cistern of sweet water, the result of which the machines condensing 150 tons of water a day are now only required to produce one-half the quantity, saving the Egyptian government a considerable outlay.

The natives look upon Mason as a magician, the man who turns the salt ocean into sweet water. But metal refuse, scraps of iron, old boiler plates, under his magic touch, are also turned into the most useful things. For instance, the steam hammer used in the government workshop is rigged on steel columns from the debris of an engine room of a wrecked vessel. The hammer is the crank of a disused shaft of a cotton machine, the anvil is from an old "monkey," that drove the piles for the Suakim landing stage in 1884; the two cylinders are from an effete ice machine, and the steam and exhaust pipes come from a useless locomotive of the old railway. A lathe, a beautiful piece of workmanship, is fashioned out of one of the guns found at Tamai. And the building which covers these useful implements was erected by this clever engineer in the Sirdar's service, who had utilized the rails of the old Suakim-Berber line as girders for its roof, and, in my humble opinion, this is probably the very best purpose for which they can be used.

TAPIRS IN THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN AT BRESLAU.

A fine pair of shabrack (Tapirus indicus) and another pair of American tapirs (Tapirus americanus) constitute the chief attraction of the house devoted to pachyderms in the Zoological Garden at Breslau, and interest in this section of the garden has recently been greatly enhanced by the appearance of a healthy young shabrack. This is only the second time that a shabrack tapir has been born in captivity in Europe, and as the other one, which was born in the Zoological Garden at Hamburg, did not live many days, but few knew of its existence; consequently, little or nothing is known of the care and development of the young of this species, although they are so numerous in their native lands. Farther India, Southwestern China and the neighboring large islands, where they also do well in captivity. The tapir was not known until the beginning of this century, and even now it is a great rarity in the European animal market, and as the greatest care is required to keep it alive for any length of time in captivity, it is seldom seen in zoological gardens; therefore, the fact that the shabrack tapirs in the Breslau garden have not only lived, but their number has increased, is so much more remarkable.