Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/297

Rh weight of fat, and nearly two fifths of nitrogenous matter. This would give it about double the nutrient value of beef. The Japanese prepare it by soaking the beans in water for twenty-four hours, then grinding them in a stone mill with the purest water obtainable, so as to form a thin pulp. The pulp is heated to boiling, when more water is added, and it is boiled again; then more cold water is added, and it is allowed to stand. The liquor is then strained out through a bag, and brine is stirred into it. This effects a coagulation, and the curd is pressed as in making cheese. Prof. W. Mattieu Williams has obtained soluble casein by treating peas in a similar manner; and he remarks that all peas and beans will yield soluble casein when so treated. Prof. Williams estimates the cost of producing the bean-curd, equal if not superior to the best cheese made in the dairy, at about threepence per pound.

Whaling in Spitzbergen Waters.—Whaling has been carried on in the Spitzbergen seas during the last forty years, according to Captain Gray, of the steamer Eclipse, of Peterhead, by the aid of the traffic in seals, with whose products the gaps in the cargo of whale-products were filled; but since the introduction of steam-vessels, in about 1860, the seals have been so completely exterminated that it no longer pays a vessel to go in search of them. Steam has also been to a great extent the ruin of the Greenland whale-fishing. The whales are receding farther and farther into the ice, where it is impossible to follow them. So far as can be judged, there are probably no fewer whales now than there were forty years ago, but they are more inaccessible, as they are being yearly frightened farther back by the noise of the steam-engines. Notwithstanding the greater difficulty in penetrating the ice at such a time, a "close season" is welcome to the whale-fisher, for the whale will only appear in the neighborhood of field-ice, and in open seasons the ice is constantly broken up by the swell. In some seasons the whales are later in appearing than in others; but the usual time is about the 20th of May, and from that time the fishing is prosecuted till about the end of June, when the whales disappear. A new branch of enterprise has been developed within a few years in fishing for the small "bottle-nose" whale. These whales yield no bone, but give about a ton each of an oil equal in lubricating power to the southern sperm-whale oil. Since they began to be hunted, more than two hundred have sometimes been killed in a season by a single ship; but there are signs that the trade is being overdone. The oils, formerly the main-stay of the fisheries, were at one time largely used for lighting collieries and street lamps; but for a good many years back they have been principally employed by jute manufacturers for lubricating purposes. Since the discovery of the great Russian petroleum-wells at Baku, however, the demand for the seal and whale oils has greatly fallen off; but whalebone is now at a higher price than ever. Captain Gray regards the prospect of finding a new and lucrative whale-fishery in the antarctic seas as very hopeful.

Railways as Fosterers of Trade.—The history of railway construction in India illustrates in a remarkable way how rapidly traffic is developed as soon as facilities arc opened for it. Until within a year or two past the Government of the country considered that it was unlikely that any railway in India would pay that did not pass through a dense population. The Government was averse to constructing railways in Burmah till business interest urged it so strongly that the experiment was tried, when, to the surprise of the administration, the Burmah Railway paid about five per cent as soon as it was opened. In the same way the Government denied the possibility of extensive traffic upon the Rajpootana and the Indus Valley railways, which were constructed solely for strategic purposes through a poorly populated country, and a narrow gauge was all that it would afford. Yet so rapidly has the country been brought under cultivation, and the population has increased so fast, that in 1885 the Indus Valley Railway carried one hundred and thirty-six million mile-passengers and two hundred and ninety-three million mile-tons of goods and grain, and paid 7·32 per cent on its capital; and the Rajpootana line carried three hundred and fifty-eight million