If we are to believe M. Vernouil, French chemist of reputation, the ruby can no longer be classed amongst precious, stones. After many failures, ho has succeeded in making perfect rubies by a process which, though requiring expert manipulation, is not at all costly. His method, as described at the last meeting of the Academy of Science, is to melt a small fragment of real ruby in an oxygen blowpipe flame and gradually add layers of finely divided liquid aluminium. The chief difficulty in the process is to keep the aluminium thread on which the germ, so to speak, of the stone hangs, below the melting point. Hitherto flaws or tiny bubbles of gas have always been found in artificial rubies obtained by fusion, but M. Vernouil's are quite free from these defects, are finely coloured and weigh from one eighth to one sixth of an ounce. In short they are quite indistinguishable from the natural stone. The Academy did not seem to doubt in any way the gonuinenoss of the discovery, but as it is not yet proved that the new blowpipe rubies are marketable or that the cost of production is not likely to be enhanced by laboratory accidents, just as the value of a perfect piece of cloisonne represents many failures as well as one success, owners of rubies may breathe freely, for the present.
Mails via Siberia.
The French postal authorities are already bestirring themselves to secure the dispatch of mails to North China by way of Siberia. All countries belonging to the Postal Union are bound to allow trunk lines of railway to be used for the conveyance of mails, but with the object of shortening the delay direct representations have been made to the Russian Government. It is difficult, however, to say when the new service can begin, At present the mails are taken as far as Irkutsk, but no arrangements have been made for shipping them on the steamers that ply on Lake Baikal, and it is unlikely, according to the information obtainable here, that there will be any through conveyance of mails until the line round the lake is finished. It will then be possible to send a letter from Paris to Port Arthur in seventeen days.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.