Finally, we have to ask, What of our export coals? Rapid as has been the growth of our total production during the last twenty-three years, the growth of our export of coals has been greater still. Beginning at 4,300,000 tons in '54, we find it reaching 16,250,000 tons in '76, and an increase at a corresponding ratio up to the present date as far as statistics will carry us. At such a rate of increase it would seem as if our whole annual production would be ultimately swallowed up in our exports, and it is not, perhaps, impossible that after we have ceased to be to any great extent a manufacturing people, a certain export trade in coal may still continue. Just the same as the export trade in coal preceded by centuries our own uses for it other than domestic, so may it also survive these by a period as prolonged. If our descent from our present favored position be a gradual one, much may be done in the interval to adapt ourselves to the future outcome, but it is certain that nothing will be done except under the stern persuasion of necessity. When our coal fields become exhausted, be it soon or late, he would be a wise or, perhaps, a rash speculator who fixed himself to a year or a generation. Being inevitable, the best philosophy is to make our decline more gradual and less bitter. Sentimental regrets that these hills and valleys will no longer resound with the din of labor, or be blackened by the smoke of the factory, would surely be out of place. What we might regret is that Britain, which we know and are proud of, the Britain of great achievements in politics and literature, of free thought and self-respecting obedience, of a thousand years of high endeavor and constant progress, was indeed to perish when these factories and furnaces whirled and blazed their last. But, it is not so. This country's fortunes are gradually being merged into those of a Greater Britain, which largely, through the aid of coal, whose prospective loss we are lamenting, has grown beyond the limits of these islands to overspread the vastest and richest regions of the earth; and we have no reason to fear that the great inheritance that America and Australia and New Zealand have accepted from us will in their hands be dealt unworthily with in the future. * * * * * GASTON PLANTE. This eminent scientist was born in Orthez (Department of Basses-Pyrénées) on the 22d of April, 1834; at present in his fiftieth year. He began his scientific career as assistant to Edmund Becquerel at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers at Paris. In the year 1859, after resigning his position at the above named institution, he entered upon his researches in electricity, and has continued them ever since. His work entitled "Recherches sur l'Electricité" is a model of clear language and elegant demonstration, and contains all the papers presented by Planté to the Paris Academy of Sciences since 1859. [Illustration: GASTON PLANTE.]