through the foreign ministry at Stockholm. The storthing at Christiania has twice passed resolutions urging the government to grant the reform mentioned; and on March 3 decided by unanimous vote to appoint a committee to formulate proposals for the establishment of arbitration treaties between Norway and foreign countries. The result of the approaching elections in Norway is awaited with much.

OF NORWAY.

interest. In the meantime Sweden continues to increase her armaments on an unusual scale.

GREECE.

Besides the incidents arising out of the Greek intervention in Crete, which are fully reviewed elsewhere under the heading "The Eastern Crisis" (p. 17), the only item of general interest during the quarter was a serious revolt in the latter part of January, among the students in the university at Athens.

It appears that Professor Galvani, who is the most eminent surgeon in

Greece, had incurred the enmity of the medical students by requirng what they thought excessive clinical work. During one of his demonstrations, and while a critical operation was being performed upon a female patient (who, it might be said in passing, afterward died), the students persistently interrupted the professor, stirring up such a dust, that, recognizing the danger to the patient, Dr. Galvani sternly rebuked the students. The latter, thereupon, feeling themselves insulted, stopped work, and demanded of the authorities the dismissal of Dr. Galvani. When this was refused, the strike became general, even the theological students joining it. On January 27 there was rioting, and several of the rioters were wounded in a collision with the police. About 500 students, having armed themselves, took possession of the university building. The government decided to dislodge them and close the university till Easter. A cordon of troops was stationed around the university, and supplies and light were cut off; but no attempt was made to recover the building.

This state of affairs continued for three days. On January 29 a band of student sympathizers outside tried to reach the palace in order to present to the king a demand for the dismissal of Professor Galvani. They were prevented by the troops from approaching the palace, and then proceeded towards the ministry of finance to interview the premier, but were encountered by a force of cavalry and mounted police, and dispersed after a serious conflict, in which one person was instantly killed and several were wounded.

The blockade of the university proved so effective that on Saturday, the 30th, the students were induced by some of the professors, who had offered their mediation to the authorities, to leave the building. They were allowed to depart without being searched, but many warrants were issued for the arrest of the ringleaders.

INDIA.

THE year 1897 opened on a scene of widespread suffering in India from famine and pestilence.

The Famine.-The scarcity of food in the densely populated Central and Northwest Provinces, which began last autumn (Vol. 6, p. 936), assumed frightful proportions in January over an area 1,300 miles long and 400 miles wide. Rains in December in some districts gave promise of some addition to the food supply in April, and mitigated the horrors of what threatened to be the greatest calamity of the century. But the situation remained appalling; and notwithstanding local mitigations the famine is evidently the greatest that has occurred since the country came under British rule.

It extended from Calcutta to Bombay, and from the Indus to the Coromandel coast-including the north and east of the Punjab, with Multan, Amritsar, all the Northwest Provinces; also, of the Central Provinces, Jubbulpur and Chatisgarh, and Orissa in Bengal; besides all the Madras presidency north of Madras, and all the Bombay presidency eastward from the Western Ghauts. These faminestricken regions have a population exceeding 80,000,000, while in extensive bordering regions there is scarcity of food and great distress.

That this greatest famine is not to be classed also as the greatest calamity of the century, is due to the elaborate preparations of the government and to the immense fund which has been applied to relief. Early in January about 750,000 persons were receiving relief. At the middle of February a report from the viceroy to the secretary for India, stated the number at 2,750,000. A comparison with the famine of 1877 shows that at a corresponding stage only 39,725 per

sons were receiving government aid. Private relief in the present famine began eight months earlier than in 1877. Later in February the number of persons employed on relief works was 2,948,000; the relief work includes road construction, grading the ground, filling up ravines, making public parks, canals, tanks, etc. It is reported that in the Northwest Provinces alone more than 1,000,000 wells for irrigation have been dug. As an illustration, Banda may be taken. Out of a population of 700,000, about 200,000 persons were receiving relief, of whom 36,000 were employed in making roads, and the rest were gratuitously aided. Multitudes through lack of food were too weak to labor. The emaciation of some almost surpasses belief. About March 1 the viceroy reported 3,141,000 persons on relief.

A scandalous report several months ago, that the Famine Insurance fund-established twenty years ago to be raised by annual taxation as provision of relief for years of famine-had been misappropriated by the government for military purposes, so that funds were not now available to save the starving, seems contradicted by the immense and prompt expenditure of the British authorities. Aid has been greatly deficient only in some of the native states of India-the officials being supine. A very large relief fund has been raised by popular subscription in Great Britain and in nearly all the colonies.

In the first days of April rains were reported over a large portion of India, giving hopes of a good harvest. Necessity for general relief is expected to continue till September.

The Pestilence.-Close on the track of the famine. came the pestilence, though fortunately with much less extensive range.

Accurate accounts of the regions ravaged by it are not at hand; but its chief work of horror was at Bombay. There it began last September, and was for nearly a month undetected, being mistaken for a peculiar type of malarial or of typhoid fever. That city of 850,000 people, many of them crowded into small and filthy habitations, gave the disease abundant food; and thence it was carried by frightened fugitives to the adjacent districts, to Kurrachee, to Poonah and Satara, to Tanna, Bendora, Surat, and Baroda, to the peninsula in Kattiwar, and to the island of Kutch. It is not known however to have grown beyond control at any point except Bombay and Kurrachee; indeed at some of the above named places its spread was soon checked.

Bombay was for three months a scene of horror. By the middle of January more than half the population had fled-the native physicians among them; business and labor had largely ceased; the streets were nearly deserted except for the funeral processions incessant by day and by night; the dismal Hindu dirge was always in the air; the Moslem cemeteries were overcrowded with the bodies brought to their gates; the burning ghats," Hindu places of cremation, constantly obscured the skies of day with smoke or lighted the night with their glare; while the "towers of silence," where the Parsees expose their dead to be devoured by vultures, had had such surplus that the throng of vultures had been gorged, and left many corpses to decompose slowly in the open air. The roads out of the city showed processions of fugitives of all ages toiling dismally under such few household articles as they were able to bear away. On January 14 at Andheri, where the water supply is scanty, 8,000 fugitives were camping out.

As to the exact nature of the disease, medical authorities seem undecided. It is not typhus fever, though resembling that disease more than any other. Newspaper reports have identified it with the "Black Death," the scourge of Europe during the Middle Ages; but this is doubtful, though all varieties of the plague are probably allies. Its onset is sudden, with high fever (but sometimes with an ague, or with bilious vomiting), head-ache, thirst, and stupor, which rapidly pass into coma, ending in death usually in about two days, though sometimes in twenty-four hours. The recoveries are said to be less than 30 in 100 cases. Its name, "bubonic plague," is from the bubo or tumor-a glandular swelling, hard and tender to the touch-which appears frequently in the groin, sometimes in the armpit or the neck, twelve or more hours after the onset of the disease. Post mortem examinations indicate that the thin walls which confine the blood are destroyed throughout the body-which explains the hemorrhage from nose, lungs, stomach, and bowels, in the fatal stage.

The bubonic plague finds its victims among the ill-fed and the uncleanly. In Bombay deaths were less numerous among the Parsees, the best housed and most cleanly of the natives; comparatively few among the Eurasians (half-Europeans); and very rare among the wellfed Europeans. Dr. Haffkine, the bacteriologist, is said to have proved that attenuated plague virus is an antidote. The famous Dr. Kitasato, of Japan, pupil of Pasteur, is reported to have isolated and cultivated the plague bacillus at Hong-Kong in 1894; and another pupil, Dr. Yersin, of France, also is said to have discovered the germ, and prepared a serum by inoculation, with which he wrought cures of the plague at Amoy in 1896.

Official report states the number of cases of the plague at Bombay to January 14 at 3,394, of deaths 2,356; to January 28, cases 4,396, deaths 3,275; at Kurrachee, cases 694, deaths 644; at Bombay to March 4, cases 8,383, deaths 6,979. The British Medical Journal of February 20 says that the deaths at Bombay, nearly 200 a week at the end of September, rose to more than 1,200 a week in January. The chief increase was in December, when the deaths in one week were 1,484. Since December there has been a decrease. On March 11 the deaths for the week numbered 521, and the gratifying announcement was made that the plague had lost its virulence. The general spread of the pestilence, at first feared, has been averted.

Frightful as has been this pestilence in Bombay its ravage cannot compare with that of many former visitations. In London in 1665, the deaths reported for a single month were 26,230 (Defoe says the reports fell below the facts). In Marseilles in 1720, the plague carried of 40,000 in fifteen months. In Bagdad in 1830, the death rate was 2,000 a day. In Canton in 1894, the deaths were 60,000 in a few weeks (Vol. 4, p. 437). The signs are encouraging for a limitation hereafter of the extent of the disease, and for a reduction of its virulence.

Vol. 7-14.

PERSIA.

An important reform in the administration of Persia has been undertaken by the new shah, who has summoned to his assistance a cabinet of twelve responsible ministers. The chief task confronting the cabinet is a readjustment of finances. The revenue is in serious arrears, due in large part to official peculation and extortion.

JAPAN.

Gold Standard Adopted.-A very important change in the currency system of Japan was enacted in March, to go into force on October 1, 1897. The standard unit of value, the yen, is changed from silver to gold; and the coinage ratio is fixed at 32.348 to 1, which is equivalent to a price of 29 3-16 pence per ounce of silver in London. The change has been taken in pursuance of the recommendation of an imperial commission appointed in September, 1893, "to investigate the causes and effects of the fluctuations in the value of silver, and to suggest the best monetary standard for Japan."

The future monetary unit is to be a gold yen containing .75 gramme, or 11.574 grains, of fine gold, and worth about half as much as the old gold yen, which was permanently rated at 99.7 cents United States money. The new gold coinage will consist of pieces of 5, 10, and 20 yen, no 1-yen pieces being coined. The 20-yen piece will weigh 16 grammes. The 10-yen piece will, in round numbers, be reckoned equal to $5.00 United States or £1 British, its actual value being between the two-namely, $4.985. In silver there will be pieces of 10, 20, and 50 sen; 100 sen being equal to 1 yen. In nickel there will be pieces of 5 sen, and in copper pieces of 1 sen and of 5 rin, 10 rin making 1 sen. Gold coins are to be 900 fine and silver 800 fine, the alloy being copper. Nickel coins are to be one-fourth nickel and three-fourths copper, and copper coins 950 parts copper, 40 tin, and 10 zinc. Gold will be unlimited legal tender, silver to the amount of 10 yen, and nickel and copper 1 yen.

The law, as already stated, is to take full effect on October 1; but the coinage of 1-yen silver pieces is to be stopped at once, or as soon as all existing orders for coinage of bullion are filled. The silver yens are to be exchanged gradually, at the convenience of the government, for gold at par-yen for yen-and until such exchange is completed silver yens are to be full legal tender. The suspension of their circulation is to be notified six months in advance. The ratio between the values of gold and silver is fixed at 1 to 32.348.

Opinions differ as to the motive which inspired the change and the results likely to follow. Senator Wolcott of Colorado is quoted as follows regarding it:

"The result which Japan seeks is to make permanent the depreciation of silver in relation to gold, and to preserve thereby the advantages which the depreciation naturally gives to Japanese agriculture