Some months ago, when every one who had more money than scientific knowledge was hastening to invest in electric-lighting schemes, we gave a few words of warning as to the risks involved. That we were not wrong is evidenced by the collapse of so many of the Companies which were then issuing rose-coloured prospectuses. We now learn that so many people have suffered loss in this way, that there is the greatest difficulty in floating any scheme in which the word ‘Electricity’ occurs; and although inventors are still producing wonderful things, they cannot get support. There seems, however, to be no doubt whatever about the genuine success of the Edison Company in New York. The annual Report of the Company recently issued says that the Pearl Street Station in that city is working up to its full capacity. It has nine thousand eight hundred and eleven incandescent lamps in use, and the machinery has been kept running night and day without cessation since September 1882. The Company has now two hundred and forty-six installations at work, with a total of more than sixty thousand lamps. It may be mentioned as a matter of interest that Edison has had two hundred and fifteen patents actually granted him, and one hundred more have been filed. Every small item of his mechanical contrivances forms the subject of a patent specification. There is just now such a great demand for handsomely marked leather, such as that obtained from alligator and boa skin, that the supply is not nearly equal to said demand. A large proportion of leather sold as the product of the alligator is really a photograph of the original article. It is managed in this way. The real skin, with its curious rectangular spaces separated by grooved markings, is carefully photographed. From the negative thus obtained a copy is produced in bichromated gelatine, which has the property, under the action of light, of affording images in relief. This is easily reproduced in metal, which serves the purpose of a die. Common cheap leather is now taken and placed with this die under heavy pressure, when all the delicate markings of the alligator skin are indelibly impressed upon it. The finished product can be stained in any way required, but is more frequently preferred to remain the brown colour left by the tanning operation. Such is the most recent trade-application of the fable of the jackdaw and the peacock’s feathers.