California stands fifth in the list of States in the manufacture of salt, and is the only State in the Union where the distillation of salt from sea water is carried on to any considerable extent. This industry has increased rapidly during the last twenty years. The production has risen from 44,000 bushels in 1860 to upwards of 880,000 bushels in 1883. The amount of attention given to purely technical education in Saxony is shown by the fact that there are now in that kingdom the following schools: A technical high school in Dresden, a technical State institute at Chemnitz, and art schools in Dresden and Leipzig, also four builders' schools, two for the manufacture of toys, six for shipbuilders, three for basket weavers, and fourteen for lace making. Besides these there are the following trade schools supported by different trades, foundations, endowments, and districts: Two for decorative painting, one for watchmakers, one for sheet metal workers, three for musical instrument makers, one for druggists (not pharmacy), twenty-seven for weaving, one for machine embroidery, two for tailors, one for barbers and hairdressers, three for hand spinning, six for straw weaving, three for wood carving, four for steam boiler heating, six for female handiwork. There are, moreover, seventeen technical advanced schools, two for gardeners, eight agricultural, and twenty-six commercial schools. The Patrie reports, with apparent faith, an invention of Dr. Raydt, of Hanover, who claims to have developed fully the utility of carbonic acid as a motive agent. Under the pressure of forty atmospheres this acid is reduced to a liquid state, and when the pressure is removed it evaporates and expands into a bulk 500 times as great as that it occupied before. It is by means of this double process that the Hanoverian chemist proposes to obtain such important benefits from the agent he employs. A quantity of the fluid is liquified, and then stowed away in strong metal receptacles, securely fastened and provided with a duct and valve. By opening the valve free passage is given to the gas, which escapes with great force, and may be used instead of steam for working in a piston. One of the principal uses to which it has been put is to act as a temporary motive power for fire engines. Iron cases of liquified carbonic acid are fitted on to the boiler of the machine, and are always ready for use, so that while steam is being got up, and the engines can not yet be regularly worked in the usual way, the piston valves can be supplied with acid gas. There is, however, another remarkable object to which the new agent can be directed, and to which it has been recently applied in some experiments conducted at Kiel. This is the floating of sunken vessels by means of artificial bladders. It has been found that a bladder or balloon of twenty feet diameter, filled with air, will raise a mass of over 100 tons. Hitherto