mathematician, very rapid in his calcula- If, for instance, forty-five to fifty grains tion as well as absolutely correct. Every

of smokeless powder is necessary for thing pertaining to the chronograph must killing pigeons or large game birds, forty work harmoniously. The battery should to forty-five grains with less wadding be of a known power, and the current will answer the purpose of breaking the flow with a continuous regularity. The flying target under all conditions of wind wires at the muzzle of the gun should and weather. be of the same thickness, and the muzzle Since we have spoken of velocities, it of the weapon itself at precisely the same may be instructive to know something distance from the target at each dis- of pressures at the breech of the shell charge. A foot variation in this respect chamber, at which point the greatest would make a surprising difference in strain in the barrel is usually exerted at the time of the flight of the load when the instant of discharge. As it is imwe consider that with a velocity of say possible in the space here allowed, to 900 to 940 feet per second an ounce and print the tables necessary for comparison a quarter of shot will travel thirty yards with all the powders, we must simply be in a little less than the eleventh part of satisfied with an illustration. a second. Eight hundred and fifty feet Taking for instance five shots each, per second is a developed force great of the Dupont, E. C., and Gold Dust enough to kill any game for which the powders, with the shells wadded to

, shotgun is intended, and anything be- obtain fair velocities for most any puryond this is, of course, advantageous, pose pertaining to field and trap shooting, adding, as it surely does, to the power Dupont gave 879 feet velocity with 7440 of the gun,- providing always that to pounds bursting strain, the load being obtain the higher velocities the breech 3/4 drams or 40 grains, and 118 ounce of pressure is kept far below the bursting No. 7 shot. E. C. gave 851 feet velocity strain.

with 7584 pounds bursting strain, the The pigeon shooter desires above all load being 374 drams or 44 grains and things what is called a killing load, and 118 ounce of No. 7 shot. Gold Dust is constantly studying to increase the gave 928 feet velocity, with a pressure power of his gun. Hence he uses a at the breech of 5266 pounds, the load charge proportioned to develop the great being 2 drams or 45 grains with 116 est force to the shot charge. At the ounces of No. 7 shot. pigeon shootings of today the average The chronographic readings on the velocity is undoubtedly 920 to 945 feet Dupont and E. C. herein mentioned, were per second for thirty yards. Twelve to taken at random from a report published in fifteen years ago a score of seventy-five a recent Forest and Stream. The chronoto eighty-five pigeons out of one hundred graphic and pressure gauge readings was considered most excellent, and it on the Gold Dust are taken at random was only the experts of that time who from a report at the office of the United could score so high. Today such scorers States Smokeless Powder Company. would not win, for, with the improved By changing the wadding to thin, thick, ammunition and the modern hammerless extra thick, or combining same; decreasgun, ninety to ninety-five per cent of ing or increasing the shot charge, using the birds killed is considered a top score. more or less powder in connection with

For inanimate target shooting high vel- the multitude of styles of wadding, the ocities are not considered indispensable. pressures and velocities are directly affected thereby,- fifty grains of E. C. and Gold Dust will do the same if the will give, say, a pressure of 7000 pounds quantity of powder and number and qualand a compensating velocity of 930 to ity of wads is used to produce the same 945 feet 1%8 ounce No. 7 shot. Dupont results as nearly as possible.

W. L. Colville.

ETC

(ETC

IF THE good people that obscene prints. The devoting of two whole

have done so good a work pages a day to a crime, repeated day after day, The

against the obscene pictures illustrated in every detail as carefully as a church Criminal

and penny-dreadful in art and wedding, magnifies the crime until it becomes Press.

literature would only turn honorable. We need censors of the press with

their eyes on the columns of power to impose fines large enough to make such the San Francisco press, they would discover a exhibitions unprofitable. A Sunday school lesstate of things that should call for their earnest son once a week can do little to combat such condemnation. How many thousand upon thous- broadcast demoralization. It is no excuse for ands of words and dozens of drawings the Chroni- an educated newspaper owner to plead that his cle, Examiner, and Call, have devoted to the trial of paper is what the public makes it. Durrant the man Durrant we will not even waste a might hide behind the same specious argument. guess. Suffice to say that for a month we have As long as filth pays better than cleanliness the been glutted with the history of a bloody crime, newspapers will pander to the filthy. which in small boys' and gushing girls' eyes has become through its newspaper notoriety an

UNITED STATES Senator act of heroism. The intelligent public has been

William M. Stewart, the ignored and the news of the world sacrificed that

The

leader of the Silver Party in the scandal-loving, sensation-seeking readers

Silver

Congress, has organized a may have their fill. But this is not the worst Knights.

secret society styled the “Silphase of the question. It is the effect that the

ver Knights of America," of narration of crime always has on young and

which he is President. Its organ is The Silver weak minds. Nothing worse appears in the

Knight, published in Washington, of which SenPolice Gazette of New York or the Police News of

ator Stewart appears not only as editor but chief London than what appears from day to day in

editorial writer. The plan of the society is outthe city press re the Durrant Trial, and yet the

lined in the Silver Knight :United States mails refuse to carry either of

TO THE PUBLIC:—This Order was organized these papers. Purveyors of criminal garbage for the purpose of combining into one great orshould be as subject to the law as the hawker of ganization those of our citizens who are in favor of the equal coinage of gold and silver, as was for $1.27 a week, will become familiar in this provided for in the laws in force prior to the de- country, if the Rothschilds of England and their monetization act of 1873. It is nonpartisan as to myrmidons in America succeed in fastening upon party politics and aims to work through all poli- us permanently the gold standard as the only tical parties.

fundamental money of our country. This is a Then the argument following goes on to sum

work which every friend of his country and of up the situation very concisely:

his kind should need no urging to enlist in, un

tiringly, unceasingly, perpetually, until the close The election occurring in 1896 will substantially of the evening of the Presidential election in settle the condition of all industrial pursuits in

1896. this country. If we can succeed in electing a Congress and a President who are in favor of If the Silver Party honestly believes that the the rehabilitation of silver to equal coinage, it above will be the condition of affairs after '96 in will insure to this country a period of financial

case a “gold-bug” is made President, they will prosperity which it has not known for over twenty years.

do well to choose carefully their standard bearers If the single gold standard party shall succeed for the campaign. Unknown men like their in electing a President and Congress favorable mushroom candidate Sibley of Pennsylvania, to their ideas, the doom of liberty will be sealed.

freaks like Peffer of Kansas, cranks like Waite Give them four years more intrenchment in power and they will have destroyed the people

of Colorado, or demagogues like Altgeldt of Illto the extent that by impoverishment, want,

inois, will only bring their fond dreams to the hunger, the citizen will have largely lost his in- earth and the realities of ridicule. Let them dividuality ; his independence will have waned, nominate Senator Stewart for President on a and a condition gradually sinking to serfdom will have taken possession of his mind, and as

silver platform free from Woman Suffrage, Prohard times continue, hunger and want becoming hibition, and attendant rot, and “The Silver the familiar companion of the family hearthstone, Knights of America ” will find their knighthood liberty will die, and with it will be established a honorable and useful. The silver idea will win moneyed aristocracy which will own the body of labor. The picture of an English mother,

if it is not loaded down by short-haired women working at an ron forge, hammering iron and and long-haired men. It is to be hoped that it making nails from early dawn to late at night, will have a chance.

the carefully guarded child of aristocratic parents, the “nihilistic wife” of a frowzy student, a student herself at the universities of Heidelberg and Berlin, a Doctor of Philosophy with honors in mathematics, a privat docent and finally a full professor of mathematics at the University of Stockholm. Moreover, she was the author of poems, published locally and in Eastern maga novels and of plays which, by themselves, would zines, and by certain clever skits, printed chiefly have given her a high rank; and finally, she in the San Francisco Examiner. Her work is all was the heroine of dramas played out by her of it bright, conscientious, and readable. But own passions in her own heart, and each of even with so much of an introduction to the readthese dramas was in its way a master-work. ing public it cannot but be considered flattering

The book under review is a remarkable one to so young a Californian, to have a leading in each of three respects and it is interesting in a publishing house like the Putnams bring out hundred others. In the first place, it gives the two of her books at nearly the same time. most vivid picture possible of the interior of one A reading of An Unlessoned Girl, the book here of those Russian homes of the gentry which to be noticed, justifies the judgment of the pubTurgeneff and Tolstoi have painted — but no lishers, for the story will undoubtedly make a better. And it gives the life-like image of the multitude of friends for itself. It is a girl's story wave of aspiration, discontent, effort, which of boarding school life in New York. The heroswept over young Russia in the years 1860-1870. ine is a girl in the “green apple” stage, unhappy The birth of the new woman of Russia is there re- in her home life because her strength of character counted. In the second place, we have the history and abundant energy are too cabined in the of the rise of a mathematical talent of a very narrow bounds of a poor home in a small town. high order. Sonya Kovalevsky's name will be She meets with her opportunity by the act of a ranked along with the few women mathemati- cousin, a wealthy young New Yorker, who re cians,– Maria Agnesi, etc. Her talent came by pays an obligation to her dead father by sending descent from one of her maternal grandfathers. the girl to a good boarding school in New York and finally, her literary and dramatic successes City. were the record of a most remarkable life spent Of course there are many tribulations in this

and vainly spent -in la chasse au bonheur. sudden transplanting, but Margy comes through Her happiness was wrecked on the rocks of a them all and is successfully pruned and trained prodigious self-will.

into shape for Vassar College, with the approval With all these adventures and successes her and love of the reader. Not that there are not some life was a melancholy failure, and she knew it signs of inexperience in the book. It is a little vague to be such. Even her scientific achievements as to places and devoid of local color, for the reawere but the masterly working out of ideas de- son probably that the scene is laid in New York, rived from her teachers. It is difficult to conceive rather than in San Francisco or San Leandro, how she could have been more cruel and unre- the places that Miss Tompkins may be supposed gardful of her parents and of her child. Her in

to know best. The slangy tone of much of the tense passionate desire was for the two things conversation, too, it is to be hoped, would be which Balzac strove for all his laborious years - more appropriate to the uncultured West than to to be famous, and to be loved. She attained New York. both, as he did, to the uttermost. But her life But there is no question but that Miss Tompended, as it began, in wretchedness; while his kins knows girls, their feelings, their aspirations, was nobly satisfied. The man had cast out and their peculiarities. These she clearly brings selfhood; the woman fastened the demon of out in her careful study of Margy, Louise, and self-will in her very vitals.

their friends. This melancholy book, by a woman of genius, about her own development, is a document of pre

A New View of Invention. cious value in the new questions which arise today. There is nothing new in the solution, but

MR. W. H. SMYTH, manager of the late Methe experiment was made on noble material, with

chanics’ Fair, and a consulting mechanical enmany noble aspirations, and its utter failure is

gineer, has written an interesting brochure on all the more signal for this reason.

Is the Inventive Faculty a Myth? His position is a

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