Facts and Comments.

Progress, Volume II, Issue 9, 1 July 1907, Page 323

Facts and Comments.

The effect of cocaine as a drug is as much worse than morphine as morphine is worse than the excessive use of alcoholic liquors, and the man or woman who contracts the cocaine appetite, or the " coke habit," as it is commonly known among its devotees, is to all intents and purposes physically, mentally, and morally forever lost. ******

An endless chain made at Cradley Heath, Staffordshire, no less than two and a half miles long and twenty-five tons in weight, was recently forwarded to a Leicestershire colliery. The mammoth chain was taken from the forge to canal boats on waggons drawn by a traction engine, and the sight created a commotion in the town. »t» •?• •** *P H* *t* A scheme is under the consideration of the Canadian Home Secretary, submitted by Mr. R. A. MXennan, a Canadian farmer, of Russell, Manitoba, for changing the whole of North America " into a semi-tropical paraise." Mr. MXennan contends that before the flood North America enjoyed as balmy a climate as any in the world. The flood blocked up the channel between the Arctic and the Atlantic, and if the accumulated ice is torpedoed away, the warm waters of the Atlantic will once again lave the ice-locked northern shores of America, the area of habitable land in Canada will be doubled, and the climate of Greenland will become mild and equable. *#* * * * There are gloomy times in store for the maker of printing ink, according to a writer in the Strand Magazine, for in the near future science is to place the printed word before our eyes by a process in. which ink will not figure. The magazine quoted reproduces a page from a book printed in the new typography and the effect is remarkably good. The experimenter, Mr. E. K. Davenport, states that " the constituents for the blackening of the portions impressed by the metal were contained in the paper, which was made from Newfoundland pulp." Plainly, the invention is far from being perfect, from a commercial standpoint ; but what a field for economy in the production of newspapers alone such a discovery opens to view ! It is said that three-halfpence worth of solution will saturate a hundredweight of paper. If different solutions are found to produce different colours under the electric shock, the doom of the ink makers is amongst the portents in the sky. * sH % * * * It sounds amazing, but actually there will be no stonemasons, no carpenters, and no bricklayers employed in the building of the vast block which is to form the General Post Office extension in London. Indeed, no skilled workmen, except the gangers and the foremen, will be necessary for the work All the rest will be labourers. The explanation of this apparently miraculous undertaking is that the great buildings are to be erected on the Hennebique Ferro-concrete system ; they will be all steel and concrete. Under this novel system, as described by the Westminister Gazette, the whole framework of the building may be said to be steel — somewhat on the principle of \and yet greatly differing in detail from the American plan — encased in concrete, which it naturally strengthens and supports, but which, when the building is finished, is quite invisible. A completed building has the appearance of being composed of Portland stone.