PLAUEN. Plauen, or, to give the town its full official designation, Plauen-im- Vogtlande, is the most southerly as well as the most westerly of the five principal towns of ¡Saxony, and the fourth among them in point of population. Its geographical position in relation to the other four large towns is perhaps best defined by picturing a triangle having at its apex Leipzig on the northern frontier of the kingdom, and for its base, a line crossing the southern portion of ¡Saxony in a direction parallel with the range of the Erzgebirge, i.e., from west by south, to east by north. At the eastern extremity of this line would be found Dresden, and at the opposite extremity Plauen, while midway between these two, and still on the slopes of the Erzgebirge would be found Chemnitz with the colliery town of Zwickau, about 20 miles to the south west, or about midway between Chemnitz and Plauen. The town resembles Chemnitz and Zwickau in being surrounded by a cluster of industrial villages for whose products it is the collecting and distributing centre. It has the same advantages of proximity to the Saxon coalfields, and the same lack of facilities for water transport, since the small river on which Plauen stands—the White Elster, one of the many tributaries of the Elbe—is unnavigable. As regards railway communication, however, Plauen occupies a peculiarly favourable position ; being the last of the important stations on the main line of the Saxon State Railway, running south into Bavaria and linking up the railway systems of North and South Germany. A service of trains crossing a portion of the Erzgebirge also maintains communication between Plauen and the Bohemian town of Eger, although owing to the steepness of the gradients this communication is somewhat slow. Being the centre of the German lace making and embroidery trade, Plauen occupies a position corresponding to that of Nottingham among the manufacturing towns of the United Kingdom, Calais among those of France, and St. Gall among those of Switzerland. Modernity is the predominant characteristic of the town, for the greater part of Plauen, as one sees it now, has been built within the last dozen years. From the river, on the western bank of which old Plauen has been built, the modern town has extended upwards in a series of long, wide, straight streets cf four and five storeyed buildings branching from the right and left of the main business thoroughfare and promenade (the Bahnhofstrasse) which leads from the old Town up a steep incline to the central railway station—a distance of about two-thirds of a mile. Each of these parallel streets is crossed by other parallel streets of similar appearance with a regularity which would be monotonous in its effect but for the constant change of level due to the steep rise in the ground from the river upwards—a rise of 250 feet in two-thirds of a mile, with occasional gradients of one foot in ten. In consequence of this rise it is possible from almost any street corner to obtain a view over a large part of the town and into the "hilly and wooded country beyond. The difficulties of horse traffic on such sloping ground account for the entire absence of any kind of smooth paving material such as wood, concrete or asphalt, rough setts or cobbles. The somewhat exposed situation of the town at a height above the sea level varying from 1,066 to 1,480 feet would in some measure account for the absence of smoke and grime, a circumstance which is also in part due to the extensive use of electricity, gas and benzine as motive power in the lace making and embroidering establishments. The municipality owns large tracts of land outside the town boundaries. Thus, while the total urban area amounts to 7,700 acres, the land owned by the municipality amounts to 4,900 acres, of which 2,900 are outside, and 2,000 inside the urban boundary. Of the total extent of municipally owned land 3,700 acres consist of forest, of which 86 acres, at the immediate outskirts of the town, have been converted into a public park. Other means of public recreation with which the municipality is identified are the town theatre 3 E 2 2'JOöö