in the United States, and in different countries. Under the old English Common Law the age was ten, sometimes twelve years. Until within the last decade the old Common Law period of ten, sometimes twelve, years was the basis of the age of consent legislation of most of the States, and also of the law of Congress pertaining to rape in the District of Columbia and other territory under the immediate jurisdiction of the National Government. It was not until after the astounding revelations made by Mr. Stead, in 1885, of the crimes against young girls in London that the age of consent laws in the United States began to arrest attention, except in courts of law, on this side of the Atlantic. Even then the age of consent in England was thirteen years. One outcome of Mr. Stead's shocking exposures was the speedy raising of the age by the British Parliament from thirteen to sixteen years, Mr. Gladstone and others advocating eighteen."

Helen H. Gardener, the author of "Is This Your Son, My Lord?" and "Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter?" says:

"What good can it do any human being to have the age of consent below that at which honorable marriage or the right to sell property comes to a girl? Who is to profit by it? Surely not that girl, since by her immature infant judgment she has wrecked her whole life, while the law protects her against her infant judgment in immaturely squandering or deeding away her property. Who is to profit by it? Whom is it intended to benefit? There can be but one answer. It is a law in the interest of the brothel, in the interest of the grade of men who prey upon the ignorance and helplessness of childhood. Ah, but, says one, there are wild and bad and perverted girls, who would lay traps for inexperienced boys, who are not over eighteen years of age, and by threats thereafter blackmail them into marriage. That is the only attempt at an argument that I have ever heard on that side of the question. It is easily answered. Let the boy and the girl stand upon precisely the same legal footing. Let the law not favor her in the least. Let it not hold him, any more than it does her, to account in such a case. Where both are children, infants before the law, let both be treated as children, and give no legal advantage to either. But this plea is and has always been a mere blind subterfuge. Such cases are too rare to demand very serious consideration. It is not, and it never has been to protect the lads who may be led into indiscretion by designing young girls that such laws were made. It is to shield men of mature and vicious lives from the results of their most heinous vices."

Frances E. Willard says:

To my mind the most difficult and important task we have before us is to impress upon the average mind among good men and good women that there is such a thing as the age of consent.' For myself I had reached the age of forty-seven before I ever heard of it; doubtless the phrase may have met my eye. Just so soon as it becomes well understood in the homes of this country that by the common law, a girl of ten years, who cannot legally give away her pocket handkerchief or sell her doll, is held responsible equally with her strong, relentless and doughty assailant for the sale of herself in a crime of which two only are capable, just so soon will the moral sense of the home revolt against this barbaric reminiscence of those dark ages when all women were the property of all men. White ribbon women throughout the world have long felt that the Siamese twins of vice are strong drink and the degradation of woman. But under all the work for purity lie two principles which must be established before we can ever hope for a genuine and an abiding success. First, We must have such knowledge, conscience, custom and law as will establish an equal standard of purity for boys and girls, youths and maidens, men and women. Second, The sanctity of motherhood must be respected to such degree as shall make a wife the unquestioned arbiter of her own destiny."

The Arena also graphically presents a "black-list of States, showing the limit at which fathers, brothers and husbands have placed the age at which a little girl may consent to her ruin":

Ten years, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina.
Twelve years, Kentucky, Louisiana, Texas, Wisconsin.
Thirteen years, Iowa, New Hampshire, Utah.

Fourteen years, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont, West Virginia.

Fifteen years, Delaware, Montana.

Sixteen years, Arkansas, Colorado, District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Missisippi, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Washington.

Seventeen years, Florida.

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GOVERNMENT is nothing more than a national association acting on the principles of society.-Thomas Paine, in Rights of Man.

PROPER TRAINING AND THE FUTURE OF THE INDIANS. DURING the last forty-five years I have seen scores of thousands of Indians pass from the state of savagery to a half-civilized condition, and a smaller number into practical civilization. Under my own eye thousands of them, naked the greater part of the time, but gaudily dressed in fantastic pelts, furs and feathers on gala days, have thrown aside these gauds and adopted the costume of civilized man. Men by the thousands who were snaring rabbits in their youth and my youth are now guiding the plow; girls who were picking berries then are now churning butter. Boys and girls who were speaking in languages native to only a few hundred persons, are now speaking our common tongue, Few of the old men and women speak our language; usually the children speak it, and in another generation one homogeneous tongue will replace the multiplied jargons of savagery.

The differentiation of trades has been replaced by the invention of machinery, so that the skilled workman is now the skilled machine. There must yet be a few special workmen, but the great body of mechanics are machine tenders. In this manner a new and universal trade has been developed. By this transformation labor has become mobile so that it can easily pass from one theater of operation to another. What is now needed is a general deftness by which a man may turn from one operation to another as the call arises, and this general deftness is the universal trade. This was the Carlisle and Hampton idea, and it is the principle which is at the basis of industrial education first systematically developed in the highest grade through the agency of our polytechnic schools, but now it has found its way into the public schools and is gradually permeating the whole system.

From Carlisle and Hampton the new education has spread through the West so that a number of special institutions have already been established in proximity to the Indian reservations, while others have been founded upon the reservations themselves. Their influence is already widely manifest, for the young Indians are everywhere drifting into a new industrial life. They are becoming farmers, and learning to use the plow, the cultivator and the harvester. They are becoming lumbermen, and fell trees, navigate rafts and saw timber; they build houses and manufacture furniture, and in a multitude of ways are learning the universal trade. The young Indians from Hampton and Carlisle, and to a slight extent some of those trained in the later schools, are taking their positions as special laborers in the higher grades. The full fruition of this policy does not yet appear; in fact, the policy is not yet universal. Some schools have not been transformed, others are in progress of transformation; only a few are fully fledged industrial schools. Teachers competent to inaugurate the system have not always been found, but the work has fairly begun and the beneficial effects are already seen. About 20,000 Indian pupils are now under instruction.-Maj. J. W. Powell, in the Forum, New York, January.

THE diet of labor is more closely related to its productive power than is generally supposed. It is inferred, and that possibly in a vague and desultory way, that half-fed labor is not so capable as that having three meals a day. It is also a fact that the dietary needs of labor do not figure as they should in the question of a living wage. The earning power of a worker cannot be absolutely regulated by a time-keeper or the capacity of a machine. The interest taken in what is done, as well as the power to do it, are not office regulations or functions of a manager. They are personal, and also as largely dependent on what a man eats as on what he thinks. Impoverish his diet and you impoverish his productive power.-Age of Steel, St. Louis.

It would really seem as if the adoption of the referendum in this country was unnecessary. If a State Legislature enacts laws that are unjust or oppressive the people soon see to it that representatives are elected who will repeal the objectionable measures. Besides this, such a system would be a radical change in our Government, and if, in addition to all the elections that we have now, we had to vote on every measure of legislation, important or otherwise, and, perhaps, on the demand of a whim or a prejudice, there would be but little rest for us. Surely the people have sovereign rights now. -Philadelphia Inquirer.

WE recommend to our Prohibition friends that is to say, to those who claim that the cause of poverty is liquor-to issue a pamphlet explaining the poverty of Pullman's town. As far as the unhappy workers were concerned, the place was a "dry" spot and their misery and poverty great. As far as any liquor was sold, that was done only at that end of town where Pullman and the nabobs held sway. The non-drinkers were poor, the drinkers rich.-New York People (Socialist).

MISCELLANY

THE FATE OF THE AMERICAN FARMER.

THE American farmer has long held a place greatly above that of the peasant of Continental Europe in his income and style of living, because he has been able to possess a larger tract of land, and greatly above the English tenant-farmer in his independence, because he has been able to own the ground he tilled. He will not continue another half-century to hold this enviable position. The economic forces that have been at work in Europe have also been at work here, but not so long, and therefore they have not yet matured so much fruit. There have been Americans who imagined that our political constitution would protect us from the fate of the Old World. It would be as rational for a man to expect his knowledge of arithmetic to keep him dry in a thunderstorm. Sometimes we find the American farmer slipping away from his acres, and sometimes we find his acres slipping away from him; as a result of both tendencies there is a separation, widening with the lapse of time, between ownership and cultivation. The American farmer is following the English yeoman into extinction, and the creation of landlord and tenant classes has already made considerable progress here. Specialization is one of the incidents of evolution, and evolution in agriculture is giving us, instead of one class of farmers, who were simultaneously landlord, tenant and laborer, farmers of the three classes, permanently distinct.

Between 1880 and 1890 the number of owning-farmers decreased in every New England State, and the number of tenant-farmers increased. In each of these States there was a marked increase in the percentage of farmers who plowed the fields of another man, and in the sweat of whose brow somebody in Boston ate cake. In the six States, in the ten years, the owning-farmers diminished 24,117 and the tenant-farmers increased 7,246. The percentage of tenant-farmers in Massachusetts, though not large in 1890, was nearly double what it was in 1880; over 17 per cent of the farmers in Vermont and Connecticut and 25 per cent of the farmers in Rhode Island were tenants in 1890. In each of the four Middle States the number of owning-farmers decreased and the number of tenant-farmers increased. In the group the owners decreased 42,304 and the tenants increased 24,075. In New Jersey the tenants increased from nearly a fourth to nearly a third of the whole. In New York the loss of owning-farmers was 26,534, and the gain of tenantfarmers was 12,108. For Pennsylvania these figures were 11,292 and 9,222 respectively. In the South farm-tenancy is largely the result of the emancipation of the slaves. So far as the increase of tenancy is due to the transformation of the colored men from hired hands to tenants, it is a beneficial change. This might be deemed a sufficient explanation of the increase of tenancy in the South, were there not such an increase of tenancy in the East and the West. Of twelve Southern States six show a decrease in the number of owning farmers. In the group there was an increase of 13,915 owning-farmers and 275,785 tenant-farmers. In three Southwestern States, Missouri, Arkansas and Texas, there was a gain of 47,882 owning-farmers and 114,510 tenant-farmers.

Persons who are unwilling to admit the evolution of landlord and tenant classes in this country will seek to explain these facts by the foreigner in New England and the negro in the South, and urge that the increase of tenancy is only local or temporary. But the increase of tenancy is not confined to those sections, nor to the Middle States. Each of the three States of the middle West, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, gives evidence of the same change, and the group lost 31,259 owning-farmers and gained 48,864 tenant-farmers. In Illinois the tenants increased from 31.37 to 36.72 per cent of the whole. In eight States of the Northwest, in several of which public lands have been obtainable till quite recently, the number of owning-farmers increased 129,322 and the number of tenant-farmers increased 108,507. In Iowa the number of owning-farmers increased 3,521, while the number of tenant-farmers increased 16,563. In Kansas the owning-farmers increased 2,121 and the tenant-farmers increased 30,463. In the Pacific and Mountain States and the Territories the number of owning-farmers increased 65,512 and the number of tenant-farmers increased 20,350. In forty-seven States and Territories the number of owning-farmers increased 158,951 and the number of tenant-farmers increased 599,337. In 1880, 25.62 per cent of the farms

were cultivated by tenants; in 1890, 34.13 per cent of the farm-families hired. The classification of the two censuses is not identical, but there can be no serious discrepancy between the farms that are hired and families that hire. The process of the creation of landlord and tenant classes may be observed in any Western State. When land could be got for nothing of the Government, or for a small price on a railroad grant, every settler could be a landowner. When land is worth twenty or thirty dollars an acre a considerable proportion of the rural residents must be tenants or laborers. The average price of land sold last year in Jefferson County, Wis., a choice dairy section, was sixty dollars, an increase of nineteen dollars in three years. The Western farmers, who, many years ago, got their land for little or nothing, are now growing old. They are renting their farms to men who will live on less than the full produce of the land rather than not live at all, and they are moving into the large towns and the cities to enjoy life, educate their daughters, and start their sons in business. Even so far west as Minnesota and the Dakotas this is going on; in Illinois and Wisconsin it is a common thing. The tenants, being obliged to divide the produce with the landlord, are in a state of poverty, and they will stay so. As they do not own the land, they will suffer instead of profit as it advances in value. As the population increases, the value of land will increase and the number of persons who can afford to own land will decrease. There is already started in the Northwest an agricultural peasantry which has no future except one of increasing rent-charges. The sharper the competition for chances to earn a living, the greater rent will the landlord be able to exact. In parts of Europe custom, and in Ireland the courts, limit the demands of the landlord, but in America all rents are rack-rents. The tenant will get a bare subsistence, and all else will go to the descendant of the "homesteader." The agricultural population of this country will in fifty years be poor and illiterate, made up of hired laborers on great estates, of tenants and of proprietors of small patches of ground which they will cultivate with the spade and of whose produce they will eat only what cannot be sold. The substitution of tenants for owners has already had in parts of the West an injurious effect upon highways and schools; the removal of the most intelligent and prosperous farmers from a neighborhood, together with the substitution of tenants for own ers, will make the agricultural population peculiarly the prey of demagogues, cranks and political adventurers. Such a population will not buy so much manufactured goods as the farming populations we have been accustomed to. It may be premature to say that there is a concentration of agricultural landholding, but so far as our information goes it points in that direction.-Fred Perry Powers, in Lippincott's Magazine for February.

COLOSSAL FORTUNES.

By a calculation made a short time ago by an American statistician it seems that 70 citizens of the United States possessed among them an aggregate wealth of £540,600,000. That gives an average of about £7,500,000 for each person. To come to particulars: There was one estate -we refrain here from mentioning names-returned as worth no less than £30,000,000. There were five individuals valued at £20,000,000; one valued at £14,000,000: two valued at £12,000,000; six valued at £10,000,000; six valued at £8,000,000; four valued at £7,000,000; thirteen valued at £6,000,000; ten valued at £5,000,000; four valued at £4,500,000, and fifteen valued at £4,000,000. The brain reels before such figures. They express measures of wealth which the ordinary mortal is powerless to grasp.

Besides these 70 colossal fortunes there are 50 other persons in the Northern States alone valued at over £2,000,000 each, 30 of them being valued in all at £90,000,000. There were some time ago published lists of 63 millionaires in Pennsylvania possessing in the aggregate £60,000,000, and of 60 persons in three villages near New York whose wealth aggregated £100,000,000. In Boston 50 families pay taxes on annual incomes of about £200,000 each.

We have nothing to compare with such individual cases of wealth in Great Britain. Baron Rothschild and Lord Overstone each left about £3,500,000; the late Lord Dudley left £4,000,000; the late Duke of Buccleugh, estimated to be the richest Scotchman, left estates valued at £6,000,000. One living English duke is valued at £10,000,000 and another at £8,000,000, but not many names could be added to these to place against the above list of American fortunes. In 1884 there were only 104 persons in the United Kingdom whose incomes from business profits were returned as over £50,000 a year. In 1886 there were only 17 estates which paid probate duty on about £250,000 each.-Chambers's Journal.

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES.

The appointment is announced of Carrie Liebig as a division surgeon of the Northern Pacific at Hope, Idaho. This is the first woman physician to be appointed in the railway service.

Prince Bismarck has a curious superstition in connection with the number three, and apparently not without reason. He has served three German emperors; he has fought in three wars; he has signed three treaties of peace; he arranged the meeting of the three emperors and established the Triple Alliance.

Prof. A. C. Merriam, of Columbus College, formerly President of the American Philological Association, a director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, and Professor of Greek Archæology and Epigraphy, died of pneumonia at Athens, Greece, on Saturday, January 19. Professor Merriam superintended important excavations at Sicyon and Icaria, in Athens.

Recent statistics as to the public libraries of the United States show that Massachusetts ranks first with 212 free public libraries with a total of 2,760,000 volumes, or 1,233 volumes to every 1,000 of the State's population. New Hampshire comes next with 42 libraries and 175,000 books, or 464 volumes to every 1,000 of population. Illinois ranks third, having 42 libraries, or 130 volumes to each 1,000 of the population.

The American Association of Educators of Colored Youth propose to hold their next annual meeting in London, and have accordingly planned for an excursion to Europe to cover forty-five days next summer, at an expense of $200 each, hoping to visit London, Glasgow, Antwerp, Paris and Rome, and with the purpose also of acquainting the European public with the educational, moral and material progress made by the American negroes since the Emancipation.

It appears that in Japan one factor entering into the problem of the choice of a daughter-in-law is her skill in raising silkworms. The thread spun by the silkworm is said to be regular and even in proportion as the worm has been regularly and carefully fed. The prospective mother-in-law carefully and minutely examines the evenness of the silk thread in the material of the garments worn by the young lady before giving her assent to the betrothal.-New York Independent.

On Friday of last week the Chief of Police of Montreal forced Messrs. Scott & Sons, art dealers of that city, to remove a collection of pictures of the nude from their show window. The pictures, some sixty in number, were taken from original paintings and statues of the most celebrated galleries in Europe. Among the artists represented are Angelo, Raphael, Murillo, Rembrandt, Durer, Velasquez, Van Dyke, Holbein and others. Two immense photographs of Venus, a Milo and a de Medici, four or five feet high, were also in the display. As was to be expected, an outery has been raised by artistic folks condemning the action of the authorities.-Philadelphia Ledger.

At last it has been made known that the death of Emin Pasha was due solely to the pride of a petty African chieftain, who wished to show his more powerful nighbors that he was not afraid to take the life of a white man. The first detailed account of the murder of perhaps the most picturesque figure among explorers is written for the February Century by R. Dorsey Mohun, United States agent in the Congo Free State. Mr. Mohun's sergeant, who was a member of Stanley's Emin Relief Expedition, discovered two of the assassins. Mr. Mohun arrested them and very ingeniously extracted a full confession of them, which he has given in their own graphic language. Both were hung just a year after they had cut off Emin's head.

The annual jack-rabbit hunt near Lamar, in southeastern Colorado, ended December 23, when 5,142 dead rabbits were brought to Lamar. A rack 200 feet long had been erected, and on this the game was stretched. The rack was 6 feet high, with an arch of 15 feet in the center. Ten hundred were carried away by hunters, and the rest were sent to Denver and Pueblo for distribution among poor people Christmas day. Besides a hundred hunters from Lamar, more than a hundred men from La Junta, Denver and other cities joined in the chase. The best score was made by A. H. Cawthorn, of La Junta, who killed 239 rabbits. The record of the day is held by four Pueblo sportsmen, who killed 225 rabbits in two hours.-Harper's Weekly

"IF the repair were always identical with the waste, life would then only be terminated by accident, never by old age." This is a fact well known to all who have investigated the subject, though Mr. G. H. Lewes, in his "Physiology of Common Life," makes the statement quoted. In early years this balance of the human system is admirably preserved. As man advances in life, however, and gets up to 50 or 60, he begins to get stiff in the joints, and experiences what he calls "feeling his age." Renovation of various organs of the body depends on the blood, and if this supply is not at all times furnished in sufficient quantity and quality, a gradual deterioration takes place. Heart and arteries become clogged, and the whole delicate machinery suffers from the lack of nourishment. Deposits of phosphate and carbonate of lime accumulate, and the change is really a chemical one, by which the blood is hindered from going to the extremities of the system and fulfilling its work of repair and reno

vation. Old age, then, is the result of a change in the blood, which becomes overloaded with earthy salts, leaves its refuse matter in the system, and the valves of the heart become cartilaginous. Becoming thus, the heart is not able to propel the blood to its destination. Arteries also having become ossified, a still further obstruction takes place, and the whole body languishes. Blood is life. If it is kept continually in good order, our years are prolonged. New bodies, as in youth and early manhood, do not accumulate these fibrinous and gelatinous deposits, which, as the years go by, help the gradual process of ossification and cause the decrepitude of age. Now if some means were discovered by which the blood could be kept in a condition like that of youth, it would throw off these earthy salts which obstruct the action of the heart and arteries. Our food and drink make our blood. It seems, then, that it is to them we should look primarily for the quality of it.

Without eating and drinking there is no life; but we may select certain kinds of foods containing a minimum amount of the elements which cause the ossific blockages in the system. An English physician, Dr. C. F. De Lacy Evans, who made many researches in regard to our food, comes to the conclusion that more fruit should be eaten, especially apples, grapes and bananas, they being rich in nutritious elements. Being deficient in nitrogen, they are best for elderly people, as they keep the blood in a better condition than flesh. After the age of 60 people should eat less beef and mutton, and use more apples and nuts of all kinds, the latter being rich in many of the nutritious elements of meat. Fish and poultry have not the objectionable earth salts of beef. In order to retard physical decay and to keep the blood in a wholesome condition distilled water is recommended. It has solvent qualities which act upon the earth salts in the blood and expel them from the body. A goblet of this water taken three times a day, with ten or fifteen drops of diluted phosphoric acid in each glass, has a tendency to assist the blood in eliminating the obstructing salts. A man is as old as his arteries. If they are soft and compressible the deteriorating effects of old age have not appeared.

Flourens in his well-known work on "Human Longevity" cites the case of the Italian centenarian Cornaro, whose recipe for health and long life was extreme moderation in all things. Flourens himself insists that a century is the normal life, but that 50 years beyond, and even 200 years, are human possibilities under advantageous conditions. Hufeland also believed in 200 years as an extreme limit. Sir James Crichton Browne, M. D., concedes, in a late address, that Flourens was right. Duration of growth gives the length of life. Hufeland held that the human body grows till the age of 25, and that eight times the growth period was the utmost limit of man. But if 20 years be taken as the time of growth, even five times that will give us a century. According to Flourens and Cuvier, man is of the frugivorous or fruit- and nut-eating class of animals, like the gorillas and other apes and monkeys. Man has not teeth like the lions and carnivorous beasts, neither has he teeth like the cows and herbivorous ones. Intestines in the man are seven or eight times the length of the body; the lion's are but three times the length of his body. Herbivorous animals, like the cow, have intestines forty-eight times the length of the body.

So judging man by his teeth, his stomach and his intestines, he is naturally and primitively frugivorous, and was not intended to eat flesh. Fruit is aperient, and apples act on the liver, and are good brain food also, as they contain much phosphoric acid. As to the effect of certain climates, perhaps too much stress has been laid upon that. We find that Thomas Parr, who lived in England, died in his 153d year, and was dis sected by the celebrated discover of the circulation of the blood, Dr. William Harvey (who expressed no doubt of his age), was never out of his native country. Accounts of men who have lived to extreme age in Ecuador and Mexico indicate possibilities. A climate that allows much outdoor living is the best for health. More depends on food than on any climate. Exercise, fresh air to live in and to sleep in, daily bathing, and freedom from medicine are the important things. In July, 1893, the Courier-Journal, of Louisville, published a long account of James McMullin, who died in Carlisle County, Ky., at 117 years of age. When Buffon, Hufeland, Flourens, and men of that class, who had studied the subject, believed in the possibility of 150 or 200 years of life, the subject is not to be laughed at.- William Kinnear, in Harper's Weekly.

A SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF MOBS.

"HYPNOTIZATION," says Binet, can be produced by strong and sudden excitement of the senses. The patient becomes hypnotized, and hence obedient to the hypnotizer." We find the same phenomenon in the case of the mob: the mob is hypnotized by a strong, sudden action, and becomes for a time obedient to him who hypnotized it; that is, to the

ringleader, to the hero. Again, Krafft-Ebing tells us of a peculiar state which he observed in his patient, namely, fascination. "In this state the patient feels herself to be a pure automaton, and knows herself as absent from the body, existing only as an image in the experimenter's eye. This disappearance of the consciousness of personality," he adds, "is of great interest." It is of great interest in the study of the mob, as we shall see further on. This form of hypnotism called fascination was first discovered by Donato, and has since been described by Bremand. It is produced in men presumed to be perfectly healthy, and is effected by the subject fixing his eyes on a brilliant point. Thereupon he appears to fall into a sort of stupor; he follows the experimenter, and imitates closely all his movements, gestures and words. Bremand considers fascination as hypnotism in the lowest degree of intensity. A similar state, but of less intensity, we find in the mob when fascinated by its hero; and when this state is more intensified we have something approach ing the hypnotic state of fascination.

What particularly characterizes the man of the mob is the entire loss of his personal self. In a dense crowd not only is our body squeezed and pressed upon, but also our spirit. The individual self sinks sensibly in the crowd; it seems to get submerged in the fermenting spirit of the possible mob. The mob has a self of its own, and this self is the stronger the more it consumes of the individual self. It is true that this mob self is extremely changeable; but is not this so with the individual self, though in a lesser degree? This mysterious fact that the individual self sinks In the crowd needs explanation; and should such an explanation be found, it would throw strong light on the dark nature of the mob.

The very mode in which a crowd is formed is highly favorable to its hypnotization, and hence to its becoming a mob. At first a crowd is formed by some strange object or occurrence suddenly arresting the attention of men. Other men coming up are attracted by curiosity: they wish to learn the reason of the gathering; they fix their attention on the object that fascinates the crowd, are fascinated in their turn, and thus the crowd keeps on growing. With the increase of numbers grows the strength of fascination; the hypnotization increases in intensity, until, when a certain critical point is reached, the crowd becomes completely hypnotized, and is ready to obey blindly the commands of its hero; it is now a mob. Thus a mob is a hypnotized crowd.-Boris Sidis, in the Atlantic Monthly for February.

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A NOTABLE DISCOVERY IN ELECTRICITY. THE year 1894 was not remarkable for epoch-making discoveries in science, but was busily occupied in the prosecution of familiar lines of research, with useful applications of existing knowledge as the chief result. Nevertheless, something has been done to widen the intellectual vision and stimulate thought in new directions. Perhaps the most strixing original work of the past year was Mr. Philipp Lenard's application in England of Hertz's discovery that metallic films are transparent to the dark rays issuing from the negative pole in the case of electric discharge in a high vacuum. Mr. Lenard closed one end of a vacuum tube with an aluminum film thick enough to resist atmospheric pressure and studied the rays after passage through the metal. The air outside was seen to glow faintly. All the ordinary phosphorescent effects produced by Crookes in a vacuum were thus readily produced in air. These rays from the negative pole, though not affecting the eye and producing no sensation in the skin, are yet photographically active, and to the tongue and nostrils have the taste and smell of ozone.

Unlike the rays of ordinary light they cannot pass through quartz plates, but do pass through metal films, which are opaque to light. In respect to air or gas their behavior is equally novel. Ordinary light passes through a gas as if it were a homogeneous medium and becomes dispersed or makes its path visible only in case there are solid particles, such as dust, floating in the gas. But these rays from the negative pole, or "cathode rays," affect the gas molecules as if they were solid particles floating in a continuous medium. In other words, all gases, however transparent to ordinary light, are turbid to cathode rays, and the degree of turbidity depends wholly upon the density or mass of the gas molecules present, irrespective of their chemical character. Oxygen, for example, under a reduced pressure that brings it to the density of hydrogen, is as transparent as hydrogen, while hydrogen, if brought by pressure to the density of oxygen, becomes as turbid as oxygen.

The cathode rays traverse a perfect vacuum with facility. After passIng through the aluminum screen their radiation in air stops at a distance of eight-tenths of an inch, but in hydrogen it extends to four Inches and in a vacuum to fifty-two inches. While the rarest gas disperses the cathode ray into a blur, as a fog disperses an ordinary ray,

its movement in a vacuum is in a straight line. But a magnet brough near deflects it. The question of the nature of matter is raised by some of Mr. Lenard's experiments, the experimenter being of opinion that the fact that every gas molecule acts as a solid obstacle to the passage of the cathode rays is a proof that the molecule is only "a function of the ether itself "-virtually that there is no matter, unless the name can be given to ether, a substance that eludes all tests. Prof. J. J. Thompson, on the other hand, finding that the rate of propagation of these phosphorescence-producing cathode rays is much less than that of ordinary light, but about one hundred times as great as that of the hydrogen molecule, solves the difficulty by assuming that electrified gaseous molecules, rather than the ether, are the seat of this mysterious force.

A practical utilization of the cathode rays has been made in the Elbert luminescent lamp. The inventor states that a serviceable light can be obtained by means of his lamp with an expenditure of one-two-thousandth part of the energy consumed in the acetate unit lamp. Just what weight is to be given to this claim is in doubt, but it is evident that we have in Hertz's discovery and Elbert's lamp a promise of a new method of electric lighting vastly cheaper than those with which we are at present familiar.-Baltimore Sun.

SCIENTIFIC NOTES.

Dr. Charles L. Dana, in an article entitled "Giants and Giantism," announces an important discovery, the result of several years of investigation-that is, that "giantism" is a disease.

Lord Coleridge and others have formally protested against the use of anti-toxine in English hospitals on the ground that “public money ought not to be devoted to experiments in physiology."

Telegraph lines throughout the world aggregate 1,069,123 miles; of these America has more than half, 548,822 miles; Europe, 382,937; Asia, 67,875; Australasia, 47,812; and Africa, 21,687 miles.

An Italian bacteriologist says that old age is caused by the presence in the tissues of "old-age bacteria," and he asserts that when some method of expelling these bacteria has been discovered man will become immortal.

A concrete bridge having a clear span of 164 feet and 26 feet wide was recently constructed over the Danube at Munderkingen, in Austria. Stone is scarce and dear there, while good Portland cement is produced in large quantities.

The International Geographical Congress will hold its first meeting in England the last week of July. The previous meetings of this Cougress have been held as follows: Antwerp, 1871; Paris, 1875; Venice, 1881; Paris, 1889 and Berne, 1891 Compressed air is used in Paris for all purposes, from running clocks to operating dynamos for electric lights. The central station furnishes air at a pressure of seventy-five pounds to the square inch. It is scut around the city under the streets in pipes, and is sold to customers by meter, just as gas is.-New York World.

A new disinfecting agent, to which the name “formalin " has been given, is said to be a forty per cent solution of the gas-like composition called "form-aldehyde' (CH O H), and is produced by oxidation of methyl (wood) alcohol. It has been found highly efficacious for disinfecting purposes, and, though poisonous when taken internally, is perfectly harmless as an external disinfectant.

Physical deterioration has been increasing steadily in the British army in the last twenty years. In 1875 there were only 65 soldiers in a thousand under fivefoot five; last year there were 127. The 608 in a thousand measuring less than 37 inches round the chest has grown to 685. The proportion of enlisted men under 20 years of age has increased from 97 in a thousand to 170, while that of men over 30 has decreased from 340 to 88 in a thousand.-Philadelphia American.

From private advices received at Chicago, the Western Electrician learns that the long-expected test of Gray's telautograph over the long-distance telephone line between Paris and London came off on the night of December 15, and resulted in a great success. The line is under the control of the French and English Governments, and as no newspaper men were present, no publicity has heretofore been given to this interesting and important event. The distance over which the writing was electrically reproduced was 312 miles, and all agreed that it was a wonderful spectacle to watch in Paris the instantaneous reproduction of the movements of a pen in the hands of a man writing in London.-Scientific American.

RELIGIOUS:

AN EPISCOPAL ENCYCLICAL.

THE priesthood of the Protestant Episcopal Church has often been regarded as a refuge for ministers of other denominations who desire full liberty of thought. The claim is sometimes made that while an Episcopal priest pledges himself faithfully to follow the established order of worship in the Church, his ordination vows do not bind him to hold specific articles of faith. The pastoral letter of the House of Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America, which was read in all the

churches of that denomination recently, is a sufficient denial of any such claim as we have stated. This letter declares succinctly, with great strength, dignity and impressiveness, "the truth of God which every minister of this Church has pledged himself to hold, teach and defend" concerning the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ and the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. It defines unmistakably, both in the quoted language of the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds and of the Thirty-nine Articles, and also in the words of the bishops themselves, the miraculous conception of Christ by the Virgin Mary, his two natures united in one person, and his resurrection in the body after death on the cross. The bishops declare, also, that the entire system of theology held by the Church depends on the incarnation of the son of God only begotten through the power of the Holy Ghost. They say:

Unless our Lord Jesus Christ is firmly held to be God's own true and proper son, equal to the Father as touching his Godhead, and to be also the true son of the Blessed Virgin, by miraculous conception and birth, taking our very manhood of her substance, we sinners have no true and adequate mediator; our nature has no restored uniou with God; we have no sacrifice for our sins in full atonement and propitiation, holy and acceptable to God; for our moral weakness and incapacity there is no fountain of cleansing, renewal and recreation after the measure and pattern of a perfect manhood. The assertion of the Catholic doctrine of the incarnation the one indivisible personality of the son of God incarnate, the word made flesh and dwelling among us-is the antidote of the false teaching of our day, which 18 simply the revival of the old heresy of the self-perfectibility of man. For the miraculous Virgin-birth, while it is alone befitting to God, in assuming our nature into personal union with himself, marks off and separates the whole of our humanity as tainted by that very corruption of original sin, which had no place in human nature as that nature was assumed by our Blessed Lord in his incarnation.

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The bishops affirm that the fact of the inspiration of all the books of the Old and the New Testaments must be accepted by all the ministers of the Church, though no theory concerning the mode of inspiration is insisted on. They do not deprecate the critical study of the Bible, but they rebuke "the irreverent rashness and unscientific method of many professed critics." They insist that the Scriptures may not be studied in order to find out whether or not they are inspired. Their inspiration is "a postulate of faith, not a corollary of criticism." The bishops leave no doubt as to their repudiation of all evangelistic labors, however fervent, unless they are accompanied by unswerving loyalty to the doctrine of their Church. At the same time that they tolerate no variation from its established formularies, they will permit no devotion to the ritual to excuse disloyalty to doctrine. They give this sharp thrust to those ministers who would limit their vows to outward conformity: "A heresy which would seek at the altar protection from the penalty of a violated vow forfeits the respect and tenderness due to honest doubt."

This letter, we believe, will stand as one of the memorable religious documents of this time. It is a notable sign of renewed interest in doctrine pointing to a new era of theological discussion. It makes assumptions which will be promptly challenged outside of the Episcopal Church, and which we find it difficult to believe will be altogether acceptable within it. It affirms the inspiration of the creeds as voices of God as really as the Scriptures themselves. It declares that their interpretation is fixed and final, and that they can be honestly accepted only in their plain historic sense. The bishops intimate, also, that their own letter is an inspired utterance and therefore authoritative. 'We, your bishops, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, are speaking not as truth seekers, but as truth receivers." The Pope himself could not speak with greater dogmatism than this. The doctrine that the Church is the inspired authority in interpreting the Scriptures, and that the deliverances of its officers are to be received without question, appears in the spirit as plainly as in the assertions of this document. Inferentially, not only doctrines of the person of Christ and the inspiration of the Scriptures are here set forth, but the body of teaching held by the Church to be dependent on them and the doctrine of the inspiration and dogmatic authority of the Church, moved by the Holy Ghost, speaking through its appointed leaders. Whatever the reception given to this letter, its simplicity, directness and spiritual impressiveness will excite profound interest, and will bring comfort and reassurance to many who have feared that the Episcopal Church has been relaxing its hold on the faith "once for all delivered to the saints."-Boston Congregationalist.

THE bishops speak with much gentleness, but with all the more authority, of the dangers attending the study, and especially the teaching, of the Holy Scriptures in these times. They neither denounce nor deprecate the most searching critical investigation of the Scriptures. It would be "faithless," they say, to apprehend danger from such an investigation, and they "devoutly thank God for the light and truth which have come to us through the earnest labor of devout critics of the sacred text." What they do deprecate and solemnly rebuke is "the irreverent rashness and unscientific method of many professed critics, and the presumptuous superciliousness with which they vaunt erroneous theories of the day as established results of criticism."

There is also a very real danger, the bishops truly say, "not merely from false teaching, but through injudicious and ill-timed teaching, the effect of which is not to settle and confirm, but to undermine and weaken, faith." "The chief duty of every student, and especially of every teacher, is to learn what the Scripture says, and what it means, so that he may be able faithfully to open the same Scripture to the help and healing of sinful men"; and although, "outside of the domain of faith there may be undetermined questions touching matters which to some minds may seem to be almost essential to the integrity of the Christian scheme, but which cannot be necessary to salvation,” “the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures is a postulate of faith. It cannot lawfully be questioned by any Christian man, and least of all by men who have scaled their conviction of the certainty of the Faith with the solemn vows of ordination."

We have every confidence that the pastoral letter of the House of Bishops will have a salutary effect. We do not believe that there is, or has been, any widespread faithlessness to the creeds of the Church or to the vows of the ministry. There have been inconsiderateness and haziness of thought, and quite too much looseness in the use of language; but these, we think, have been happily checked, and we cannot doubt that all true men will give reverent heed to the solemn admonition of our chief pastors.-Church Standard (Episcopal).

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THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

THE recent revision of the English and the German translations of the Bible, the earnest efforts in many denominations to make the church creed and polity agree with their present belief, and the claims of biblical criticism, on the one hand, and the charge of heresy on the other, indicate, not the decline of Christianity, but its transition to a higher, completer manifestation of its essential nature. The zeal shown both for and against these changes attests the deepest interest in religion. Such times of change are always tests of men's faith, and many stumble and fall. This calamity can be avoided by distinguishing the spirit from the letter, the permanent from the temporary, the essence from the phenomena of Christianity. The phenomenal elements are subject to the law of change; the essential elements abide forever.

The cult of Christianity is a system of ceremonies used in worship. Some form seems necessary in worship, both to cultivate the devotional spirit by giving outward expression to it, and also to edify others. But the ceremonies that will satisfy these ends will not be the same for all persons, in all times and places. Whether the psalms of David or the hymns of modern times are used; whether the choir does all the singing or merely leads the congregation in the service of song; whether instruments of music are used or only the human voice is heard; whether men stand or kneel to pray; whether the sacrament of baptism is administered by sprinkling, pouring or immersion; whether the eucharist is administered to persons kneeling or sitting; whether preaching is accompanied by the splendid, æsthetic ritual of the Episcopalian or by the severely plain service of the Non-conformist; whether the message is delivered with the warm-hearted earnestness of the Methodist or with the logical, intellectual coolness of the typical Presbyterian, are matters not of the essence of Christianity, but are subject to change and to a wise adaptation to times and places and persons.

Christianity as creed is a brief statement of its most important truths for public use. It may cover but one topic, or it may cover the whole range of religious topics. It is an attempt, on the part of the noblest minds of Christendom, to express the religious belief and life of the church in terms of the intellect. A creed may be made by a universal council, or by the legislative body of a sect, or by a body of divines delegated to do this, or by a whole denomination, or by a local church, or by one person chosen for this purpose. The essential thing, to give it authority, is that it be recognized as the belief of the body from which it issues. In these various ways have originated the Universal, the Greek, the Roman and the evangelical creeds of Christendom. Many objections are raised against creeds. "But when they are subordinate to the Bible they are of great use as summaries of Bible doctrines, aids to their sound understanding, bonds of union among their professors, public standards and guards against false doctrine and practice. In the form of catechisms they are of especial use in the instruction of children and in the systematic upbuilding of the believer in the faith. It is hard to see any valid objection to a plain and full statement of belief, provided it is a real belief."

What has done most to bring creeds into disrepute is the assumed right of a State to enforce them upon the consciences of its citizens, as in the case of State churches; also, their assumed inspiration and infallibility,