IN 1886, 17 Gloucester fishing vessels were lost, worth $115,800, and 115 fishermen never came home. The year was remarkable for the small inshore catch, almost all the fishing being done on the high seas.
At the forthcoming American Exhibition in London, we are promised, among other novelties, a house of straw, which is now being made in Philadelphia. This house is to represent an American suburban villa, announced to be "handsome and artistic in design," two and a half stories high, and covering a space of 42 feet by 50 feet. It is constructed entirely of materials manufactured from straw--foundations, timbers, flooring, sheathing, roofing, everything in fact, including the chimneys--the material being fire proof as well as water proof. The inside finish is to be in imitation rosewood, mahogany, walnut, maple, ash, ebony, and other fine woods, the straw lumber taking perfectly the surface and color of any desired wood. This straw house is, in the first place, to illustrate Philadelphia's commercial, financial, and industrial interests by means of large photographs of the leading buildings; but it will also demonstrate how far the inventive Yankee has succeeded, not in showing us how to make bricks without straw, but how to produce timber from straw. If, after this brilliant exhibition of inventive genius, we do not bow down and worship him as the "licker" of creation, we may consider ourselves lost to all sense of what is proper under the circumstances.--_Iron._
The British government lately strengthened up the bottom of the old ironclad Resistance, and tried the effect of firing off a 90 lb. guncotton torpedo against the vessel. To the surprise of every one, the ship was not seriously damaged. The _Engineer_ comments upon the experiment as follows:
The Resistance experiments so far tend to demonstrate that the total disablement or destruction of a modern ironclad is not so easy as many people imagined. It was too hastily assumed that the explosion of a charge of 90 lb. of guncotton in contact with any portion of the hull under water would have such destructive effect as to overcome the protection afforded by a thick lining of coal and the cellular system of construction now always adopted in vessels of war. There are, however, certain considerations attached to this experiment which, if duly weighed, should reassure the advocates of the torpedo, and restrain the exultation of naval architects within reasonable bounds. We shall endeavor to place these before our readers briefly and impartially, reserving a fuller summing-up until the remaining experiments are concluded, as they are of greater importance than any of those preceding. It is the more essential to do this because the _Times_, in a leading article of November 3, leads us to believe that as this attack failed, in the broad sense of the word, similar attempts under different conditions would have a like result: and that although serious damage would be caused, the ship would remain "floating and seaworthy, with her offensive powers not materially impaired." We are not prepared to accept this conclusion, for the following reasons: