TWO QUESTIONS.
ITo THIll EDITOR Or TEEN "SPECTATOR."] Sin,—Your valuable' paper takes some time in reaching ine, but there is very little in its pages that I find too old for satisfying perusal. The delay, however, must be my excuse for lumping two questions suggested by your issue of July 10th into one note. (1) Why does your correspondent "X.," in meeting the charge against the drink traffic of -wasting valuable foodstuff in the making of alcohol, omit to point to the enormous waste of such material in the manu- facture of starch P Viewed in all its bearings, the conversion of wheat, maize, and rice into starch (by rotting away or other- wise destroying every atom of nutritious matter in the grain, often poisoning at the same time the sweet waters of some benign stream or river) seems to me, a mere man and an octogenarian who has less use for starch than a younger man might have, a waste hardly less, if not more, deplorable than that caused by the conversion of grains into spirit. (2) Who knocked the " i " out of lieligoland P The newspapers here have for some time past agreed that the name of the island should be Helgoland, and I have reason to believe that they took their cue from the present possessors of that unnecessary—to say the least—gift of Great Britain to its crafty and hate-full foe. Of course the first syllable of the latter form of the name has for the German ear no suoh sinister associations as it has for ours, but it does look as if some conscientious German in a high place felt that "Isle of Saints" was a title too incompatible with its present use and ocoupation,--I am, Sir, &c., C. J. a Santa Cruz, California, August 12th.
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