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Rh the safest explosives, processes for avoiding as far as possible the use of explosives, and supports. The second subdivision includes ventilation and lighting, with precautions against fire-damp explosions and the resultant damage. In the third class are invited treatises and plans with reference to the removal of water, extraction, hauling, and loading of the products, and the transportation of the workmen in the shafts. The fourth class embraces the mechanical preparation of the mineral products, manufacture of coke and agglomerated matter, and processes of treatment for burning turf so as to increase its value. The fifth class relates to plans and maps of the subterranean works, provisions against accidents, measures for the saving, relief, and care of the workmen when they occur, institutions for the benefit of workmen in mines, and statistics. In the sixth class arc included processes and working-stock for the operating of quarries; and in the seventh class, comparisons of the stones and marbles of different countries, and exhibits of Belgian stones and marbles adapted to all the different purposes of use. Applications should be filed before January 15, and entries made before April 15, 1888, with Armstrong, Knauer & Co., authorized agents, 822 and 824 Broadway, New York.

What can he do?—The great test in life, says General Thomas J. Morgan, in a paper on "Training as an Element of Education," is rather what a man can do than what he knows. Can he use his eyes? Has he good judgment? Is he a man of common sense? Can he think? Does he reason correctly? Has he power of adaptation? Can he organize? Has he executive force? Is he practical? These are the kind of test-questions that are put to the graduates of our schools. Can the "sweet girl graduate" cook a dinner, sweep a room, or superintend a house? Does she have an intelligent interest in passing events? Has she robust health, good habits, self-reliance, energy, and power of endurance? Can the young man lay aside his diploma and keep his father's accounts, write an article for the newspaper, make a business-trip to Chicago, give an intelligent account of the morning's news. Can he lend a hand at home, and turn to some good account in the daily duties of life some of the accumulated stores of knowledge amassed in years of study? Does his education render him more industrious, more skillful and efficient, more ingenious, more persistent, more practically masterful in whatever he undertakes? If he has been trained to use his senses, to acquaint himself with natural phenomena at first hand; if he has been taught to think, to make careful comparison, noting essential differences and significant similarities, making patient inductions and wise generalizations; if he has been led to form fixed habits of thoughtfulness, self-reliance, moral earnestness, inflexibility of purpose, persistent industry, promptness, punctuality, fidelity unswerving devotion to duty; if, in short, as a result of his school-life, his training has produced a well-rounded character, he will be able to meet all the reasonable demands that society can make upon one who lacks practical experience in actual business. He will readily acquire skill and efficiency in any calling for which his special talents have fitted him. Training gives potency to all the soul's possibilities.

Counterfeiting Gems.—The closest imitations of diamonds and other precious stones can be made out of a mixture of violin-glass and borax. A London lapidary once testified in court that he made all his imitations out of real stones, by taking pale, cheap stones, splitting them, introducing a deeper tone of color, and joining them again, whereby the salable value of the stones was considerably increased. Diamonds are often split, and each half of the gem is made to do duty on a paste foundation on which it has been carefully mounted. The operator then has two gems, at two prices. One Zocolind was accustomed to procure a very thin flake of an inferior example of the stone he wished to "improve," choosing those which had little color. As a bottom for his "make up" he took a bit of crystal which he had shaped for his purpose; covering this with a transparent glue properly colored, he fixed on the flake, and then concealed the joining so well in the setting that customers could be deceived into believing that they had very fine stones. Varieties of the topaz and other stones are