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EW tasks our engineers have to undertake are

more difficult than the construction of what Kipling calls "The coastwise lights"—especially if they

be off-shore and not on the mainland cliffs. Yet how well worthy the years of patient toil and heroic strife with wind and wave the structure seems when the beams of its lantern sweep the wild seas for the salvation of ships, freighted with human souls!

As to cost of construction, while a shore station may be built for any sum between $40,000 and $60,000, an off-shore light may cost as high as $400,000 before it has. finally conquered the fierce elements and is ready to send seaward its triumphant beams of perhaps 90,000 candlepower.

The cause of this enormous expense is not far to seek. Take for example Captain Alexander's famous stone tower on Minot's Ledge Rock just outside Boston Harbor. It cost our Government over $310,000 and five long years of constant battle with the sea before it rose, as Longfellow said, "like a huge stone cannon, mouth upward."

Men told Captain Alexander he was attempting the impossible. The rock was completely submerged at high tide.

So slippery with sea weed was it that a man could not walk upright upon it; and it was only bare for three hours a day. And yet on this precarious perch Alexander contracted to rear a granite tower one hundred and ten feet high!

His men began by scraping away the treacherous weeds; falling face downwards and clutching one another as the majestic rollers came up and swept over the rock. the rock. Often enough no boat could

LIGHTHOUSE.

come out for them thrch the surf. At such times they had to piunge into a boiling sea and be dragged on board by a rope.

Months passed away in this perilous, heart-breaking work, yet saw but four

swept away in a furious storm, and its crew were never seen again. The second Eddystone Lighthouse, too, was burned one stormy night and the keepers again. killed-this time by a shower of molten lead from the lantern on high.

Another very interesting lighthouse from the constructor's point of view is the well known Spectacle Reef tower at the north end of Lake Huron. A marvel of human enterprise is this. The light is perched on a lonely rock ten feet under water, and some nine miles out. As usual in these cases, it was the reef's terribly destructive record in shipping circles that forced its conquest.

Work was begun inside an area enclosed by wooden walls sunk to the lake floor. Then a kind of bottomless barrel was lowered over the tower's site. This barrel was next filled with concrete by masondivers. Haste with the work was positively vital, because of the dreaded ice pack, which this lighthouse was to withstand, besides the terrific lake storms. Thus the men were often at work at three in the morning and their day's labor would often total twenty hours. Altogether from first to last the Spectacle Reef Lighthouse cost $380,000; and its very first season saw it undergo a very exhaustive test, for it was assailed by roaring, grinding ice-masses, that piled themselves up threateningly about its base to a height of thirty feet.

On an isolated rock eighty feet high off the coast of Oregon, towers the Tillamook Light, dominating a wilderness of turbulent sea. Its first prospector was drowned; and his successor had first of all to conquer and drive the sea-lions from their old stronghold before he could

even look about him.

Here it was actually necessary to use the breeches buoy for landing the workmen and taking them away every night to the mainland.

A cable was stretched from the mast of a ship at anchor to the islet's crest; and along this line the buoy travelled. It was merely a pair of short leather breeches, made fast to a lifebelt. You may be sure the passage was pretty exciting. One moment would find the travelling mason plunged into an icy, angry sea; whereas the next he would be literally flying in the air at a height of eighty feet, having been sharply snatched out of the water by a heavy lurch of the ship that held one end of the cable.

Great Britain has altogether more than nine hundred and fifty "coast-wise lights," which are controlled by an ancient corporation known as Trinity House, which collects nearly three million dollars every year from ship owners for the maintenance of these towers.

One of the very latest built, is on the foreshore below Beachy Head, a towering cliff, six hundred feet high, on the south coast of England, near the town of Eastbourne. There was already a lighthouse on its summit, but it was often veiled in sea fog. And for this reason the Trinity House authorities fixed upon a new site, some six hundred feet out at sea from the base of the cliff, and of course in quite deep water at high tide.

It was necessary to establish work yards on the cliff-top, at a point four hundred feet above the chosen site, and transport both men and material to and fro by means of an aërial ropeway of sixinch cables. Upon these the great fiveton blocks of granite for the foundations and walls of the lighthouse were carried swaying and swinging on their dizzy journey from the four hundred feet cliff, down and out to sea, and pumps, steam engines, cranes, cement, shingle, and every other requisite, also made the jour

ney.

A dam was thrown up around the foundations, so that work might continue for some time after the tide began to rise; but the moment the water began to overflow the walls of the dam the men had to flee for their lives and take refuge on the staging, taking with them all tools. and movable machinery. The foundation of the lighthouse is twelve feet deep under low water in the hard chalk. At its base the tower is forty-seven feet in diameter; and it is over one hundred and fifty-three feet in height to the top of the lantern. The work has now taken several years. Over 50,000 cubic feet of granite. has been cut for it, while 5,000 cubic feet of concrete were needed to fill in the lower courses.

But perhaps the most difficult of all the British lighthouses to erect was the Skerryvore. It towers proudly from a submerged reef on the coast of Argyllshire in Scotland; is exposed to the full, tremendous force of the North Atlantic; and is surrounded by innumerable ledges and sharp points of rock for nearly nine miles.

No secure anchorage could be found, and the prospecting vessel drifted along this terrible coast at the mercy of the waves. As to the rock itself, while building operations were going on its treacherous surface was swept by great green icy seas, while the intrepid workers, with limbs and bodies drenched and benumbed, had to save themselves from destruction as best they might. On one occasion the working crew were cut off from the ship for four or five days, and were within an ace of dying from starvation.

It is no wonder that the Skerryvore proved one of the costliest lighthouses in the world; nearly $400,000 was spent upon it from first to last. Indeed, very few of the public have an idea what this magnificent service costs the nations of civilization; the bill our own government has to meet every year in this respect is not far from four million dollars.

EATEN by a Frenchman in the discovery of a substitute for butter, the American has now far outstripped his scientific rival across the sea in turning that discovery to commercial uses. One result is that American manufacturers are shipping hundreds of tons of oleomargarine back to the land of its origin every year, and are selling it there cheaper than the Frenchmen themselves can make it. Chicago is now the center of the oleomargarine industry of the world.

Despite the enactment of federal and state laws designed to protect the dairy and creamery against this once hated pro

most cases where it is thus consumed it is purchased under its true name. When it is put on the table, however, it passes as genuine butter and probably not one person, in a thousand who eat it, guesses it is anything else than the natural product of cow's milk.

Oleomargarine in reality is not a substitute for butter; neither is it an imitation of butter. It is genuine butter produced artificially. In these days there is nothing secret about its composition or its manufacture. Powerful machinery, proper equipment, a careful regard to temperatures, skilled labor and the right kind of "raw materials" are all that is required to manufacture oleomargarine. The formula itself, which won a prize.