a hunter before he was a sculptor, believes that only one who has known the wild, free life of the mountains and forest as the beasts themselves know it can transmit this spirit to his clay or his canvas as a positive force. On the other hand, those men who have never been hunters believe that careful study of captive animals, supplemented by knowledge gained from explorers and hunters and by their own imaginations, will enable them to picture animals truly, even tho they have never shot them. Mr. Gleeson painted animals before he ever saw one in the woods; and now, after several seasons in the Canadian forests and a trip to Africa, he feels almost handicapped by this new relation with his subjects. With Mr. Rungius, perhaps more than with the others, trips to the wilds are a necessity. Moose, caribou, and wapiti will not live in captivity, and so few students of natural history visit them in their native haunts that facts concerning them are very meager. At first, like Mr. Gleeson, Mr. Rungius felt that perhaps too much knowledge is a dangerous thing. But after repeated trips he began to bring order out of the chaos and to make his new knowledge a part of his own thought and feeling."

46

THE RELATION OF LEGS TO LITERATURE.

MR

R. BAILEY MILLARD has been indulging in a "more or less painstaking research" in what he believes to be a neglected field of observation, namely, the relation of legs to literature. As a result of this research he ventures the generalization that the men who have written the marrowy books-those writers of sure touch and well-bottomed, those who show the best relish of life-were all men who faced a long tramp with zestful anticipation." This finding is the more significant, he suggests, since walking seems to have become a lost art with us. "Nearly all those poets whose lives are open to us have been good walkers," we are assured. And Mr. Millard confesses to a long-cherished suspicion " that the flabby flexors and extensors of the locomotor media of our modern poets are largely responsible for the invertebrate verse of present production." Enlarging upon his theme in The Critic (New York) Mr. Millard continues:

"Much bending over the folio does not make the better part of poetry or of prose. It inheres as much in the physiological condition that results from the swinging of the legs, which movement quickens heart action and stimulates the brain by supplying it with blood charged with the life-giving principle of the open air.

'In spite of his club-foot, Byron, one of the most fecund, if not the most moral, of poets, managed to walk about in the open to an extent that should shame the verse-writer of today, clinging to his strap in the trolley-car. Wordsworth walked all over the Cumberland district and the neighboring country. Wherever he happened to be he poked into every secret corner. Shelley, we are told, rambled everywhere. Despite all unseemly cavil as to Tennyson's drinking-habits, I should say that he drew more inspiration from his walks than from his wine. Goethe, who during his lifetime required fifty thousand bottles of the vintner's best to sweeten his imagination, found his extensive walks about Weimar a source of great inspirational profit.

best lines. The tonic quality of his verse is, in a great measure, due to his habit of faring forth where he might' think the thoughts that lilies speak in white.'

Scott was a tremendous pedestrian and made small ado about a thirty-mile walk over the breezy highlands, with the stout heather brushing his boots. Victor Hugo wrote much of his prose and not a little of his verse in a standing position. At the Hauteville House, in Guernsey, he stood by the hour at a high table on the veranda. He knew the snare of the sedentary habit and would not sit while he wrote, tho at times his legs became stiff from much standing. He often walked while in the act of composition and attributed his facility in writing to his having trodden out his chapter before he put it upon paper.

In fact, the more prolific the writer the more he is found to move about upon his feet. You recall rare old John Wilson, the' Christopher North who so irritated Tennyson and was so neatly prodded by him. There was a man who could shut himself up in his room and, with the creative steam of a Beckford, write a whole Blackwood's at a sitting, and who would be turning out his spirited' Noctes Ambrosianæ' in any number of volumes, to this day, were he yet able to walk. A tramp of sixty miles was mere child's play to Wilson. Often he would walk twenty or twenty-five miles before breakfast.

"Browning's incomparable 'Paracelsus' was composed for the most part during his rambles in the Dulwich woods. At any stage of his superb singing, wherever he happened to be, he would give his feet the freedom of the highway and the byway. He composed much in the open air and trod out, as it were, many of his

in the air of the open road, says Mr. Millard, a property which Hazlitt hints at and Whitman insists upon in his songs, and which " more than any other known element makes language plastic to meaning." Returning to the complaint that we Americans are, perhaps, of all the great peoples, the poorest walkers," he says:

"In the spread of that peculiar malady we have agreed to call progress, the disease seems to have settled permanently in our legs. I am as hopeful as any that we shall live down the scholarly taunts of Matthew Arnold and stop making the machinery of our progress an end in itself; but to be as vigorous, as vertebrate, and as original as it should be, our literature must get upon its legs. It may not safely ride in the automobile or on the bicycle or in the trolley-car. It must get out and walk."

THE death of the venerable English novelist, George Mardonald, says the New York Evening Post, "takes away the last of a school of writers who, for their own generation at least, contrived to mingle the useful and the sweet in admirable proportions." Macdonald was

born only five years later than Charles Kingsley. Like Kingsley, says The Post, he was a product of that general movement which sought to make religion palatable in the form of fiction. We read further: "With Kingsley, Christianity was to be 'muscular,' and the spirit of the Vikings was the true interpretation of the Gospel. Macdonald pursued a somewhat milder course, and the 'manly' would suffice for him without quite so much brawn. Their novels, and those of their followers, were safe; they were welcomed by the pulpit, and the critics found them good art; they might lie unabashed on the most pious and cultured parlor-table. Even a tinge of unorthodoxy did not frighten away Macdonald's readers, but added a touch of piquancy to their pleasure. For Macdonald differed from Kingsley and the Southern writers generally in displaying an undercurrent of very un-English mysticism."

A

SCIENCE AND INVENTION.

WHY NEGROES ARE BLACK. PERSISTENT racial characteristic is presumably a useful one, if we are to accept the doctrine of the survival of the fittest. That tropical races are so often dark-skinned can scarcely be regarded as accidental, and the fact has almost universally been referred to the greater intensity of solar radiation in the tropics. But black substances do not reflect or turn away the solar heat; they rather absorb it. How, then, is a black skin useful to the native of the tropics? This question is taken up by Mr. Francis Marre, who shows in an article contributed to Cosmos (Paris) that the negro's skin protects him, not against the sun's heat, from

exposed to the attacks of the solar heat, the wearing of a black epidermis, if such an expression is admissible, is equally necessary. Altho we may no longer state that negroes are black because this makes them cooler, we shall nevertheless be correct in saying. that the human skin, subjected to the constant action of intense solar radiation, reacts so as to adapt itself as well as possible to its environment, and that this reaction manifests itself by the dissemination, over the cutaneous surface, of dark pigments, whose presence prevents the hurtful effects of the luminous and chemical radiations. This explanation also accounts for the formation of sunburn on delicate skins that are exposed to sunlight."-Translation made for THE LITERARY DIGEST.

A SUN-DIAL FOR STANDARD TIME.

means, but against the chemical effects of the solar radiation. At first sight, the writer says, it would seem to be a sort of scientific heresy to ascribe the dark skins of the negro or negroid races to their life in a tropical climate. He goes on:

"The notions of physics that we imbibed at college tell us that black is the color that absorbs most of the heat-rays, and all attempts at teleological explanation run up against this fact, which we may regard as proven. It would seem, then, that the very fact that the negro has a black skin should increase his discomfort under the solar rays.

'The experiments of Duclaux on the chemical power of lightwhat is known as actinism-compared with that of heat, have shown that heat, whose decomposing action is by itself slight, acquires very considerable strength when it is luminous.

"We know that modern physics asserts that one and the same cause produces both luminous and calorific effects; or we may say that the two causes that produce them act together and disappear together. Also, the chemical action of light has the same cause as the luminous action properly so called, or, again, the two causes may act and cease together.

"The principal objection, or even the only one, that can be made to the hypothesis of a single cause is the diversity of the observed effects. There is, in fact, no analogy between a luminous and a calorific sensation, but altho this is incontestable it constitutes no insurmountable obstacle to the hypothesis of a single cause, since the nature of an effect depends rather on that of the organ or body that manifests it than on that of the cause.

"It is consequently proper to say that the calorific, chemical, and luminous phenomena [of radiation] are only three different manifestations of the same phenomenon, which modern science regards 23 a system of undulatory vibration in the ether."

Of course this question of cause, Mr. Marre goes on to say, is only of secondary importance, our present interest being in the fact that, to guard effectively against the burning action of the sun's rays, it is sufficient to protect oneself against its luminous radiation. Thus the Italian physiologist Mosso has shown that the sunburn induced by residence in high mountain regions may be greatly reduced by blackening the skin with lampblack. To protect the eyes from ophthalmia caused by the reflection from glaciers, an effective method is to shield them with darkened glasses. To resume our translation:

"Now the investigations of physiologists show that the internal temperature of the human body varies not more than 1° C. [1.8° F.] when the temperature of the surrounding medium is increased; different causes of loss, especially the evaporation of perspiration, act to eliminate rapidly the heat transmitted from the interior so that the actual bodily temperature can not rise sensibly.

"It follows that when man is subjected to the action of intense solar heat, as is the case, for instance, in tropical countries, the only troubles that his organism has really to fear are those due to the luminous and chemical rays. Now both are arrested by the black pigment, which is almost totally inactinic.

"Thus everything in this regard would appear to be for the best, in the best of worlds.

"To guard against the heat the use of white and floating garments is absolutely necessary. But when the skin must be directly

sun as a timepiece is not accurate, because its motion is not uniform throughout the year. A dial that will indicate standard time, or the local time of any particular place, if desired, has been

patented by Albert C. Crehore of Yonkers, N. Y. The illustration represents one of Mr. Crehore's dials made for Sir William Preece and set up at his place at Carnarvon, North Wales. Others are at the University of Ohio, Northwestern University, and elsewhere. The Crehore dial, as described in The Optical Instrument Monthly (New York), is one solid piece of bronze, except the face, which is an engraved bronze cylindrical sheet whose axis is inclined to the horizontal plane at an angle equal to the latitude of the place and points directly north. The shadow is cast by a small bead held by a wire kept stretched by a spring, as shown in the picture. The scientific principle on which the dial depends. is thus described by the inventor in a communication to the periodical above named. He says:

"The relative motion of the sun and the earth is such that the sun's apparent path in the heavens, when mapped with reference to the horizon plane of some fixed locality, is only completed so that the sun begins to describe approximately the same path once every year. It does not describe quite the same path because of several component motions of very long period, which are for the present purposes of the second order of magnitude and may be neglected. Considering the sun's path results from two component motions, the rotation of the earth on its axis once per day and the revolution in its orbit once per year, it will be seen that this path is one continuous curve which is approximately completed only once a year, and will be retraced each succeeding year. Each day the path is almost a complete circle, but the cir

cle is not quite closed, as the path the following day is a similar circle very near the preceding one, so that the path resembles a screw-thread except that the pitch of the screw is not uniform throughout the year, but changes from its maximum at the time of the equinoxes to zero at the solstices.

"For a sun-dial which is to indicate time it is necessary to know more than the mere path of the sun in the heavens, which is only a geometrical curve described in space. It is necessary to know where the sun is situated on this curve at all times. If a point is marked on the sun's path, as above described, for every hour throughout the year, it will be found that the points made at the same hour, say 3 o'clock, on succeeding days lie very close together as compared with points corresponding to succeeding hours of the same day. At 3 o'clock on the succeeding day the sun will have made a complete revolution in its screw-thread path, and will then be at the corresponding point on the next adjacent thread. If it were exactly at the corresponding point for each succeeding day, all the 3 o'clock points, for example, would be located on a portion of a meridian circle, there being twenty-four such meridians at equal intervals around the equator.

"This would be strictly the case if the earth's orbit around the sun were a perfect circle. Because it is an ellipse, however, the

locality. In a spherical surface, used in some old dials, the distance traveled by the shadow in an hour differs at different seasons, so that this is not well adapted to its purpose. To quote further:

"For these reasons a cylindrical form of surface is adopted, having its axis parallel with that of the earth, and the bead which casts the shadow is on this axis. The circles are then all of the same diameter, and the distance from any point on one figure' 8' to the corresponding point on the next is fixed throughout the year so that the same scale may be applied at any time to interpolate between the hour curves.

SHAPE AND HEIGHT OF OCEAN WAVES.

HE falsity of the conception of ocean waves that represents them as almost vertical walls of water, ready to fall upon a ship and engulf it, is shown by some diagrams drawn to scale to illustrate an article on "Rhythmic Movements of the Sea," by A. Berget, part of which we quote below from The Scientific American Supplement (New York, September 9). Says the writer:

'The position of the sun at the hour of 3 o'clock by mean time. is not on the meridian, but on a curve somewhat resembling a figure' 8' situated almost symmetrically about the meridian already described. The larger loop of the figure' 8' is described during the January half of the year, when the earth is moving fastest, and is therefore situated south of the equator.

"Having now formed a picture of the imaginary path of the sun in the heavens with its system of figure' 8' curves representing hours, we may calculate how to make a sun-dial which will indicate the sun's position at any time throughout the year, or, conversely, which will indicate the correct time for every position of the sun throughout the year.

"If we abandon at the beginning the method of letting the shadow of a line (the gnomon in the common form of dial) indicate the time, it will be evident that more can be shown by having the shadow made by a point or small sphere. The system of curves in the heavens representing the sun's path may be projected through this point upon some material surface upon which the curves may be permanently marked."

This surface, the writer goes on to say, may be of almost any shape. A horizontal plane is objectionable because the shadow of the bead becomes indistinct at hours distant from noon, owing to its increased distance from those parts of the plane on which it is then thrown; also because the system of curves would differ with

"In reality, the mountains of the sea are by no means steep. Fig. 1 gives, drawn to scale, the profiles of waves 53 feet high, as observed by Lieutenant Pâris, and, on the same scale, a threemaster 250 feet long and of 2,000 tons displacement, and an Iceland fishing-smack.

"Below are shown waves of the Indian Ocean 36 feet high, measured during heavy weather, in comparison with a Messageries Maritimes liner; and Atlantic waves, which rarely exceed 26 feet in height, compared with the transatlantic liner La Touraine. It is evident that so long as these vessels move in the same direction as the waves they are little affected by them. The frequent flooding of the deck by sheets of water which sweep everything before them is due to steaming at full speed against both wind and waves. The latter, encountering an obstacle, attack it with all their momentum, and thus many accidents are caused.

"As a matter of fact, when the free propagation of waves is-interrupted, when the wave meets either a solid obstacle or another system of waves, the law of the phenomena changes. Each particle of water is acted upon simultaneously by two systems of forces. If the velocities due to these are equal and in opposite directions the particle remains at rest, but if the velocities are in the same direction they are added together and the amplitude of the wavemotion is increased.

FISSURE MADE IN THE WESTERN JETTY AT CHERBOURG DURING THE STORM OF 1894.

A phenomenon of interference of this sort is the cause of the baffling or choppy' sea which is encountered in the center of a cyclone (Fig. 4).

In a cyclone the wind blows from every direction. It, therefore, generates an infinite number of systems of waves, which meet and interfere at the center, where the waves rise to heights of 70 and 80 feet and more, and follow each other at very short and irregular intervals. The battle-ship and the torpedo-boat in the illustration are drawn to the same scale as the waves.

"Below are shown storm-waves of the Mediterranean, compared with a packet of an Algerian line. The waves are short, because of the interference of numerous systems of waves due to reflection of the principal wave system by the coasts of this enclosed sea."

I

HOW TO MAKE A RUBBER STAMP.

N answer to a correspondent who inquires about the method of making rubber stamps, The American Inventor (New York) gives the following information through its “Notes and Queries " column. The directions may be followed by any one who has a small printing outfit. In the first place, we are told that the ordinary stamp is made by shaping rubber by a combination of heat and pressure, the shape being retained when the stamp is cold and the pressure released. The writer says:

I

"The material used is mixed sheet rubber, which can be obtained from any caoutchouc factory and looks like ordinary white rubber. The first thing to do is to select the style of type desired in the stamp to be made. Set the type after the style wanted and place the same in a small printers' chase, then surround the lines of type with thin pieces of metal or hard wood, which come above the face of the type. Printing type is 1 inch high and the surrounding pieces should be 1% inches in height in order to bring out prominently the type of the rubber stamp. Rub the type thoroughly with hard soap or wax to prevent the mold sticking. Next mix some good plaster-of-Paris (‘ dental plaster') to a proper consistency and spread a layer of about of an inch upon an iron plate of uniform thickness and a little larger than the chase. This is then turned over and the plaster side placed upon the face of the form of type and a slight pressure applied; the plaster will set in ten minutes. This is the mold and should be strengthened by soaking in an alcoholic solution of shellac. The mold is dried and baked in a moderately heated oven for a couple of hours. Take a suitable piece of sheet rubber that is well dusted with talc and place it over the face of the mold. Some kind of a press is now equired; a letter copying-press will answer well, provided a uniform heat can be applied beneath the bedplate. Place the mold in the center of the press and screw down lightly the suspended

WAVES 16 FEET HIGH AND 165 FEET LONG.

platen. Heat is then applied under the bedplate by gas-burners or one or more oil-stoves. As the rubber softens, further pressure should be applied in screwing down the press. A heat of a vulcanizing temperature, or 140° C., is necessary, which can be regulated by the use of a thermometer. At first the rubber becomes very sticky, after which it regains stiffness and elasticity, when the curing process is complete. The stamp is removed, trimmed, and attached to a wooden or metal base by marine glue. After a little experience one soon becomes proficient in this work."

CUSTOM AND RACIAL DIFFERENCES.

THAT

HAT the difference between races is largely a matter of custom and tradition, and that these are subject to the influences of civilization, which are everywhere breaking down barriers erected in this way, is maintained by the writer of an editorial note in The Lancet (London, September 9). In particular, it is the writer's belief that, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, there is no general mental inferiority of the colored races, and that when civilization has done its work in obliterating their peculiar habits of mind, they may reach the higher levels of culture. In this he is supported by Basil H. Thomson, governor of the great convictprison on Dartmoor, to whose recent address on "The Decay of the Law of Custom" the writer refers. He says:

The

"The laws of custom which have governed the colored races for countless generations are, it is pointed out, gradually breaking down, tho it is estimated that some 800,000,000 of the 1,500,000,000 constituting the population of the globe are still comparatively uncivilized and stagnant under the influence of these laws. ever-increasing facilities of intercommunication must make steadily for a greater uniformity of view and conduct among the different races of mankind; and for the white race the question is of the first importance as to what part the colored races will come to play in the affairs of the world when they shall have assimilated the teachings of Western civilization. With this is bound up the question of the relative mental capacity of the white and colored peoples. It would be rash to assert that any race is inferior in mental endowment to, and inherently incapable of reaching the mental level of, another, tho plenty of white men are to be found who, after years of residence in Africa or the East, speak confidently of the general mental inferiority of the colored races. Even in instances in which it is manifest that no such inferiority exists, there is, they say, and always will be, a profound difference between colored and white races in the manner of viewing things. This is to maintain that a man's attitude of mind is as innate and as little liable to alteration as is the color of his skin. We prefer to take the view that the differences between white and colored races are, in the main, matters of custom and tradition and as such are subject to the influences of the agents of civilization, such as steam and electricity, which have already done so much toward obliterating lines of demarcation between nationalities and toward establishing uniformity in manners and customs. That this is Mr. Basil Thomson's view may be seen from the following words of the address referred to: In tropical countries the line of caste would soon cease to be the color of the skin. There, as in temperate zones,

wealth would create a new aristocracy recruited from men of every shade of color. In the great cities of Europe and America we might find men of Hindu, Chinese, and Arab origin controlling industries with their wealth just as Europeans now control the commerce of India and China, but with this difference, that they would wear the dress and speak the language which would gradually have become common to the whole commercial world. Just as the aristocracy of every land would be composed of every shade of color so would the masses of men who work with their hands. . . . White men would work cheek by jowl with black and feel no degradation. There would be the same feverish pursuit of wealth, but all races would participate in it, instead of a favored few.""

THA

DO WE RUN ABOUT TOO MUCH?

HAT much of the congestion on our crowded streets is to be remedied by stopping the crowding rather than by furnishing facilities for its increase is the editorial opinion of The Engineering Magazine (New York, September). Business does not consist in "chasing" about the streets, altho an impression to that effect seems to be abroad, especially in our own strenuous country. Why run "to see a man," when you may write to him, or, still better, telephone? Taking as his text a recent report of the British Royal Commission on Traffic Conditions in London, the editor goes on to write as follows:

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We can not emphasize too strongly the importance of the possibilities for improvement by diminishing the necessity for crowding the streets, rather than by providing increased facilities for enabling more people to move about. Formerly the only way of communicating with another man was to go to him or to send some one else. With the introduction of the railway, the postoffice, and the telegraph, much of this necessity has been removed. By the provision of a full, prompt, and wholly adequate telephone service a very large portion of the crowding of city streets might be avoided, and this, too, with a promptness which no system of new and enlarged highways could approach.

66

Many people seem to have the idea that business energy and effort consist in 'taking cabs and going about,' or in chasing with feverish activity about the streets, endeavoring to meet and talk with people who themselves are as busily engaged in trying to get to others. It is this feverish perpetual motion, resembling nothing so much as the movements of a host of animalculæ in a drop of ,water under the microscope, which causes much of the congestion in the streets of a great city; and the greater the facilities provided for such wasted energy, the greater will the congestion become."

There is of course another kind of congestion, due to the daily flow of people from home to business and back again, but even this, while unavoidable in cities like New York, may be provided for, to a certain extent, both by greater facilities and by judicious regulation. To quote again from the same editorial writer:

A large part of the crowding of transport vehicles is due to the fact that the local and the long-distance services are not separated to a sufficient degree. Usually the business district of a city is closely condensed and centralized, and, while densely populated during business hours, its traffic is also concentrated to a few hours in the morning and evening, at which time the greatest congestion occurs at certain limited areas. By providing suitable express trains, preferably running underground, but possibly overhead, and by separating this service entirely from the local transport provisions, it would be possible to run a number of through trains from the business district to the extreme outlying suburbs without any of the delays invariably included in local transport, the result being a rapid clearing of the congestion at night and a corresponding development of suburban residence districts of but moderate population-density. In such a system there should be no conflict of human currents, no mixing or confusion between local and express passengers, and above all no contraction of the flow of people in boarding the trains, since most of the congestion at stations is due to the delays in getting the passengers from the platform to the cars while others are crowding on behind them. The modern engineer should be capable of designing something far superior to the present obsolete car with its ancient platform, an inheritance from the days of hand-brakes, and give us one

which shall enable a crowded platform to be cleared in the time required to pass freely over the few feet of distance involved. When a great exhibition, or even a racing event or athletic game, occurs, the railway authorities understand very well how to handle the crowds which they know will be clamoring for simultaneous transportation, and every one is familiar with the efficient manner in which long trains are rapidly supplied and as rapidly despatched from the grounds to the homes of the multitude. The same methods, even intensified in vigor, applied to municipal transport, would work wonders, and their application might be made with but moderate delay."

The Atmospheres of Two Distant Planets.-The outermost of the planets, Uranus and Neptune, are so far both from the sun and from ourselves that our knowledge of their physical constitution is very meager. We can not even be sure whether or not layers of clouds cover them, as is the case with Jupiter and Saturn. Some astronomers have described markings on the surface of Uranus, but their dimness makes even their existence doubtful. The best we can do is to rely on the spectroscope, and even here, since these bodies are only slightly, if at all, self-luminous, we can learn nothing of the constitution of the central mass. We see them almost wholly by reflected sunlight, but, since this must pass through the planet's atmosphere, its analysis may tell us something of the nature of this outermost envelope. This, in fact, is what has been found out by Mr. V. M. Slipher, of the Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Ariz. A study of photographs of the spectra of the two planets, obtained with difficulty, especially in the case of far-distant Neptune, reveals some interesting facts. It appears that there is free hydrogen on both planets, but especially on Neptune, and that helium also exists on Uranus. Certain lines also make it probable that gases yet unknown may exist in the atmospheres of these far-away planets. Says Mr. Émile Fouchet in a note on the subject in La Nature (Paris):

"The fact that free hydrogen is so abundant in the atmospheres of these two planets would make us think that unknown luminous gases, analogous to hydrogen and helium, may be present. Altho such gases have not yet been found in the fixed stars, this may be due to the high temperatures there present. Certain bands observed in the two spectra correspond fairly well with groups of lines due to water vapor. This element may therefore be present in the two outermost planets of our system.

"It is to be hoped that these investigations may be resumed with still more powerful instruments and in observatories of high altitude, where the effect of the earth's atmosphere may be less noticeable."-Translation made for THE LITERARY DIGEST.

SCIENCE BREVITIES.

"IN point of quantity and value corn is the leading cereal crop of the United States," says The Scientific American. "Its annual farm value in later years has nearly equaled and sometimes exceeded $1,000,000,000. While less subject to insect damage than wheat, the next most important cereal, the corn product would be considerably greater were it not for important insect pests. The work of several of these is obscure, and many farmers are entirely ignorant of the existence even of some of the worst enemies of this crop. In this last category falls the work of the corn root worm (Diabrotica longicornis), which ordinarily passes unnoticed, or at least is often misunderstood. The larva of this insect feeds on the roots of young corn, and in regions of bad attack may cause an almost entire loss of the stand. The corn root worm, together with one or two allied species working in substantially the same way, causes an annual loss of at least 2 per cent. of the crop, or some $20,000,000."

ELECTRICITY AND THE DRAMA.-Mr. Augustus Thomas, the playwright, in a recent interesting interview, quoted in The Electrical World and Engineer (New York, September 16), spoke of the "greater disposition to naturalness" in modern plays, and, when asked to what he attributed this, said: "To the improvement in the playhouse itself, and very noticeably to the introduction of electrical lighting. In the olden days, when the theaters were lighted by candles, the facial expression of the actor must have been more difficult to see, and his meaning had necessarily to be bolstered by additional speeches, by a greater prolixity. There was a gradual diminution of this prolixity as in their turn oil and gas and electricity secured a greater illumination. Facial expression became more evident, and verbal expression correspondingly abridged." "Has this resulted only in the abridgement of the lines?" No, I think that there has been an introduction of more delicate shades of meaning in the lines of the ordinary comedy. It is quite possible for a dramatist to write a speech which he shall intend the facial play of the actor to absolutely contradict. The modern comedy has become more delicate, more intimate, and more insinuating."