are the essentials. Other apparatus such as the skill of the bubble blower may require, or his ingenuity suggest, may be added to these for the performance of additional tricks. The more numerous, the greater their variety, of course the more pleasing is the performance to the spectators.

Properly equipped with apparatus, and thoroughly practiced on the execution of

his various tricks or feats, whichever one may choose to call them, the performer may give much entertainment to his friends for even a whole evening. Especially will bubble blowing be found a very excellent means of entertaining children, who, apparently never grow weary of watching the iridescent shapes take on changing hues and forms.

It will be found, however, that children, active, eager and imaginative as they are, will not be content to sit idly by and watch some other person perform these marvels with the soapy bubbles,

fleecy cloud navigating the blue heavens on a fine summer's day.

N a building so huge as the five-story and basement plant of the Glasgow Technical College, the five hundred young Scotch specialists who attend in the daytime seem more like fifty. One or two or three in a room, dour, many be-spectacled, and a few in dressing gowns, they work among textbooks and test tubes and assay furnaces like joyforsaking monks.

But at night the visitor sees a picture in sharp contrast: the enrollment jumps from five hundred to more than five thousand; along with the night-course collegians march in two regiments of student workingmen; and the whole building blazes with yellow light.

For ten shillings ($2.50) a term a Glasgow man may learn in these night trade classes the first principles of the plumber's or the printer's trade; for seven and sixpence ($1.87), boiler making or sheet metal work; for five shillings ($1.25), how to cut cobbler's patterns or a course for shoe-store salesmen. There are rooms full of looms and fabrics and dyes, if he cares to learn the principles and practice of textile manufacture and there are other laboratories for bakers, watch makers, tailors, furniture designers or sailors. Three in every four of his classmates will be older than twenty, so he need feel no shame at going to school again. Hundreds of the men he passes in the halls will have only a common school education.

That public school buildings should be used only a few hours in the daytime

implies an inadequate return on the taxpayers' investment. In Glasgow, Scotch practicality has seen this and applied a remedy. Result: the efficiency of an educational plant was multiplied by ten.

It is characteristic of the Scotch to solve a problem by common sense, whenever such problem arises. Are their schoolrooms empty at night? Then they must be filled! The invitation is given and the thing is done.

FIVE THOUSAND YOUNG SCOTCHMEN ATTEND THIS SCHOOL AT NIGHT.

The Glasgow Technical College.

N spite of all modern improvements and safety devices, the operation of railroads still continues to exact an enormous toll of killed and injured in the United States. In 1907, the last year for which figures are complete, the killed numbered 11,838 and the injured 111,016. The railroads fought when the Federal government, through the Interstate Commerce Commission, insisted upon their adopting certain safety appliances.

are

Now they are glad of it and are continually on the watch for something that will eliminate more of the danger of railroad travel and employment. The American Railway Association and the Interstate Commerce Commission contemplating an early review of the safety appliances with a view to uniformity, etc. Their attention will be called to a new device, the invention of an old railroad locomotive engineer living in Danville, Ill. It is said to be one of the simplest yet most effective safety appliances evolved since the air brake was invented.

The new signal device was patented about four years ago, but ever since its inventor has been improving it and subjecting it to a thorough test. It is a non-electrical, automatic device which, when danger, blows a

set at whistle in the cab and then applies the air and stops the train if the

engineer and fireman disregard the signal.

All old engineers realize that many bad wrecks are caused by engineers sleeping at their post-that engineers when they have been in the harness for several years, sometimes are unable to keep awake. The new signal is made in three styles, stationary, portable and movable. The stationary signal is designed to be fixed permanently at all danger points, and to be always at danger, giving the warning whistle and stopping the train if disregarded. The movable signal is to be operated in connection with switches, block signals, semaphores, etc. The portable signal weighs about ten pounds and can be carried from place to place by flagmen and located at places temporarily dangerous, instead of flags or lanterns, or in addition to them.

The invention consists of two parts. One is a trip affixed to the outer ends of the ties, where it will be clear of all obstructions. The other is a cylinder attached to the front truck of the tender, and operated by air connected with the train air system. When the train passes over the point where the stationary track trip is set, or where a movable trip is set at danger, the trip comes in contact with a trigger in the cylinder, actuating a piston, blowing the whistle in the cab, applying the air and stopping the train in a few seconds if disregarded. The construction is simple, and there is little to get out of order.

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N oil for all sorts of cooking that is better than lard and superior to cotton-seed oil is now being commonly produced from peanuts, which are only beginning to be appreciated in this country. The lowly peanut may come into the lead among principal food stuffs and useful plants, and the oil that is produced from it may become one of the leading products of portions of the South.

Peanut oil is only less valuable commercially than olive oil. Deodorized it has long been used as an adulterant and in some places has been sold without detection under the name of the olive product. It is a non-drying oil used heretofore, widely as a lubricant and better than sperm oil as an illuminant, except in cold weather when it thickens. It is made by heating, grinding and pressing the kernels of the nuts. The mills which have been making the cottonseed oil can make the peanut oil with very little change in machinery, and are, therefore, in a position to profit highly by the wider use and growing of the peanut. Virginia has been the principal peanut

growing state,

though other Atlantic states and Tennessee have been prominent in the industry lately. Now the nut is grown in many warm climates, and is a staple crop, despite its restricted use, so far. As a human diet, as a stock food, as a soil enricher and as a source of oil, the peanut and its vine are tremendously useful. In France the market has long been excellent and Marseilles has had almost a monopoly of it. The demand has never yet been satisfied and with the new uses to which the oil is now being put there will be a greatly increased buying public.

Experiments carried on in Louisiana recently showed that the oil made from the American nut is sweet and clear and will never turn rancid if properly kept. It serves as an ideal shortening and cooking oil and it is expected that there

will be a huge demand for it in American houses as soon as its merits are realized.

Not only can the nuts be sold at a cheap price, say forty cents a bushel, and net the farmer a revenue per acre equal to cotton,

but two crops can be raised off the same land each year. This can be

done by planting potatoes first and fol