2d. By spreading a wet towel at a short distance in front of the hot-air register, and dipping its lower edge into water placed in a shallow tin vessel. 3d. To throw steam into the air of the room by placing a tin vessel containing water on a small gas-stove, or at a height of six or eight inches over the lighted gasburner.

Another and perhaps more serious difficulty is the escape of the gases of combustion from the fire-box into the air-chamber. To prevent this, the utmost care should be taken at the commencement of the winter to close all seams and cracks in the ironwork with fire-cement, and remove all the soot and ashes from the radiator and pipes. Even when this has been properly done these insidiously poisonous gases will still find their way through the red-hot iron of the fire-box. This can only be prevented by the use of a soap-stone or fire-brick lining, by which the iron is kept below a dull red heat. The lining will obstruct the free passage of the heat, but the loss from this cause may be remedied by increasing the surface of the radiator in the hot-air chamber.

Science and Legislation.

IN the struggle that science is making in every civilized land to gain some consideration of her demands, too little attention is paid to the services that she has rendered to the human race in past ages. The laws of every country bear to a greater or less extent the impress of the results that have been derived from scientific investigations, but how rarely do we find in the records of the same nations any indications of their encouragement of such investigations.

The great Hebrew Legislator planned his laws on a sound scientific basis: he regulated the diet of his people to suit the climate of the lands to be occupied ; he ordered the burial of every species of excrement and refuse; he fixed the lines of prohibition of marriage, and founded and erected his system with such success that the frequent escape of the Hebrew race from the effects of terrible epidemics has by some been ascribed to the sanitary regulations of their religious code.

In China likewise scientific principles constitute the basis on which the laws are founded. Nothing is wasted. Whatever the earth in her bounty yields is returned. Not a particle of sewage is lost, and as the result we find that one-third of the human race is supported within the limits of that monarchy and yet the land has lost nothing of its fertility.

Egypt, Greece, Rome, also give evidence of the influence of scientific knowledge in elevating them to the lofty position they each in turn occupied. The very armies of the Roman Empire depended on advances in science for their efficiency. How to move such a mass,-on what to feed it, to keep it in health, how to improve its means of attack and defense, all these are scientific problems of the highest order.

Turning to our own time, the explanation offered

on all sides of the results of the Franco-German war is the more thorough education of the Germans, whereby they were rendered more efficient, and could act more intelligently toward the accomplishment of the desired end. The lesson taught by these facts has now been so clearly perceived by all European nations, that enactments are appearing everywhere, the object of which is to aid as liberally as possible in the advance and dissemination of scientific knowledge among the masses, not only for the purpose of increasing the military power, but also to improve their literary culture. It may not be possible to instill ideas of refinement of language and manners into the mind of him who is to spend his life in manual labor, but he can be taught to lessen his labor, or to obtain more favorable results from the same amount of exertion. When this step is gained the other follows of itself. In place, therefore, of the antagonism that letters so generally display in our colleges toward science, there should exist a most cordial understanding, for it is often through the advance of science that art and literature have their own advancement.

Memory.

MANY philosophers regard the faculty of memory as being peculiar to mind, but Maudsley thinks this cannot be the case, for it must exist in all the nervecenters of the body. How, were it otherwise, could these nerve-centers be educated to produce movements in answer to impressions? A nerve-center, whether of sensation or motion, that was devoid of memory would be an idiotic center and incapable of education. So far from memory being a faculty peculiar to the mind, it is, as Mr. Paget has suggested, a property of every tissue of the body. The scar of a cut is one evidence that the tissue recollects the inju ry it has received. The whole system remembers an attack of small-pox.

While we may admit that memory is a function of every tissue, nevertheless its highest development is in the greatest nerve-center or brain. Impressions received in times long past may here remain dormant almost for a lifetime. Consciousness and the utmost effort of the will may be powerless to arouse them, but sooner or later the poison of fever, the horror of a dream, or the agony of drowning may in a moment dissipate the cloud, and in an instantaneous flash the scenes of a long-forgotten act appear as vividly and as really as when they were first enacted. It may even be, as De Quincey has suggested, that the opening of the book at the day of judgment shall be the unrolling of the scroll of memory.

The Steam-Engine and Civilization. IN discussing this question the Quarterly Review says: The steam-engine, mighty as a slave, is the hardest and most brutalizing of masters. It has cal ed into existence a new class in the social scale, a class unknown save by name a century ago, a class which no great statesman has yet dared to look in the

face. This class is that of the operatives, the men, women, and children who are the Helots of the steamengine. Without that culture of the intelligence which every craft necessarily produces in the craftsman; without that healthy simplicity which attaches to agricultural and open-air employments; shut out from the influence of man, in his industrial and social activity, by the many-windowed walls of the factory; shut out from the light and voice of God as he speaks in the aspects of nature, the operative class is hourly adding up a terrible score which society will some day have to liquidate.

Instinct and Education.

To those who explain the actions of all the lower creatures on the principle of "instinct," we commend the following observations of A. R. Wallace: "It is said that birds do not learn to make their nests as man does to build, for all birds will make exactly the same nest as the rest of their species, even if they have never seen one, and it is instinct alone that can enable them to do this. No doubt this would be instinct if it were true, and I simply ask for proof of the fact. This point, although so important to the

question at issue, is always assumed without proof, and even against proof, for what facts there are, are opposed to it. Birds brought up from the egg in cages do not make the characteristic nest of their species, even though the proper materials are supplied them, and often make no nest at all, but rudely heap together a quantity of materials; and the experiment has never been fairly tried of turning out a pair of birds, so brought up, into an inclosure covered with netting and watching the result of their untaught attempts at nest-making. With regard to the song of birds, however, which is thought to be equally instinctive, the experiment has been tried, and it is found that young birds never have the song peculiar to their species if they have not heard it, whereas they acquire very easily the song of almost any other bird with which they are associated."

Petroleum Oils.

In a recent report on these oils, Professor Chandler gives the following as the cheapest process for making an oil that will not flash, that is, emit an inflammable vapor below 100° F.

(1.) Run off the naphtha down to 58° R., instead of 65° to 62°, the usual point.

(2.) Then expose the oil in shallow tanks to the sun, or diffuse daylight, for one or two days.

The increased expense of this plan of refining would not reach more than three or four cents per gallon. This addition would be cheerfully paid by the consumer, to insure himself and his wife and I children from a horrible death. But the refiner says, I cannot get the advanced price, because the consumer does not know my oil is safer than the cheaper article. This is true, and our only hope is in strict laws, rigidly enforced, which will make it a crime to sell an unsafe oil.

Muscular Expression.

IN an admirable chapter on the relations of the mind to the body, Professor Maudsley says: Those who would degrade the body in order, as they imagine, to exalt the mind, should consider more deeply than they do the importance of our muscular expression of feeling. The manifold shades and kinds of expression which the lips present, their gibes, gambols, and flashes of merriment; the quick language of a quivering nostril; the varied waves and ripples of emotion which play on the human countenance, with the spasms of passion that disfigure it-all which we take such pains to embody in art, are simply effects of muscular action. When the eye is turned upward in rapt devotion, in the ecstasy of supplication, it is for the same reason as it is rolled upward in fainting, in sleep, in the agony of death: it is an involuntary act of the oblique muscles when the straight muscles cease to act on the eyeball. We perceive, then, in the study of muscular action the reason why man looks up to heaven in prayer, and why he has placed there the power "whence cometh his help." A simple property of the body, as Sir Charles Bell observes-the fact that the eye in supplication takes what is its natural

position when not acted on by the will—has influenced

our conceptions of heaven, our religious observances, and the habitual expression of our highest feelings.

Truffies.

THESE fungi, so highly prized by gastronomists, and which enter so largely into the composition of the 'pâté de foie gras,' are found among the roots of various trees, as the beech, walnut, chestnut, though those growing among the roots of the oak are said to possess the finest flavor. Of some twenty-four varieties only four are edible: two of these ripen in autumn and are gathered in the beginning of winter ; these are known as the black truffle and the winter truffle. They are common in Italy and the south of France, and are found occasionally around Paris and in England.

They must vegetate on decayed wood, and they can only grow to advantage in groves where the shade is not too dense. A rainy July and August greatly favors their development. At the proper season they are hunted or found by trained pigs and dogs.

The Preparation of Tea.

THE definite effects sought from tea-drinking over and above the mere comfort given by the hot liquid are produced by two ingredients of the leaf,-the alkaloid theine and the aromatic matter. The latter is what is chiefly valued by the refined connoisseur of tea; and accordingly he (or she) makes tea by pouring perfectly boiling water on a pretty large allowance of leaf, drinking off the first infusion and rejecting the rest. Made in this manner tea is, no doubt, not only a very pleasant beverage, but also a most useful restorative; but, unfortunately, so far from being cheap, it is a costly beverage, and the poor cannot afford to drink it. The plan which they adopt is that of slow stewing, the tea-pot standing for hours

together upon the hob. The result of this kind of cooking is that a very high percentage of theine (and also of the astringent substances which are ruinous to fine flavor) is extracted; and the tea, though poor enough as regards any qualities which a refined taste would value, is decidedly a potent physiological agent. -(Lancet.)

Insurance Losses.

THE large majority of loss payments made by fire insurance companies are the outgrowth of incendiarism. The existence of so bold and persistent an enemy to insurance capital has neutralized all hope of making underwriting a profitable field for the continuous employment of capital. A careful analysis of the cause of fires in London, New York, or Philadelphia, shows that nine-tenths of the fires originate by carelessness or crime.

In a London police court the startling disclosure was recently made that more than one hundred arson offenses had been committed by one individual, and in another case the fires ceased in a district when a certain individual was arrested. This person had set fire to sixty or more houses merely to obtain the informer's fee of half a crown or so.-(Spectator.)

American Farmers.

THE Artisan says: We hazard the assertion that no class of equal average means live so well as American farmers. One of these possessing a farm and buildings worth say ten thousand dollars, will gather about him and enjoy more real comfort than could be obtained from the income of a hundred thousand dollars in New York. He may live in a more commodious dwelling than a metropolitan citizen having ten thousand dollars annual income. He may have his carriage and horses. His table may be supplied with everything fresh in its season. His labor is less wearing than the toil of counting-rooms and offices, and he has more leisure.

A Curious Investigation.

IN a letter addressed to Professor Tyndall, a writer in the Contemporary Review makes the following proposition to test the efficacy or power of prayer to cure the sick "I ask that one single ward or hospital, under the care of first-rate physicians and surgeons, containing certain numbers of patients afflicted with those diseases which have been best studied, and of which the mortality rates are best known, should be, during a period of not less, say, than three or five years, made the object of special prayer by the whole body of the faithful, and that, at the end of that time, the mortality rates should be compared with the past rates, and also with those of other leading hospitals, similarly well managed, during the same period." The writer closes the statement of his proposition with an expression of his belief that the ward or hospital thus favored will show a greatly increased percentage of cures.

Memoranda.

THE hypodermic injection of vaccine lymph in the treatment of small-pox is worse than useless.

Professor J. C. Draper describes in the American Chemist a new process for the quantitative determination of arsenic in cases of poisoning by this substance. The peculiarity of the process consists in the precipitation of the metal by red-hot platinum from the arsenide of hydrogen.

The good effects of associated action have never been better illustrated than in the establishment of cheese factories in the United States. The improvements that have been introduced into the manufacture of this important article of diet have through this agency been so great that the American product now competes with the best English in the London markets, whereas it was almost unsalable twenty years

ago.

The soul is by an ancient writer figured as the dotted outline of a man. The voice of the soul is thought, by savages and half-civilized folk like Polyne sians, to be a murmur, or whistle, or a ghost of a voice, and this idea still exists in some parts of England.

The construction of ovens heated by gas for the purpose of hatching eggs is now so perfect in France that the gas flame regulates its own rate of combus tion, and keeps the variations of temperature in the oven within one degree.

M. Boussingault finds as the result of a series of experiments on churning milk that only three-fourths of the butter is obtained by this method. He also states that it is not difficult to detect by the microscope the difference between this milk and the buttermilk that remains after churning cream. The mixture of buttermilk with skim-milk may also be detected and distinguished from fresh milk, which it closely resembles.

Black-lead pencil or crayon drawings may be fixed by smearing the back of the sheet of paper with a solution of shellac in alcohol.

Speaking of the climate of the Argentine Republic Professor Gould says: "A bowl of water left uncovered in the morning is dry at night; ink vanished from the inkstand as if by magic. The bodies of dead animals dry up instead of decomposing, and neither exercise nor exposure to the sun's rays produces perspiration."

If flowers do not mature well, they may be made to do so by placing half an inch of powdered charcoal on the earth in the pot. Another authority asserts that a solution or suspension of white hellebore in water may be used with great advantage in destroying the insects that infest so many flowering plants. A fair frent has tried the experiment with success, and reports that if the bugs sneezed as she did, it was no wonder that they lost their lives.

The white elephant recently captured in Siam takes rank next to the Queen, the heir-apparent ranking next after the elephant.

"A nation must endow science until that nation stands first in abstract science, first in the applications

of science, and first in the amount of knowledge possessed by State servants of all classes. When this is achieved the question of continuing State aid may be discussed, and not till then."

Baldness is becoming so common among the Doctors in England that in one of the large medical schools, out of a staff of twelve medical officers, all under fifty, only four were not bald.

A new process for the preparation of very fine colors from pyrogallic acid has been recently introduced into France. (M. A. Baeyer.)

Insects can traverse far greater expanses of water than is generally supposed. Mr. Darwin once caught a locust 370 miles from land, and a white butterfly was captured 400 miles from the Azores. It was still quite vigorous, for, on being placed in a drawer, it laid

eggs.

'DO

M. Claude Bernard finds that glycogène or sugargenerating substance is produced in the eggs of birds during incubation, and also in the placenta of mammals. He concludes that the evolution of sugar during the development and life of all creatures is a physiological necessity.

The rust on peach-trees is, according to M. Prillieux, a microscopic mushroom, and to prevent its increase the affected parts must be cut off as soon as possible and burned.

MM. Bert and Jolyet state that carbolic acid, administered internally, acts on the spinal cord like strychnine.

The injection of a solution of quinine under the skin of persons suffering from sunstroke is said to have been employed with advantage in India. It is sup

posed to act by virtue of its power of reducing the temperature of the body.

By the recent invention of M. Cauderay the movements of night-watchmen are recorded by electricity. It is impossible to falsify the record thus obtained.

At a meeting of the Paris Society of Civil Engineers, Mr. M. B. Thomas reported as follows on the oxyhydric light of Tessie du Motay:

(1.) Theoretically the combustion with pure oxygen does not increase the illuminating power of coal gas. (2.) Practically it enables a burner to consume four times the quantity of gas that can be burned in air without detriment to the utilization of the light developed. Consequently it would be disadvantageous to supply it for ordinary street lighting, on account of the limited consumption of the burners in practical Only in the case of sun-burners, where a very brilliant though expensive light is required, is it of any advantage. (Gas-Light Journal.)

use.

Wines may be improved in quality by passing an electric current from platinum electrodes through them. (M. Scoutetten).

According to Professor Palmieri, the vaporous emanations during the recent eruption of Vesuvius were charged with positive electricity, while the ashes were charged with negative electricity. The lightning and thunder are therefore produced by the meeting of these oppositely electrified clouds of ashes and vapor.

Social science receives an important hint from the fact that during the sway of the Commune in Paris damage to the amount of one hundred millions of dollars was inflicted on the public buildings and their

contents.

Country Board.

Different eyes see different visions. Those words, "a country summer," represent to Pater Familias, what? A dull period of inaction, of belated newspapers, of noontide naps in hard rocking-chairs, with occasional slaps at flies, of nights made musical by the hum of the cheerful mosquito, of dull carving-knives and mysteriously cut joints of meat, attributable to no particular part of no particular animal, of a general sense of dissatisfaction and a longing to return to business, spring-beds, tenderloin steaks, and the newspaper at breakfast. To Mamma, on the contrary, it represents a very different thing. Baby is to be “good” in that pure air and to sleep all night, and Mamma is to sleep too. Little Tom's thin cheeks are to fill out. There will be no Bridgets to follow round, no sewing-machine, no consultations over butcher's bills. Mamma smiles over her visions. Isabel's notions are hazy. They include blue mountains,-and picnics; or

views. A fellow is likely to be bored almost anywhere, but there are always cigars, and if a pretty girl happens along, and pretty girls usually do-why, one can stand it for a few weeks. As for the little ones, bless them, their dreams, sleeping and waking, are always the same and always rose-colored. What houses they build, what lovely imaginary games of hide-and-seek they play in the bushes, how tall are the trees which they climb, how brimful of birds and squirrels are the woods, "such alleys to search, such alcoves to importune," and Harry is ferociously bent on killing a bear, and Lucy, two years younger, is perfectly sure that he can and will.

And so on. Each journeyer country-ward goes with different intent. To some the change is merely change -to others it is respite, to others inaction after long and wearisome action. And to still another and more favored class it is renovation of the very springs of life. As the Giant Antæus, when dashed upon the earth,