street, house-yard, and other receptacles for debris can be used in so many ways, that scarcely anything can now be considered refuse. For instance, old tin cans are melted to be molded into buttons, covers for luggage, and toys for children which sell throughout the world at Christmas time.

Discarded shoes and pieces of rubber, also scraps of leather, have become of value in manufacturing various substances. Not a single broken bottle or other piece of glass need be thrown away, for mixed with certain kinds of earth and sand it makes an excellent artificial stone for buildings. Not so long ago dead animals were buried, as it was not known that their bones, and even parts of their intestines, were of use. Much of the inflammable composition in the lucifer match is now obtained from such bones. Even the sweepings of the street pavements, containing as they do particles of horse-shoes and other metal are worth gathering; while the bits which fall from the horse's hoof as it is being shod by the farrier make a most valuable dye when mixed with certain chemicals and metal straps.

A rather recent development in the oil and fat industry is the distillation of fatty acids. In this process the fat is split into its component fatty acids and glycerine, by means of small quantities of suitable reagents known as catalysers. These may be oxides of certain metals, enzymes from certain seeds, and complex organic chemical compounds. The glycerine water is drawn off, and the glycerine is recovered. It is known as saponification crude. The fatty acids are distilled in iron stills with superheated steam. They find use in the manufacture of soap and candles. Cement makers buy stearic acid, which they convert into lime soaps for use as a waterproofing compound for cement.

Usually perfumes and other useful odors are considered as being obtained principally from flowers. The oils coming from waste fruit, such as decayed pears, grapes, and peaches, can be substituted for some of the most costly floral odours after being treated with acids and other liquids, which give them a remarkable fragrance. Perfumes, soaps, even confectionery, are now manufactured, which are flavored with what is called the oil of bitter almonds, but which is extracted from the tar, which is a refuse of gas-making plants such as are to be found in every large city.

The enormous production of iron and steel in various forms has caused great furnaces to be erected for smelting this metal in large quantities. Here again a study has been made of what can be don to use what was formerly waste. Even the gas which in the past has been allowed to escape in to the air has been made prisoner, so to speak, and converted into a most valuable factor. The mixture left after the iron has been extracted from the oresometimes called stag-which represents the debris of the iron ore, is now one of the most valuable compounds coming from the blast furnace, although but a few years ago it was thrown away. In fact, blast furnaces have been built on the edge of swamps and bodies of water, so that slag could be thrown into these places and used for filling them up. Very good glass is now made from this slag, as well as paving blocks and bricks, artificial porphyry. and a cement which is equal to the best. Ground with six per cent. of slaked lime. building mortar is also made from slag; and ornamental copings and moldings, window sills, and chimney pieces are fashioned of it.

Slag brick is stated to be quite as strong as ordinary brick, and much less permeable to moisture. To make 1,000 bricks, 6,000 or 7,000 pounds of granulated slag, and from 500 to 700 lbs. of burned lime are consumed. Slag is also used for steampipe and boiler wrappings, in which form it is called "silicate of cotton." Coal slag is a structural structural material; mixed with slaked lime, it stiffens into a mass. slag is used in large quantities by manufacturers of fertilisers, instead of phosphate rock.

Basic

The greatest metal industry in the world, which is now being built in Indiana, forming an entire city in itself, is provided with iron smelters from which the gas as it rises will be returned to the fires beneath the ore and used for heat. By this system the cost of coal to smelt the ore will be about one half the expense if the gas were not secured as stated. Waste gas has been utilized by the inventors for the direct operation of engines so large that they have a force equal to the power of a thousand horses. As it issues from the smelter, the gas enters a large cover, as it might be termed, placed above the furnace. In the centre of the cover is a pipe, through which the gas passes into a reservoir

below. From this it is forced directly into the engine, and ignited by an electric spark. This causes it to explode, and the force of the explosion drives the engines and the other machinery.

One of the most important discoveries which has been made in connection with what we have called waste products is the value of saw dust. Usually saw mills produce such large quantities of of the material, that it cannot be burned to advantage. It is thrown away, so to speak, sometimes being piled in great heaps and left to slowly decay. A very good quality of alcohol, however, can be distilled from ordinary saw dust by an inexpensive process, in such quantities that two gallons of liquid can be obtained from 220 pounds of dust. The saw dust from birch and some other species of forest trees will also yield a palatable sugar after it has been treated with certain chemicals. In America and in some parts of Europe an enormous quantity of the dust is sold, being vended about in wagons and in sacks carried on the backs of the vendors. It is bought to sprinkle on the floors of cafes, butchershops, and other places where it prevents dirt from sticking to the floors. In recent years so many dolls and other "stuffed" toys have been made, that the sawdust is very extensively used for that purpose also. It is a fact that there are five hundred sawdust merchants in the city of New York alone, and they sell what is generally called waste to the value of 400,000, pounds in a single year.

Since the slaughter of cattle, sheep, and other animals on a large scale was begun at the abattoirs in America, France, and other countries, the valuable articles and compounds which have been made from dead animals is really amazing. In some of the American abattoirs the carcass of a single beef may enter into no less than four hundred different articles, ranging from beef steak for the family to the button sewed on the family clothing. Parts of the animals formerly discarded go into medicines, oils, soaps, brushes, and combs, mirrors, household necessaries, such as handles for tools, leather for harness and luggage covers. Even the teeth are fashioned into studs and bottons. A list of the slaughter-house bye-products which are utilised for commercial purposes includes hair, bristles, blood, bones, horns, hoofs, glands, and membranes,-from which

are obtained pepsin, thymus, thyroids, pancreatin, partoid substances, and suprarenal capsules-gelatin, glue, fertilizers, hides, skins, wool, intestines, neat's footoil, soap stock, glycerine from tallow, brewer's icing-glass, and albumen. Albumen is obtained from the blood of the slaughtered animals, and is used by calicoprinters, tanners, sugar refiners, and others. The bones coming from cooked meat are boiled, and the fat and gelatin which result are used, the former to make soap, the latter for transparent coverings for chemical preparations, and other purposes. The uncooked bones are used in a variety of ways. From the bones of the feet of cattle are made the handles of tooth burshes and knives, chessmen, and nearly every article for which ivory is suitable. Combs, the backs of brushes, and large buttons are made from horns, which are split and rolled flat by heat and pressure,

Hoofs are utilized according to their color. White hoofs are exported largely to Japan, to be made into various ornaments and imported back as "Japanese art objects." From striped hoofs buttons and horn ornaments are made; while black hoofs find service in the manufacture of cyanide of potassium for the extraction of gold, and are also ground up as fertilizers. From the feet neat's foot oil is extracted, and from various other portions of the body various other oils, all of which are highly valuable. Substitutes for butter, such as butterine and oleomargarine, are made by utilizing the fat of beef and hogs.

In the textile industry the making of value out of waste has been truly remarkable. In the modern woolen factory no fewer than five products are obtained by methods now in vogue, from the greasy excretions which, after circulating through the animal's system, attach to the wool of a sheep. These products are used as a base for ointments and toilet preparations, for dressings for leather, as a lubricant for wool and other animal fibres, and in conjunction with certain lubricating oils. At one large plant in America more than 200,000 pounds of wool are "degreased" every ten hours. From two million to three million dollars' worth of wool fat and potash are estimated to have been wasted during a year in the United States before the solvent process of extraction came into general use.

In the industries of cotton manufacturing and cotton seed oil making, scarcely anything is allowed to go to waste. For many years the seed of the cotton plant was regarded as without value; now the cotton seed crop of the United States is worth about one fifth of the total cotton crop of the country. Among the principal uses of cotton seed oil are its part in making lard compounds and white cottolene, both valuable food stuffs. Cotton seed oil is also used as a substitute for olive oil, by soap makers in the making of soap, by bakers, and also in the manufacture of washing powders.

The leather industry is equally saving in the matter of wastes. In the tanning of leather, there are developed as side products scrap and skin, from which glue is made; hair, from which cheap blankets and cloths are manufactured, and waste liquors containing lime salts. By means of a special apparatus scraps of leather are converted into boot and shoe heels, inner soles, etc. What is called "shoddy" leather is made by grinding the bits of leather to a pulp, and then by maceration and pressure forming them into solid strips.

But perhaps the most wonderful way in which what we have called ordinary dirt has been made a most valuable agent is in the making of concrete. It is needless

to say that what is really concrete all comes from the ground. Even the cement lies here and there in deposits in the earth, and is made ready for use by a very simple process. Mixed with sand, which is to be found so abundantly, then combined with crushed stone or gravel, it is only necessary to pour a little water over the compound to create the liquid stone with which the builders are performing such marvelous exploits. Concrete is not only being fashi oned into great bridges and monuments, but is being moulded into enormous hotels and other buildings, which in America are called "skyscrapers." It forms the linings of huge tunnels and sewers, it is so massive and solid that it is used for great foundation blocks, yet in every case it is a mix ture of four of the most common elements known to us-sand, cement, stone, and

water.

There is plenty of raw materials in India. Every year thousands and thou sands of tons are exported at a nominal price to be imported again as a beautiful and valuable finished product. The cordial co-operation of the industrial chemist and skilful engineer on the one hand and the enterprising capitalist on the other can alone save the country from this industrial dependence. Is it too much to expect it ?

JITENDRANATH LAHIRI, B. SC.

R

ECENTLY I came across this sentence in the writing of a modern author :"Materialism, scepticism, philosophic doubt, scientific vapourings, have done their utmost to make the true poetic mood impossible," and I was very much struck by its force and truth. The poetry of today is mostly unsatisfactory; it is more clever than fresh, it stands more for the consciousness of intellectual power than for the unconscious and instinctive naturalness which lies at the bottom of all creation.

Maeterlinck talks a great deal about the mystery of things and the power of

instinct to grapple with it and the hopeless failure of reason even to grope about this dim and shadowy region of the subconscious world. But his poetry and dramas have not the freshness and simplicity of Nature, the freshness which wraps one with dream when he sees a flower bloom, hears a bird sing suddenly in the bush of the early dawn, sees a lonely star peep out of the heavens in the quiet hour of the evening, or the tender softness which hangs about a human face when the unaccountable longing of love beats in the heartMaeterlinck's writings are not altogether free from 'scepticism' and 'scientific vapour

ings', as any one who reads his "Blue Bird" would at once perceive. He has not got over the conception of nature "red in tooth and claw" and it is difficult for him to rend the dark veil of the evolutionary idea of struggle and get to the shining face of real beauty and real joy.

The world of Yeats, the Celtic poet, is a world of fairy creatures, a dream-world. I was reading recently a play of his, called the "Land of Heart's Desire." It is an exquisite piece, trembling with an ethereal beauty from page to page. He paints moods which are identical with Nature and gives forms to them, which have the unsubstantial aeryness of dreams. But his simplicity is not instinctive; it is worked up. He has not the immanence of instict, which, like the magician's wand, quickly transforms realities into dreams into dreams and vague emotions into concrete forms. Being worked up, his dream-land slips like the petals of a flower of the night when touched by the morning breeze. Of course, it is true, that Yeats is more free from artificiality and self-consciousness than other modern poets. The true depth of beauty has indeed been suggested to him. But his poetry has not got deep into life. It hovers, like a bird unable to find out its nest in the dark, about the tangled boughs of life and Nature, and the beauty of Yeats' poetry consists in having woven the music of the fluttering wings of that bird and not the hush and peace of the nest itself into its very heart.

Why then, is modern poetry so self-conscious and artificial? It is because modern civilisation has drifted so very far from the simple love of Nature of the primitive man, the simplicity of life itself. It is too much burdened by facts and materials, which science has gathered and heaped around it. The opening of a flower has no more mystery to the modern man than the idle watching of the traffic in a street. He is hacked to a hundred pieces by theories of all kinds. He is like a stream which has been divided into so many channels that it has lost its current and wonder and emotion no more rise to its surface like waves.

Curiously enough, although many readers will not agree with me in this point, modern writers are everywhere bound down by conventions of art. It is because, in the Victorian era, Ruskin made too much of morality being the pre

dominant factor in art that as a reaction, modern poets turn up their nose whenever they scent morality in art. Morality has now no passport to the realm of art. But the artists forget that apart from having a didactic value it has preeminently an aesthetic value. The moral is not simply the useful, but also the beautiful. Self-sacrifice, impelled by love, is beautiful. Its beauty is much greater than the giving up of the river to the sea, the shedding of 'gentle rain from heaven,' the offering of the fragrance of the flower to the air which longs for it. But the modern convention of art would pass by it with a sneer.

There are other conventions which are more detrimental to the development of true art. Modern man has lost his ear for simple expression in poetry. A simple expression expression is considered as extremely humdrum in any work of literature-it must be twisted and made terse and pointed and sometimes a little bit obscure in order to be really artistic. It is forgotten that artlessness is the greatest art. "No more doll's decorations for me," says the poet of Gitanjali. The shorter the words in poety, the more poignant the emotions they convey; the fewer the lines painting, the more suggestive the painting becomes. The most haunting images I can remember to have read in poetry, are absolutely inornate and put in the simplest language. The tendency of shortening the verses stripping them of the encumbrances of images in poetry is the same as the tendency of impressionism in art, to attempt to catch the fleeting suggestions of a rare moment of beauty in lines and colours without elaboration of any kind. For beauty is dynamic. Whenever it is static, it is conventional. The flight of a bird, when it is made the subjects of poetry or of painting, is abstracted a great deal from the concrete and objective life of the bird itself, which is familiar and hence bound to be devoid of freshness and movement. The movement must be shown in the poetry or in the picture, the movement which thrills with the rhythm of the unseen ether wave of light, the dancing of the leaves, the sweep of the air. Then alone the movement depicted would be vital movement. Vital words and vital lines are necessary to express it in verse or in painting. And this very vitality is, as the Chinese artists say, rhythmic. For art can never be irregular.

The charm of the simple words of the Vedas and the Upanishads never dies. The language and the music of the folklore of every country are also so very simple that they have never failed to touch the human heart very deeply. It is to these that poets who have aimed at simplicity in their artistic expression, have turned always for inspiration and example. I have little knowledge of the early Celtic legends and poetry; but in the Vedas, the very names of wind and storm and sky are full of the freshness of the mystery of sounds themselves. To call the wind 'Matarishwa'the breath of the Great Mother-is n't it wonderful? To call the sky 'Rodasi,' a cry -brings you nearer to its mystery than any other word. The verses of the mantras are simple and almost like the utterances of a child, full of the sense of wonder and mystery. Modern poets must then skip

the petty conventions they still adhere to with such zest and learn to be unsophisti cated and simple. The school of Celtic revival has attempted to do it, but not with much success. However, the world is still fresh and new, as it was in days of yore when the Vedas were chanted. Names and forms rise over it like waves on the surface of the sea, and sink again as waves do. Whatever it might present, beauty or ugliness, order or disorder, its passing phantasms must not flit away without suggesting symbols which will assume a voice, a form, a tune, in the mind of the poet, the artist, and the singer. The symbols will be caught in the meshes of imagination which will dart their rare gleams across the dense gloom of facts that surround us every where.

AJIT KUMAR CHAKRAVERTY.

N this side of India Sheth Maneckchand

ON

was known as a great philanthropist. Born in Surat in Vikram Samvat year 1908, he died only a short time ago at the age of 62. His father Hirachand was poor and so was his grandfather Gumanji who emigrated to Surat from Udaypore in A. D. 1840 to trade in opium in a small way. Circumstances made the family to go to Bombay, where Maneckchand with his three brothers began business in a humble way and learnt the profession of pearlborers and stringers. Fortune favored their honest efforts, and in a short time they began to purchase and sell land in Bombay at a great profit. Ultimately they settled down as pearl merchants, exporting pearls to Europe and making huge profits. Although a man with comparatively very little education, Maneckchand's outlook on life was very wide, and just as he was able . to amass a huge fortune, so he spent generously huge sums in works of charity. His total gifts come to near ten lacs of Rupees and he fully deserved the appellation of "Danvir Jainkulbhusan" which was

bestowed on him in these parts.

He belonged to the Digambar sect of Jains, and in all parts of India, his helping hand reached the needy and poor of his