TOPICS OF THE DAY.

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

火extinguis手榴弹hing purposes are coming to the front and attracting much attention. We notice that exhibitions are being given in all sections of the country, and reports of tests of the Harden grenade and of the Hayward grenade will be found in other columns of this issue. In extinguishing surface fires—tar and kerosene poured on light kindlings—these grenades certainly accomplish wonderful results. It is not claimed for them that they are equal to combating a conflagration, but that they are convenient for putting out incipient fires. The compound contained in these little glass bottles is certainly wonderfully effective in quenching flames.

IF the Governor signs Senator Daly’s bill, requiring telegraph and telephone wires of all kinds to be put under ground, the various companies affected will have a busy year before them. The bill applies to New York and Brooklyn and provides that “ every corporation, association or person owning or controlling telegraph, telephonic, electric or other wires and cables, including what is known as telegraph poles, and other appurtenances thereto, shall, before the first day of November, 1885, have the same removed from the surface of all streets or avenues.” In case the owners of the property above enumerated fail to comply with the provisions of the act within the time specified, the local governments of the cities are directed to remove without delay all wires and poles found above ground within their corporate limits. The time fixed is ample to allow the companies to agree upon some united plan for underground service, and it will be for their interest, as well as for the convenience of the public, to have them so agree. The change decreed will give us a large amount of discomfort at best, but if the companies go about the work in the right spirit, they may give us a system of underground passages for wires and pipes which will make the tearing up of streets in future much less frequent than heretofore. We doubt if they will be so short-sighted as to attempt to have the bill repealed in case it becomes a law. The large vote by which it passed the legislature shows how generally public sentiment favors such a measure. Sooner or later it was bound to come, for the wire-andpole nuisance long ago passed the bounds of toleration.