A wild story comes from St. Petersburg, possibly with some-
thing in it. The Russian police have recently become aware, through some arrests in Zurich, that the Nihilists are resuming their plots against the Czar's life, and this week they discovered a symptom even more serious than the manufacture of bombs in the Swiss city. They found that an order for an ounce of prussic acid had been presented to a chemist in St. Petersburg in the name of a well-known physician, who wanted the drug, the order said, for experiments. The acid was supplied, but the forgery was soon after detected, and it is believed that the poison is in Nihilist hands, and is intended to enable their agents, when their attempts fail, to commit suicide. The police, who know how desperate convinced Nihilists are, are greatly alarmed, and have advised the Czar to postpone some ceremonial visits to St. Petersburg. It is quite possible that the whole of that story, with the exception of the seizure of bombs in Zurich, is an invention of jobbers anxious to " bear " the new issues of the Russian Conversion Loan ; but it is also possible that it is in essentials true. Jobbers can exaggerate artistically ; but as a rule, they have no creative imagination. When they invent, they make their stories impossible.
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