The _British Medical Journal_ says that Prof. E. Kinch, writing in the _Agricultural Students' Gazette_, says that the Soy bean approaches more nearly to animal food than any other known vegetable production, being singularly rich in fat and in albuminoids. It is largely used as an article of food in China and Japan. Efforts have been made to acclimatize it in various parts of the continent of Europe, and fair success has been achieved in Italy and France; many foods are made from it and its straw is a useful fodder. * * * * * ON A NEW ARC ELECTRIC LAMP. [Footnote: Paper read at the British Association, Southampton. Revised by the Author.--_Nature_.] By W.H. PREECE. Electric lamps on the arc principle are almost as numerous as the trees in the forest, and it is somewhat fresh to come upon something that is novel. In these lamps the carbons are consumed as the current flows, and it is the variation in their consumption which occasions the flickering and irregularity of the light that is so irritating to the eyes. Special mechanical contrivances or regulators have to be used to compensate for this destruction of the carbons, as in the Siemens and Brush type, or else refractory materials have to be combined with the carbons, as in the Jablochkoff candle and in the lamp Soleil. The steadiness of the light depends upon the regularity with which the carbons are moved toward each other as they are consumed, so as to maintain the electric resistance between them a constant quantity. Each lamp must have a certain elasticity of regulation of its own, to prevent irregularities from the variable material of carbon used, and from variations in the current itself and in the machinery. In all electric lamps, except the Brockie, the regulator is in the lamp itself. In the Brockie system the regulation is automatic, and is made at certain rapid intervals by the motor engine. This causes a periodic blinking that is detrimental to this lamp for internal illumination. [Illustration: FIG. 1. FIG. 2.] M. Abdank, the inventor of the system which I have the pleasure of bringing before the Section, separates his regulator from his lamp. The regulator may be fixed anywhere, within easy inspection and manipulation, and away from any disturbing influence in the lamp. The lamp can be fixed in any inaccessible place.