Before I close let me draw a lesson from the history of our land. Some of you doubtless bear in mind that before the late war men used to say, "Cotton is king;" and why so? Because the trades which hung on this crop were so many and so strong that they ruled all others. The rise or fall of a penny in the price of cotton at Liverpool affected planters in the South, spinners in the North, seamen on the ocean, bankers and money-changers everywhere. Now wheat and petroleum share the sovereignty; but then cotton was king. Who enthroned this harmless plant? Two masters of hand-craft, one of whom was born a few miles east of this place in Westborough; the other was a native of England who spent most of his days a few miles south of this city. Within five years--not quite a century ago--these two men were putting in forms which could be seen, ideas which brought our countrymen large measures of both weal and woe. In 1790, Samuel Slater, once an apprentice to Strutt and Arkwright, built the mill at Pawtucket which taught Americans the art of cotton-spinning; and before 1795, Eli Whitney had invented the gin which easily cleansed the cotton boll of its seeds, and so made marketable the great crop we have spoken of. Many men have made more noise in the world than Slater and Whitney; few if any can be named whose peaceable hand-craft has done so much to give this country its front place in the markets of the globe. Let me come nearer home, and as I take my seat let me name a son of this very town who loved hand-craft and rede-craft, and worthily aided both--Isaiah Thomas, the patriot printer, editor, and publisher, historian of the printer's craft in this land, and founder of the far famed antiquarian library, eldest in that group of institutions which gave to Worcester its rank in the world of letters, as its many products give it standing in the world of industry and art. Mindful of three such worthies, it is not strange that Salisbury, Washburn, Boylston, and many more have built up this high school of handicraft; it will be no wonder if others like minded build on the foundations which have been so fitly laid. * * * * * MAKING SEA WATER POTABLE. [Footnote: Read lately before the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society] By THOMAS KAY, President of the Stockport Natural History Society. The author called attention to the absence of research in this direction, and how man, endowed to overcome every physical disability which encompassed him on land, was powerless to live on the wide ocean, although it is teeming with life. The water for experiment was taken from the English Channel, about fifty miles southwest of the Eddystone Lighthouse, and it was found to correspond closely with the analysis of the Atlantic published by Roscoe, viz.: Total solids 35.976, of which the total chlorides, are 32.730, representing 19.868 of chlorine.