JAPAN proposes to build up her commercial navy by giving subsidies to ship builders on every ton above 1,000, and to ship owners for ships of 1,000 tons that can make ten knots an hour, the subsidy being increased for every 500 tons additional burden or every knot additional speed. ROSA BONHEUR began to work seriously at painting when she was about fifteen, and donned male attire so that she could go about without attracting attention. She wore it so naturally that no one ever suspected her of being a girl, and found it so comfortable that she has worn it ever since to work in. She and Mme. Dieulafoy, the wife of the explorer, are the only two women in France who are legally authorized to appear in public in men's clothes. A DEVICE for permitting the unsophisticated guest to blow out the gas in his bedroom at the city hotel without inconvenience to himself or anybody else has been devised. The gas burner is made of a metal having great expansive and contractive properties. The gas is turned on in the regular way and a small screw is turned which admits a small flow of gas through the burner. The gas is lighted, and the heat expands the metal and automatically opens a valve permitting a full flow of gas. The gas can be turned off in the ordinary way, but if the gas is blown out the metal contracts, closing the valve, and all the gas that escapes is the very small quantity admitted by the screw valve. A MOVEMENT is on foot in Europe having for its object the securing of a complete census of the inhabitants of all the civilized countries of the world. With this end in view the several governments are to be approached with the request that they will endeavor to decide upon a mutual date for counting the people under their various jurisdictions. Heretofore the different countries have taken their census on different dates, and it has been impossible to obtain accurate statistics in regard to the world's population at any one particular period. It is suggested that the last year of the present century or the first year of the coming century would be the most appropriate date for obtaining statistics.