If we even attain any greater speed either in our inland or sea-going steam-vessels, it will be principally by enlarging their size. Though some improvements will doubtless be made in the engines and in the models of the vessels, yet the great gain will be by increasing the tonnage, for the reason that the size, and consequent room for engines and coal, increases much faster than does the opposition caused by the water and the air.--_American Annual of Scientific Discovery_, p. 30. 21. _Use of Parachutes in Mines._--It is well known that vertical ladders for descending into deep mines are very fatiguing, so that the miners prefer to trust themselves to baskets suspended by ropes, and in many cases the baskets are the only means provided for descending and ascending. But accidents frequently occur from the breaking of the ropes, in spite of all the precautions that can be taken to prevent it. The _Brussels Herald_ states that some experiments have lately been made on a large scale in Belgium with a contrivance intended to remedy this evil. The basket or cuffert is so made, that, in case the rope breaks, it immediately springs open, forming a sort of parachute, which is held suspended in the air by means of the strong current which, it is well known, is always rushing up from mines, owing to the temperature below being higher than that above. The effect of this apparatus was shown before a numerous company, several miners entrusting themselves to the basket, which was so arranged that at a certain point the rope broke; they were sustained in the air by the open basket, so that the experiments were entirely satisfactory. 22. _Adulteration of Drugs._--At a meeting of the New York Academy of Medicine, June 1849, an elaborate report was presented by Dr M. J. Bailey, on the practical operation of the law prohibiting the importation of adulterated and spurious drugs, medicines, &c.