our southern waters some of the more valuable Mediterranean sponges. There are sponges, imported chiefly for surgical use, which fetch as much as fifty dollars a pound.

The method of artificial propagation adopted is remarkable for its simplicity. Deformed sponges, lacking the symmetry requisite to render them marketable, are taken and, when fresh out of water, are cut on a wet board with a sharp knife or saw into pieces about the size of one's thumb. These pieces are attached, a foot apart, to wires fifty feet or so in length strung between stakes in the shallows.

Inasmuch as several wires may be thus strung between two stakes, one above another, a single acre of shallow water will accommodate quite a vast number. Under such conditions the pieces of sponge grow rapidly to be adult and fully-developed sponges, and, coming into contact with no rocks or other bodies such as are liable to deform them in a state of nature, are perfect in shape. In about a year and a half they arrive at marketable size, when they have simply to be detached from the wires and sold. So successful has this method already proved that it has been

taken up by private concerns for commercial purposes, and at the present time one grower in Florida is raising on his own account something like fifty thousand sponges annually.

The sponge, of course, as it appears in commerce, is merely the skeleton of the animal, which in life is covered by a smooth skin and perforated with numerous canals, through which sea water, carrying food, is continually drawn. Both sexes are combined in a sponge, which throws its young out into the water-to swim about and settle down after a few hours, attaching themselves to rocks and. other suitable objects. The three leading Florida sponges are the "sheepswool," the "yellow," and the "glove." Of these the first, which grows to a good size in one year, is the best for general purposes. It is thought, by the way, that sponges might be successfully reared from the eggs by enclosing the mothers in "live boxes," provided with windows of wire gauze of a mesh fine enough to retain the newly-hatched young while permitting the water to enter freely. The young would fasten themselves upon removable tiles on the bottoms of the boxes,

which could be taken out at intervals and replaced with fresh ones when the young sponges had attained a certain size.

Already the busy Fisheries Bureau maintains two biological stations on the Atlantic coast-one at Wood's Hole, Mass., and the other near the mouth of Beaufort Inlet, N. C. When a third has been started at or near Key West, the three scientific establishments, in as many widely-separated latitudes, will be able to co-ordinate their work in a highly useful fashion, making their observations, as

it were, simultaneously from points on the North Atlantic, the Middle Atlantic, and the South Atlantic. For one thing, they can watch the migrations of various species of fishes to great advantage; but there are many others ways in which this chain of shore stations will be able to accomplish work of value to science and of practical and substantial importance to our economic and commercial interests relating to the sea and its inhabitants, their increase and their permanent preservation.

HE imperfections of chloroform and ether as anesthetics have always been recognized by the medical profession, and many series of investigations and experiments undertaken in an effort to find some substitute. The Institute for Medical Research, of Washington, D. C., now announces that this most important discovery has been made, not in a new drug, but strangely enough, in cocaine. The importance of this find, both to the medical profession and to the public in general, can scarcely be overestimated, as the Institute asserts that cocaine may be successfully used in the most difficult operations, without any injurious effects.

The use of ether and chloroform is always attended with danger to the patient. Ether is the less dangerous of the two, although it stimulates the heart action tremendously, and the patient becomes very weak and sick after returning to consciousness. Chloroform does not produce nausea, but its action is to depress the heart, so that a very slight over-dose may cause death. Cocaine has never been used except in operations of the most minor character, being applied locally, and being supposed to have no effect upon any parts or members of the body except those to which it was applied. The investigations which led to the discovery that cocaine is not a comparatively weak drug; but one of most powerful and far-reaching influence, when used in certain quantities by injection, were made by Dr. L. Kast and Dr. S. J. Meltzer. In the course of their experiments, another discovery was made, of scarcely less importance, and a theory, as old as medical science, proved to be erroneous

The entire results of the investigations show first, that cocaine administered in certain doses affects not only the local

area where the injection is made,' but every part and internal organ of the body; and, second, that the internal organs are as susceptible to pain as the hand or foot. It has long been implicitly believed by the medical profession that the internal abdominal organs were unsupplied with sensory nerves, and that, consequently, a man's liver or kidneys might be cut, burned, or torn without causing the slightest pain.

This theory found strong support in the experiments of the famous Swedish surgeon Lennander, but whose conclusions are now shown to have been based upon error an error quite natural in view of the belief at that time held regarding the purely local effect of cocaine.

Lennander conducted his experiments as to the sensitiveness of the internal organs upon dogs and cats, and, to alleviate the pain which they would otherwise have suffered from the necessary incisions, used cocaine. The result was that when the internal organs were cut or squeezed, there was no indication that the subject suffered any pain, not because the organs were incapable of feeling, but because they had been deadened to pain by the cocaine which had been administered.

Dr. Kast and Dr. Meltzer found that cocaine if injected into the foreleg of an animal would produce anaesthesia throughout the abdominal region, and that, through the circulation, the effect would be carried to every part of the system. The point of injection seems to have no weight in reference to the effect. Thus it would seem that in case of an accident, where a person had been injured in a number of places, or where pain was felt over a wide area, as from scalding, the pain might be deadened by the injection of a proper amount of cocaine at any convenient spot.

Cocaine did not act as a narcotic upon

the animals experimented upon at the Institute for Medical Research. They retained full consciousness, and, without evincing the slightest pain, followed with their eyes every movement of those about them.

The discovery of a new anesthetic is also announced from England, but little as yet appears to be known of its merits

or qualities, beyond the fact that it does deaden pain, that its injection produces a certain amount of shock, followed usually by headache and sickness, and that it does not produce unconsciousness. This drug is called stovaine, and is injected into the lumbar region of the spinal canal. The effect of the drug is believed to be of short duration.

A

FTER having been in use for over a century without change, the breeches buoy used by organized life-saving crews the world over has been improved by a device that has just been adopted by the United States life-saving service, which, according to experts, increases its efficiency fully one hundred

NEW AUTO-SAFETY SIGNAL BREECHES BUOY, SHOWING DETAIL OF THE SIGNAL PLAN AND THE RUBBER SAFETY RING BENEATH.

per cent. The improvement, or rather combination of improvements, makes almost an entirely new style of breeches buoy, and it seems strange that it had not been devised years ago, especially as the necessity for it has been known and the end sought for ever since the breeches buoy has been in use.

The first breeches buoy was used in England over one hundred years ago, but under the old system in use up to the past winter, when the buoy left shore no one knew definitely where it was, whether it had reached the wrecked ship or not, or could see anyone getting in, or when it was occupied, except in daylight, unless the mariners had lights on the vessel.

John W. Dalton, of Gloucester, known to mariners all along the Massachusetts coast, is the inventor of the device.

The device consists of a small stout case mounted on an inflated rubber ring buoy and surrounded by four small hollow posts, which are affixed to the rubber cushion buoy and on top to a square steel spreader. In the case is a small system of storage batteries that operate lamps. One light, a green one, shows toward the shipwreck when the device is started out to the vessel; the other light, a white one, shows down through the rubber cushion into the breeches, enabling the shipwrecked people to see how to get into the breeches. Another white light shows toward the shore until the

breeches buoy is occupied, when it automatically turns to a bright red, going back to white again when the passenger is landed.

Suspended above the breeches buoy from the traveler block by lanyards that run through the four hollow posts, the rubber cushion prevents the occupant below from being injured by the traveler block striking him while being dragged through the surf. Numbers of persons have been severely injured while being saved from a wreck, by the big iron traveler block striking them as the vessel lurched back and forth.

Under the old system the breeches buoy was often hauled back to the shore by the life-savers before it had reached the wreck. By Dalton's device, the position of the breeches buoy is always known to both those on shore and on the wreck. The green light moving toward the wreck unmistakably tells the shipwrecked passengers that help is at hand, and encourages them to hold on until the

JOHN W. DALTON.

Inventor of Improvement in Breeches Buoy.

NEW DESIGN BREECHES BUOY IN OPERATION.

buoy reaches them. As soon as one of the imperiled persons gets into the breeches, the red light signals to those on land to haul the passenger ashore. Signaling is further provided for by a rocket discharged by the same method which shifts the lights in the buoy signal box. Dalton conceived the idea while witnessing a shipwreck on Cape Cod, when all hands on board were lost. He was nearly two years perfecting the idea. and last summer it was exhibited at Hull, Massachusetts, for the first time before the board of examiners of life-saving appliances, appointed by the secretary of the treasury. The board has adopted it, and stations are now being equipped with it.

Experts declare that with the new lifesaving device, once lines are shot over the vessel and the hawser made fast, everyone on the ship in distress will be saved. Representatives of other governments are negotiating for the purchase of the new system and within a short time. every life-saving crew in the world will be equipped with it.