germinate after fifteen years, but the number sprout ing after twenty years was small. -— Popular Science Monthly. THE smallest coin now current in Europe, and the one having the least value, is the Greek lepton. The lepton is, according to the decimal monetary system, current in all countries belonging to the Latin union. Some be gathered idea of from this the valueless fact that littlethedisc lepton of copper, is the onemay hundredth part of a drachma. The Greek drachma usually passes for the same value that a franc piece does, that is, it is about equal to 20 cents of our money. THE sun is so vast, that if it were a hollow ball, the moon could revolve in the orbit which it now follows and still be entirely enclosed within the sun's interior. For every acre on the surface of our globe, there are more than 10,000 acres on the surface of the great luminary. AN American geography printed in 1812 contains this interesting information: "California is a wild and almost unknown land, covered throughout the year by dense fogs, as damp as they are unhealthful. On the northern shores live anthropophagi and in the interior are active volcanoes and vast plains of shift ing snow, which sometimes shoot up columns to in conceivable heights." The book adds that some of these statements would seem incredible were they not so well authenticated by trustworthy travellers. THE following statistics, recently published by the United States Government, are interesting: In 1870 American actresses numbered 692; there are now 3,883. Female architects have grown from i to 50; painters and sculptors from 412 to 16,000; .literary and scientific writers from 109 to 3,161; pastors, from 6? to 1,522; dentists, from 34 to 417; engineers, from 67 to 2ol; journalists, from 35 to 472; legal profession, from 5 to 471; musicians, from 5,763 to 47.309; officers, from 527 to 6,882; doctors and surgeons, from 527 to 6,882; directors of theatres, from 10010943; accountants, from nothing to 43,071; copyists and secretaries, from 8,016 to 96,824, and stenographers and typists, from 7 to 50.633. These figures apply exclusively to women.
"ONE of the most famous cases on record of in sects boring through books is that reported by M. Peignot, in which he states that twenty-seven folio volumes were pierced through in so straight a line that a cord might be passed through them and all the volumes raised by means of it. Different writers
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give the credit of this feat to different members of this group [the Minus group] so that the most that can be said is that it was the work of some member of the Ptinidae.' SPRINGFIELD, Mass., Manchester, N. H., and Utica, N. Y., have each about sixty thousand inhabi tants. Utica is under the Raines law, Springfield under the high-license system of Massachusetts, and Manchester under nominal prohibition. The New Hampshire city has no legal saloons, while Spring field has forty-seven, and Utica two hundred and fifty-two. But Manchester has had 1,456 arrests for drunkenness during the past year, while Springfield had 1,431. Still more remarkable is the record of only 765 arrests in Utica, or only about half as many as in Springfield, although there are more than five times as many saloons. Almost as anomalous is the showing of only 383 arrests in Dayton, Ohio, with 400 saloons and 85.000 people, while Hartford, Conn., with 77,000 people and but 219 saloons, re ported 2,460. There is no possible way of reconcil ing such extraordinary differences, except upon the theory that the police in some cities enforce the laws much more strictly than those of others, and run in drunks when men in the same condition elsewhere would be passed by. QUININE is derived from an Indian name — kinakina, meaning the best bark of all. Cinchona, the tech nical name of the tree from which the bark is derived, is named after the Countess d'El Cinchón, wife of the viceroy of Lima, who was cured from an attack of periodical fever by the use of this drug and in troduced it into Europe in 1584, but the remedy did not become popular until 1676, when it was given to Louis XIV by an English doctor named Talbot. According to others it was introduced by Jesuits and for that reason it is sometimes called Jesuits' bark. As much of the bark was brought from Peru, that also has given it the name of Peruvian bark. A CURIOUS educational institution, a school for publishers, has been established in Paris. There is to be a three years' course, with a great variety of branches; but Sir Walter Besant will notice with regret that there is no chair of Ethics.
LITERARY NOTES.
SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE for January, which begins the new year and volume, also marks the opening of two of its important serial features for 1900. J. M. Barrie's great novel. •• Tommy and Grizel," upon which he has been at work for four years begins in
