Book excerpt: This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 edition. Excerpt: ...days the island furnished about 200,000 pounds of camphor annually; to-day the production exceeds 5,000,000 pounds. But instead of being content with this, the Japanese Government, now the world's chief camphor producer, has conceived the plan of increasing the price little by little, so that while at New York it brought 2 francs 40 cents a pound in 1898, in 1901 it had reached 3 francs 60 cents. Now the United States alone use 2,000.000 pounds of camphor yearly. This rise in the price naturally affected a large number of industries that utilize the product, notably that of celluloid. So inventors at once set to work to replace it by similar products, such as menthol, naphthalin, formalin, insecticide powders, etc. Camphor has thus had to compete with these rivals, which are cheaper and, except, perhaps, in medicine, fill its place sufficiently well. Especially in the manufacture of celluloid, the substitution of naphthalin for camphor has produced a considerable fall in the price."--Translation made for The Litekakv Digest. Camphor-tree and apparatus for the extraction of Japanese camphor. Facsimile of Japanese manuscript. COAL FROM PEAT BY ELECTRICITY. A PROCESS recently invented in England, by which peat is turned to what is practically coal by an electrical process, is described in Popular Mechanics (February) by William II. Mason, United States consul-general. He says: "At Charlton, in Kent, England, there has been exhibited during the past fortnight an electrical process for converting ordinary peat into firm, smokeless steam coal at a cost which promises to bring the product far within the price limit of steam fuel in Great Britain and continental Europe. The peat is cut and excavated by machinery, loaded into...