with Europe and America. Pontevedra and Vigo, as well as
Villagarcia, are improving daily since the railway reached them. Fresh
fruit and vegetables find a ready market, and new uses for materials are
coming daily to the front. Esparto, the coarse grass which grows almost
everywhere in Spain, has long been an article of commerce, as well as
the algaroba bean--said to be the locust bean, on which John the Baptist
might have thriven--for it is the most fattening food for horses and
cattle, and produces in them a singularly glossy and beautiful coat.
This bean, which is as sweet as a dried date, is given, husk and all, to
the mules and horses at all the little wayside _ventas_, and is now used
in some of the patent foods for cattle widely known abroad. The stalk of
the maize is used for making smokeless powder, and the husks for two
kinds of glucose, two of cotton, three of gum, and two of oil. _Glucea
dextrina_ paste is used as a substitute for india-rubber. These products
of the maize, other than its grain, are employed in the preparation of
preserves, syrup, beer, jams, sweets, and drugs, and in the manufacture
of paper, cardboard, mucilage, oils and lubricants, paints, and many
other things. The imitation india-rubber promises to be the basis of a
most important industry. Mixed with equal portions of natural gum, it
has all the qualities of india-rubber, and is twenty-four per cent.
less in cost.

A great deal has been said about the depreciation of the value of the
peseta (franc) since the outbreak of the war with America, but this
unsatisfactory state of affairs is gradually mending; and the attention
of the Government is thoroughly awakened to it. The law of May 17, 1898,
and the Royal decree of August 9 provide that if the notes in
circulation of the Bank of Spain exceed fifteen hundred millions, gold
must be guaranteed to the half of the excess of circulation between
fifteen hundred and two thousand, not the half of all the notes in
circulation. The metal guarantee, silver and gold, must cover half of
the note circulation, when the latter is between fifteen hundred and two
thousand millions, and two-thirds when the circulation exceeds two
thousand. But the Bank has not kept this precept, and there has, in
fact, been an illegal issue of notes to the value of 6,752,813 pesetas.
So states the _Boletin de la Camara de Comercio de Espana en la Gran
Bretana_ of April 15, 1901.

The _Boletin_, after giving an account of