great island, island, at a high elevation above the sea. The Behosy, on the other hand, are wholly savage, occupying a denselywooded region, and jumping from tree to tree like monkeys, so as to be not easily pursued. They are very timid, and it is said that they sometimes die of fright when captured.

The little people, wherever they nowexist in the world, are passing away, and be

thousands more are still to be found in the Philippines and elsewhere. In the forests of the mountainous interior of India some tribes of them are said to linger, their small size and primitive mode of life obtaining for them the name of "monkey men." Their final departure is inevitable. A pity, too, it seems; for, although the pigmies cannot be regarded as important contributors to the welfare and progress of mankind, they furnish a most interesting memorial of the ancient past of the human race.

fore very long the last of them will have disappeared. There are only a few thousands of them left in Africa. A few

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WOOD WASTE

ITH two-thirds of every tree cut down, wasted; with large stumps, branches, slabs, sawdust, and shavings burned because the country does not know how to use them; and with statistics showing that in twenty-five years at the present rate of destruction, wood will be a luxury and a forest a curiosity; it is no less than a stern duty for Uncle Sam to take measures staving off the imminent woodfamine.

The dedication of the new United States government forest products laboratory at Madison, Wisconsin, this spring, marked the beginning of such measures. This national laboratory, the first of its kind to be established in the United States, will face the problem of teaching the country how to utilize these neglected by-products of lumbering. The

building, a handsome, three-story, fireproof structure, was built by the University of Wisconsin at a cost of $75,000, and the national government has expended a like amount in the equipment of experimental wood-testing and preserving machinery. A staff of some twenty experts and investigators, also furnished by the government, is in charge of the work. At its head is McGarvey Cline, a graduate of Purdue University in 1904, one of the best informed men on forestry problems in the United States Forest Service.

One of the biggest problems the experts will have to deal with is that of making good print paper from materials other than spruce and hemlock. These two woods have been used almost exclusively in the manufacture of print paper and up to the present time no satisfactory substitute has been found.

So scarce are they becoming that newspaper men, anticipating the coming necessity, are experimenting with white ink on black paper to get rid of the difficulty. To keep so peculiar a state of journalism in the future, much of the work of the laboratory for a time will be put on this phase of the experiments. To this end a complete paper-making plant has been installed in the building to facilitate the study of making paper from various woods.

Another problem is that of preserving wood from the destructive work of insects, fungoid growths, and fires. It is a conservative estimate that 740,000,000 cubic feet of lumber are destroyed every year by premature decay and by marine insects. The discovery of a method of preserving that lumber will result in an

moist atmosphere about them. Besides loss in the wood itself, the decayed timber is the cause of numberless mine cave-ins with their resultant loss of life and property.

A deep rotting-pit at the right degree of temperature and humidity to best suit the various conditions under which these timbers are used is in the basement of the laboratory. Into this have been introduced different woods, both preserved and unpreserved, with the borers attached, so that a comparison of the resulting decay may be made. The preservative department contains two great treatment cylinders in which oil at different pressures up to six hundred pounds per square inch can be forced into the wood to prevent decay and insect ravages. For experimental pur

enormous saving and be a great aid to the cause of forest conservation. Railroad ties and water-front piers, as well as timbering in the mines, are the greatest prey of the insects. Without preservation the average tie lasts about six or seven years, and must then be replaced. As a result the railroads of the United States demand 100,000,000 ties annually. The laboratory will seek to find a preservative that will double or treble the life of these ties. Water-front piers and mine timbers are subject to insect destruction in a still greater degree because of the

poses, cultures of every sort of vegetable growth which feed on wood fibres, and samples of minute timber-destroying animalculæ have been accumulated from all parts of the country. One of the objects of the laboratory is also to experiment with substitutes for railroad ties and mine timbers, such as concrete and steel.

The disposition of pine stumps has always been a great problem with American lumbermen. They are usually burned, for, although they may be distiled for turpentine and wood alcohol,

the labored processes necessary have proved such a use uneconomical. However, if a simpler process of extracting those products could be devised, a great saving would result as well as a reduction in the price. The chemical department of the laboratory is particularly well fitted with stills and retorts for experimentation along this line.

Then there are various torsion and weight machines

which are to be used to test the relative strengths of different kinds of woods, to demonstrate which are best suited to stand the strain and wear of bridge and building construction. Special kilns and ovens will show the shrinking and warping tendencies of different woods. Carloads of huge spruce, pine, and hemlock logs have been accumulated from various parts of the country,

and old stumps and railroad ties half destroyed by borers, contributed by publishers and lumbermen, are under cover awaiting experiment.

While the results of experiments will be equally looked for by lumbermen and kindred interests, representing a present investment of $2,500,000,000 over the entire United States, the University of Wisconsin will receive direct benefit, the

college of engineering having co-operated with the laboratory. Several courses will be given, for the benefit of the students, in wood technology and in mechanical engineering of woodworking plants. Members of the staff will also lecture for the university forestry courses, and instructors and students will have constant access to the laboratory for original research work, on the preservation of timber.

-KEATS.

A

MERICANS are accustomed to look upon Niagara Falls as the very finest example of Nature's handiwork, but South Africa can boast of a cataract that for grandeur and impressiveness rivals our Niagara. At the Victoria Falls, in Rhodesia, the Zambesi River plunges over a precipice more. than twice the height of Niagara, sending into the skies a rainbow wreath of mist two thousand feet high. The natives call the wreath the "Pillar of Light," and the falls, the sound of whose plunging waters can be heard twenty miles away, are aptly named "Thundering Smoke."

Just above the falls the Zambesi is a placid stream over a mile wide, but eons ago some volcanic tremor of the earth tore open the black basalt, leaving an abyss four hundred feet sheer, and only six hundred feet wide. Here the milewide river is suddenly constricted and plunges into the gorge which immediately turns at right angles. There the river, fresh from its leap, forms the "Boiling Pot," a monster whirlpool where the tortured water is driven back on itself, shaking the cliffs' foundations, heaving, whirling, leaping in pyramids, sinking into gulfs, and roaring with thunder multiplied a hundred times by the echoing cliffs. Thence the river turns and twists through a black-walled cleft which zigzags for fifty miles as though it were cut by some Titan's chisel in the living rock.

In the four-hundred-foot plunge of the mighty Zambesi lies latent energy which would dwarf the boasted power of Niagara. There the energy of thirtyfive million horses is going to wasteenough if converted into electricity, to make "Darkest Africa" light as day.

Plans are now on foot to turn a part of the vast energy of the falls to the uses of man. The initial installation will, it is planned, be 20,000 horse-power turbines, which will turn massive dynamos, the electric power thus generated to be transmitted to the mines of Rhodesia. Far-sighted engineers believe that the present generation will see a mighty city-Victoria City, perhaps-established at the falls and monster industries, attracted by the limitless power, sending their products to all parts of the world.

The daring cantilever bridge on which the "Cape-to-Cairo" trains crawl across the whirlpool, four hundred feet below, presented many problems that could only be solved by the ingenuity of the engineers. For instance, when the work was first begun, Wilson Fox, an engineer, had to cross the gorge. He shot across a rocket to which a cord was tied, and a wire rope was then pulled over and made fast. Fox rode across the whirlpool in a sling, the first man to cross the "Boiling Pot" alive.

Livingston, the explorer, is the discoverer of the cataract, and in the bark of a tree on Livingston Island, at the very brink of the falls, the initials D. L. bear him witness.