No other eclipse track will occur in this country till June 8, 1918, when one of the first kind will pass from Oregon to Florida, two minutes in duration. Another will occur in New England, January 24, 1925. Eclipses seven minutes in duration will occur in India in 1955, and in Africa in 1973, the longest for a thousand years. The remoteness of the last two, both in time and place, put them out of reckoning for most of us, but those of 1918 and 1925 give additional zest to the approaching eclipse of May 28th, as affording further opportunity for confirming facts and noting differences based upon the observations now made. THE MOST EXPENSIVE CITY IN THE WORLD. BY HON. BIRD S. COLER, COMPTROLLER OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. The annual expenses of the city of New York are larger than those of any other municipality in the world, and the financial transactions of a year represent the receipt and expenditure of more than $200,000,000, counting temporary loans, sinking funds, and bond issues. The gross budget of the city for 1899 was $20,000,000 greater than the expenses of the city of London, $18,000,000 in excess of the budget of Paris, and only $1,000,000 less than the combined expenditures of Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia. The expenses of New York last year for local purposes, exclusive of bond issues, amounted to $19.56 per capita of an estimated population of 3,500,000. The combined annual expenditures of the six largest States in the Union are less than those of the city of New York, and the financial transactions of the latter are equal in amount to one seventh of those of the national Government. The credit of the city, it may be stated at the outset, is second only to that of the Federal Government, and the property owned by the municipality, if sold at market value, would pay the entire funded debt several times over. The consolidation of ninety municipalities with the former city of New York was the culmination of a sentiment so fixed upon an ideal that there had been little careful reckoning of the cost. The municipality, by taking in the extra territory and population, doubled its debt, added less than one fourth to its tangible assets, and increased the cost of local government $15,000,000 a year. This added cost is the price paid by the taxpayers for a sentiment and for haste and carelessness in the work of completing consolidation. The cost of government for the enlarged city was in 1899 approximately $15,000,000 more than the combined expenditures of the various municipalities for the last year of their separate existence. This increase was excessive and altogether unnecessary to the maintenance of thorough and progressive government.