The recent great conflagrations in the city vividly illustrate to Londoners what fire could do if their metropolis were built on the New York plan. The City, however, as we have remarked, is an exceptional part of London, and, taking the British metropolis as it is, with its hundreds of square miles of suburbs, and contrasting its condition with that of New York, we are led to adopt the opinion that London, with its excellent fire brigade, is safe from a destructive conflagration. It was stated above, and it is repeated here, that the fire brigade of New York is unsurpassed for promptness, skill, and heroic intrepidity, but their task, by contrast, is a heavy one in a city like New York, with its numerous wooden buildings, wooden or asphalt roofs, buildings from four to ten stories high, with long unbraced walls, weakened by many large windows, containing more than ten times the timber an average London house does, and that very inflammable, owing to the dry and hot American climate. But this is not all. In New York we find the five and six story tenement houses with two or three families on each floor, each with their private ash barrel or box kept handy in their rooms, all striving to keep warm during the severe winters of North America. We also find narrow streets and high buildings, with nothing to arrest the extension of a fire except a few small parks, not even projecting or effectual fire-walls between the several buildings. And to all this must be added the perfect freedom with which the city authorities of New York allow in its most populous portions large stables, timber yards, carpenters' shops, and the manufacture and storage of inflammable materials. Personal liberty could not be carried to a more dangerous extent. We ought to be thankful that in such matters individual freedom is somewhat hampered in our old-fashioned and quieter-going country.--_London Morning Post_. * * * * * THE LATEST KNOWLEDGE ABOUT GAPES. The gape worm may be termed the _bete noir_ of the poultry-keeper--his greatest enemy--whether he be farmer or fancier. It is true there are some who declare that it is unknown in their poultry-yards--that they have never been troubled with it at all. These are apt to lay it down, as I saw a correspondent did in a recent number of the _Country Gentleman_, that the cause is want of cleanliness or neglect in some way. But I can vouch that that is not so. I have been in yards where everything was first-rate, where the cleanliness was almost painfully complete, where no fault in the way of neglect could be found, and yet the gapes were there; and on the other hand, I have known places where every condition seemed favorable to the development of such a disease, and there it was absent--this not in isolated cases, but in many. No, we must look elsewhere for the cause.