The law of succession to the throne of Zanzibar does not recognize the right of the eldest son or the son of the eldest brother deceased. In the eyes of the Mohammedan Council of State Seyyid Khalid, the late usurper, has no stronger claim to the throne than his cousin, the present Sultan Hamid bin Mohammed bin Seyyid. Khalid is spoken of as "a rash and willful young man of twenty-five," and Hamid as "an elderly gentleman, fifty or sixty years of age, respected for his prudent and peaceable conduct, acceptable to the better class of Mussulman townsfolk, and trusted as a ruler likely to preserve the traditional policy of the realm." Immediately upon the interment of the late Sultan, however, which took place two short hours after his suspicious death, Khalid proclaimed himself ruler. He gathered the palace guards together, placed barricades in the palace square, trained the guns upon the British warships, and awaited developments. They came the next morning in the shape of an ultimatum from Admiral Rawson of the St. George, a first class cruiser of 7,700 tons, which, together with four smaller cruisers and gunboats, lay off the city in the harbor, summoning Khalid to surrender, leave the palace, and make his soldiers pile their arms in front of it. If he failed to do this, the palace would be bombarded within two hours after the dispatch of the ultimatum. As Khalid's reply was to further strengthen his defense, at the appointed time the bombardment began. Meanwhile the loyal Zanzibar troops, with a detachment of British marines and seamen, attacked the barricades. The palace was knocked to pieces and set on fire by the shells, and Khalid, driven from the shelter, fled to the German consulate for safety. Hamid was proclaimed Sultan by General Matthews, Mr. Cave, the consul, and Admiral Rawson, and order was at once restored to the city. At the time of the bombardment it was freely predicted that the annexation of Zanzibar would speedily follow; but it now appears that the government considers that no advantages are to be gained by such a step, the cost of a direct administration being much greater than the native administration, which under the present protectorate is working satisfactorily. We are indebted for our illustrations to the Illustrated London News and to Black and White. * * * * * ERRORS IN OUR FOOD ECONOMY. Scientific research, interpreting the observations of practical life, implies that several errors are common in the use of food. First, many people purchase needlessly expensive kinds of food, doing this under the false impression that there is some peculiar virtue in the costlier materials, and that economy in our diet is somehow detrimental to our dignity or our welfare. And, unfortunately, those who are most extravagant in this respect are often the ones who can least afford it.