He quotes labor leaders to the effect that misunderstandings cause half the labor troubles: "A union hates a typewritten letter, but it likes a man." Julian Ralph writes on "The Moral Soundness of American Life;" Henry Harrison Lewis gives a glimpse of the personality, and of the working habits, of Col. John Jacob Astor, under the title "The Quiet Control of a Vast Estate;" Frank M. Chapman describes the work of the American Museum of Natural History, and how it acts both as an investigator and teacher of natural science; Ivy Lee describes the New Stock Exchange Building in New York, and some remarkable features of its construction, and Mr. James H. Bridge gives the views of important leaders of industrial combinations, under the title "Trusts as Their Makers View them."

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COUNTRY LIFE.

HE November Country Life has an eminently timely article on "Turkeys and Cranberries," describing the growing of the turkeys in the State of Rhode Island, and the cranberry at home in the marshes of Cape Cod and New Jersey.

Answering the question, "Does Farm Forestry Pay?'' Mr. Allen Chamberlain has a very interesting account of some actual successes of New England farmers, where the father sowed and the son reaped. In one case a Mr. Cutter, of Pelham, N. H., began caring for a forty-acre tract of self-seeded pine timber, thinning out the trees and, furthermore, pruning about an acre each year after the growth was ten years old. This furnished much amusement for the neighbors; but Mr. Cutter's son has recently logged 700,000 feet of lumber from this tract, leaving no less than 300,000 feet standing; this gives an average of 25,000 feet to the acre, and much of the Michigan old pine lands only cut about 5,000 feet to the acre. Another New Hampshire man, the Hon. John D. Lyman, of Exeter, has a hobby of white-pine culture cultivated most successfully. He plants 30,000 white pine trees to the acre,-thick enough to give the young trees long, straight bodies, free from limbs for quite a distance from the ground; these are thinned out until the final stand will have from 50 to 160 trees to the acre. Mr. Lyman reckons the land, before planting, at $10 an acre; and the interest at 4 per cent., compound, shows that a lot will stand its owner in 54 years about $80 per acre. On this basis he makes a good profit from his white-pine planting.

Bryant Fleming describes the famous Hunnewell Estate at Wellesley, founded by the late H. H. Hunnewell, with its Italian gardens and magnificent plantations of conifers, on the shore of Lake Waban, opposite Wellesley College. There is a very pleasant account of an old-time-home garden at Cazenovia Lake; an article on quail and quail shooting, and a chapter on staircases, in the series on "The Making of a Country Home."

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

We have quoted in an article in the November

E have quoted in another department from Mr.

Atlantic on "Australasian Cures for Coal Wars," and from the article by Ambrose P. Winston in the series entitled "A Quarter-Century of Strikes."

THE ARTISTIC HANDICRAFT OF TO-DAY. Mr. Charles H. Moore writes on "Modern Artistic

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