antitoxins. But he has ventured to announce that the condition which we describe variously as fatigue, weariness, exhaustion or just plain tiredoutness, is likewise due to a toxin, which has-oh welcome hope-its anti, too, and one that is available for use.

Fatigue, then, partakes of the nature of a disease, being itself due to a toxin. Just as in all other cases where such a toxin is produced, there is created, side by side with it, in the human body affected, the antidote, a spontaneous product of nature. from materials that she has always in her laboratory. The antidote, if plentiful enough, will counteract the poison and restore the sick body to health. If more than plentiful enough it more than counteracts the poison it fights and becomes a tonic, a sustaining substance that raises the efficiency of the body above that which we are accustomed to consider normal. The experimenter de

about in some cases by means of such inoculation. By injecting, then, the serum of animals treated with the fatigue toxin into the blood of other animals he found that the latter acquired a surprising faculty of resisting fatigue, and, even when doses of the fatigue toxin, which would have been fatal to the unprotected animal, were administered to those so treated with serum, they showed little or no injury as a result.

It was simply a matter of aiding-or rather of anticipating Nature. When white mice were given daily doses of fatigue toxin, they suffered at first, considerably. er a time, how, they began to strength and isting power, proving, according to the scientist, that the spontaneous production of the anti-toxin within their circulation was superabundant for the counteraction of the toxin injections. When the serum obtained from other animals was immediately introduced after injections of the fatigue toxin, the effect was exactly similar. The

duced this from the fact that in repeating a given physical exercise, after an interval of rest, the body shows greater capacity than in initial initial effort, effort, indicating that there has been an overproduction, for the moment, of the antidote to fatigue caused by the first exercise of the muscles, and that it has become a stimulant.

Dr. Weichardt first recovered the supposed poisons of fatigue from the muscles of animals exhausted by weariness. difficult technical process was necessary to this end, but accomplished its purpose, after considerable experiment. Obtainng finally a highly active substance in crystal form, he found that he could produce a genuine fatigue in creatures inoculated with it. Even death was brought

reasoning was therefore simple, which led to the anticipation of fatigue by the injection of the anti-toxin, and the results seem amazingly to carry out the scientist's hopes.

The protective effects produced by the injection of anti-toxin are seen in one of the illustrations. Two mice were treated with the same amounts of poison. The upper one in the photograph had been inoculated with the anti-fatigue serum previous to the experiment, and did not show any sign of fatigue. Its companion presented all the symptoms of extreme exhaustion, was almost asleep. with its hair standing on end, eyes closed, and a respiration greatly slackened,

while the temperature of its body also dropped several degrees.

The experiment shown in the illustration at the head of the article followed this. On a small platform in the left hand part of the picture is seen a white mouse, connected with an electric

FATIGUE RECORD OF A MOUSE.

man and animals contains the same poison to which the production of fatigue. is due. The objectionable properties of vitiated air are generally ascribed to the carbonic acid contained in it. It has been shown that as high as one part of carbonic acid in a hundred parts of air will

circuit through which periodical current impulses are thrown by a metronome, at the rate of one per second. These impulses cause the mouse to exert a rhythmical pull by which the weight attached to its feet is lifted a certain distance. The extent of these movements measuring the strength of the animal, was registered on the plate visible at the extreme left. The photo on this page contains some sets of curves thus obtained, each showing the gradually decreasing performance of the animal. Whenever the experiment was resumed after rest, the curves are seen to have undergone a striking increase, thus indicating the invigorating effects of the spontaneously produced anti-poison, in its body. More powerful effects were those obtained by inoculating the mouse with the artificial anti-toxin.

Dr. Weichardt has discovered, also, in this connection, that the air expired by

exert no detrimental action in the human body. This appeared to show the existence of some virulent poison breathed out continually from the lungs, but all the attempts formerly made to isolate this hypothetic substance were utterly unsuccessful. Dr. Weichardt used another arrangement of apparatus to settle the problem.

The animal to be experimented upon, a mouse or a guinea pig, was placed in an air-tight vessel, communicating with a tube for air supply which was freed from any carbonic acid by means of different chemicals enclosed in it. On the other side of the vessel was arranged a tube for discharging the air expired.

The experimenter found the air expired by the animal to be contaminated with the same toxin, and determined its quantity by means of the apparatus represented in the lower illustration on page 20. He then inoculated some mice with toxin and found these to expire a far smaller amount of the impurity than animals submitted to no previous treatment.

It is inferred, among other conclusions, that when some part of our muscular system is submitted to normal training, no detrimental action on the part of the fatigue poison need be feared, as the production of anti-toxin brings about a salutary balance. If, however, the body, or part of it, be tired out to absolute exhaustion, the toxin is produced so abundantly as to destroy the capacity for production of the antidote, and a lasting diminution of strength, or, in extreme cases, even death, may then ensue. Athletes are well acquainted with the evil

effects of over training with its sudden. decrease in vigor.

But the most important development in Dr. Weichardt's work was the artificial production of the poison and counterpoison of fatigue-or "kenotoxin" and "anti-kenotoxin" as they are called. Supposing these substances to be merely oxidation and reduction products of muscular albumen, he submitted solutions of animal albumen to the action of electric currents, hydrogen, peroxide, chlorine, colloidal, palladium, etc., and tested the biological effects of the residues thus obtained. Animals inoculated with these substances would undergo the same detrimental effects-suffocation, drop in temperature, torpor-as in case of a treatment with the natural toxin extracted from exhausted muscles. After having thus obtained the poison of fatigue by artificial means, the experimenter succeeded in producing the anti-toxin by a similar process, independent of any animal organism. The artificial stuff produced from albumen, in the form of either injection fluids or soluble powders, can now be obtained by anybody at a relatively low cost.

It is expected that the artificial antidote against fatigue will lend itself to many uses. A number of scientists are at present at work to ascertain the effects of the anti-toxin on the most varied maladies. Some have, for instance, obtained rather promising results in the treatment of tuberculosis, and in this connection, it will be interesting to note a fact discovered by Dr. Weichardt himself, that the serum known as tuberculin, with which such good results have been obtained in many cases, contains besides the tuberculous virus proper, poison

related to the very toxin of fatigue itself. Extensive experiments go to show that animals treated with the antidotes offer much more resistance against the bacteria of a number of diseases than those left unprotected. This shows the extent to which the method is likely to prove of value in medical practice.

Another question will be whether the artificial antidote really is a means of increasing physical strength, enabling the body to do better work than without this treatment. To this is suggested an affirmative reply not only by the results of the experiments above described, but by a number of tests made by Dr. Weichardt both upon himself and upon other persons. Though further observations will be required to reach any definite judgment, it can doubtless be asserted that the artificial anti-toxin deserves the fullest attention of all those engaged in physical training. In fact a marked decrease in the feeling of exhaustion, and accordingly, a decided increase in vigor, is invariably produced by the treatment with this substance. The invigorating effects will continue about half a day or more following treatment, and leave no disagreeable after-effects. While the capacity for work is thus augmented, the want of sleep is reduced to some extent, but nonervous excitation is noted. In fact, as the antidote is a natural product of the body, it is free from those detrimental effects necessarily connected with foreign bodies introduced into the organism.

Whether it may be possible to extend these invigorating effects to the capacity for mental work will have to be ascertained by further experiment, though the information so far gained seems to point in this direction.

“I

WANT a million acres of land in the state of Florida, in a section running right across the state, from tide water on the east to tide water on the west." Such is the request which a New York capitalist made of the Land Department of the Florida East Coast Railway. The request was made in dead earnest and price was no object, yet the demand could not be filled, partly because the conditions were unusual, but more because land in Florida is already so well taken up that a location of such size was not to be had. Applications from people handling big capital and wishing an outlet for it in safe and good investment come daily to responsible parties here in the state. One sees advertisements for land in fifty or a hundred thousand acre tracts in the state almost daily in the 'principal Florida papers. The rush for land in Florida is surely on.

There are many reasons for this great and comparatively sudden de

mand. One reason is that the lumber and turpentine kings are beginning to release their grip on the state lands. Having turpentined the trees to death over vast tracts, and then cut them and sold the lumber, the land is useless for their purpose. This land,

which cost the turpentine men from

twenty-five cents to a dollar and a half an acre, they are now glad to sell in large lots, thirty to a hundred thousand acres, to land speculators at three to five dollars an acre. These divide their purchase into five and ten acre plats, advertise them as extraordinarily fertile, in a state where the climate is wonderfully favorable to agriculture, and sell them, to people who have never seen the state, at from fifteen to fifty dollars per acre. Land is to be had in quantity for the first time, for farming purposes, and the big real estate men who follow the world's map and the world's markets with ever vigilant eye are making a rush for it. Among them are many who, through the construction of roads, drain

age ditches, demonstration farms and telephone systems, and through their intelligent aid and instruction to the new comer are

adding in measure the value represented by the difference in the price they have paid and the price they will receive for the land.

"Colonies," literally by the score, are being planted all over the state, from Nassau County on the north to Dade and Lee on the south, a distance of about five hundred miles. In the very Everglades themselves, a section that our geographies once taught us was but

a vast swamp with little or no land above water, four or five land companies are operating and I find reports of sales something as follows during the past year. The Bolles Co. have sold about 10,000 farms in ten acre lots at $20 to $24 per acre. The Everglades Land Co. 2,000 farms at the same prices, the Everglades Plantation Co. 1,000 farms at $50 to $100 per acre, and the Everglades Land Sales Co. 1000 farms at $30 to $50 per acre. It is estimated that forty per cent of these sales are to actual settlers, the balance going to the small speculator who is willing to chance the investment of a few hundred dollars in the hope of a great increase in price of these lands later on-when they come out from under the water. For it is a fact that much of the Everglade land sold is at present to be traversed only in boats or in rubber boots. I think as a rule the buyers understand that. If they do not it is their own fault. It is a well-known fact that one big sale of Everglade land was by the state, a half million acres at $2 per acre, the state agreeing to put out one dollar per acre in draining this land, no time being set for the completion of the drainage contract. The state now has four $50,000 dredges at work and has so far dredged about 25 miles of canal and nine of river. Bids have just been received for 300 miles more of canal and optimists think the drainage of the lands sold may be completed in ten years.

As a sample of the rush on the part of the small speculator and small farmer for these Florida lands may be cited the cutting up of a big tract near Tampa about a year ago. This was advertised by a Jacksonville firm in one of the best known weeklies in the world and money came by mail for these five and ten acre lots from Honolulu, South Africa, Panama, Philippine Islands, Ceylon, in fact, from almost every country in the world, the whole tract being sold out almost immediately. Probably not one man in ten that invested from a hundred to a thousand dollars in this land saw it before purchasing, the reputation of the publication in which the advertisement was inserted being considered a sufficient guarantee of the transaction.

I have visited several of these sudden

colonies and may select the one at Bunnell as typical of those which seem trying to give a square deal to the incomer. Bunnell is a little station on the East Coast Railroad, east of the St. Johns river and about a third of the way down the state. A year ago it was a turpentine station in the flat woods of Volusia County, just about squeezed dry of its turpentine and with the lumber pretty well cut off. Judicious advertising sold 28,000 acres of this land, which no longer had value to the lumber and turpentine people, for $20 to $50 per acre, in blocks of five, one man at least whom I saw on the place and who was well satisfied, buying 80 acres. The whole town was sold out in a few weeks. Adjoining joining the Bunnell colony the St. Johns Development Co. sold thirty thousand acres under similar circumstances in just five days. It is safe to say that nine out of ten of the people purchasing never saw the land until it was theirs, though the Bunnell people gave the purchaser ninety days in which to see his land and, if dissatisfied, get his money. back at eight per cent interest.

On the West coast similar developments are in progress. Near Tampa the Pinellas Groves Company is colonizing a large tract on the Pinellas peninsula, most of the land being set out to grape fruit.

This enthusiasm as to the value of Florida soil has a broad and deep foundation in fact. Conditions in the state are such as may be found nowhere else in the Union. For five hundred miles the peninsula of sand, almost as level as a floor, practically without a rock, extends down toward the tropics with vast bodies of water on both sides of it. Winds from the great ocean temper its climate in the winter, and, though on some winters the northers drive freezing weather almost to Key West, the temperature in the main is such that, when all the rest of the country is frozen up, fruits and vegetables may be grown, at least in the southern half of the state, successfully. What the northern farmer does in January, painfully and with much. cost in labor and coal under glass, the Florida farmer may do in the field. Portions of the land, moreover, are extraordinarily fertile, the sand and rich