Take, for instance, an extreme case: A manufactory is erected on comparatively worthless ground. A million dollars or more is invested in a plant, with the result that surrounding real estate values go up with a bound. Supposing that the manufacturer has not made any previous arrangements for immunity, and the assessors are both acute and honest, the property will be taxed for a large figure, which tax, if the factory is making money, will be paid, with more or less grumbling, up to the economical breaking point. Suppose that, owing to a sudden permanent change in business conditions, it becomes impossible to operate this plant, and it is abandoned. A corps of experts may be thrown into the mill, before the last employee has left the building, and may carefully scrutinize and caliper the machinery, count the bricks in the wall, tap the stay-bolts in the boilers, and bore into the furniture to see whether it is solid or veneer, and when they are through and their figures are all in, they have not arrived at anything that is of the slightest use as a basis for a bond issue or taxation, and very little that would be of use for sale. In such an extreme (but by no means unheard-of) case physical value bears no relation to real value. This is not to say that a physical valuation is without worth, and even great worth in some cases; it is merely offered as an opinion that the physical value is in many (and probably most) instances a very treacherous guide to the real value—a far poorer guide, as a general rule, than the accounting department; a minor quantity, in fact. It seems doubtful whether there is a scientific way of arriving at the true value of a going property by the physical-valuation route. There is too large a percentage of values which, being intangible, are matters of judgment. At best, the determination of value must be that of opinion, and the worth of that opinion hinges principally on the practical qualifications and disinterestedness of the person who gives it. Unfortunately, or fortunately, as the point of view may be, the disinterested person is not apt to be qualified, nor the qualified person to be disinterested, and it seems extremely probable to the writer that, while weapons may be changed and excuses vary, the tax war will be waged as of yore, and the fool and his money will continue along diverging paths until something more ingenious than physical valuation is invented, however well the valuation may be made. C. P. HOWARD, M. AM. SOC. C. E. (by letter).—While there may be no material differences of opinion as to the principles on which a physical valuation should depend, such a detailed description of organization and methods as that presented by the author should be of great service to others undertaking similar investigations. It may not be amiss, however, to mention certain features affecting the non-tangible values which should be more fully considered in any general discussion of the subject.