deaths from explosions increased. The Detroit _Tribune_ of December 27, 1891, says that the reduction of the test in Michigan and Nebraska is due to the avarice of the producers (refiners) and nothing less than criminal carelessness of the legislators. The dangerous constituents of petroleum, such as naphtha and gasolene, are indistinguishable by the eye of the buyer from kerosene. They can be as easily mixed with it as hot and warm water with cold. These reductions of the test in various States permit mixtures more hazardous than dynamite to be sold to the people, lulled into reliance upon the State inspectors. "The advantage to the oil company," says the Detroit (Michigan) _Times_ of April 30, 1891, "is obvious. Naphtha and gasolene are worth, perhaps, three cents a gallon. Kerosene is worth three times as much. A test which allows one quart of kerosene and three quarts of gasolene to constitute a gallon of merchantable illuminating oil will enable a few more colleges to be endowed, though increasing the death-roll in a notable degree." One of the demands of those who are conducting the agitation, noticed elsewhere, for the admission of American oils free into Canada is that the standard of Canadian oil inspection be lowered. This, says the Hamilton (Ontario) _Spectator_, will open the Canadian market to the low-test and dangerous oils made by the American combination, and "restore the old order of lamp explosions, with the consequent loss of life and property." An unwritten chapter of this story is the experience of the Ohio oil producers, and the use of the inferior oil of the Ohio field to adulterate oils made from Pennsylvania petroleums.