HOW CAN WE BEST HELP RUSSIA ?

A NIHILIST'S SUGGESTION.

IN the North American Review for November, Stepniak sets forth his views of how the Americans, and also the English, can best help Russia. He tells us that nine years ago, in Italy, he had a dream, and since then his life has been one long chase after the dream. His dream is that a new crusade should be started in the west against the Russian Tzardom, and that the best men of all nations shall make common cause with the Russian patriots, fighting side by side with them until the Russian autocracy is conquered and compelled to accept triumphant democracy. The Russian patriots, as he calls them, have for the present accepted the great and modest mission of securing the political enfranchisement of their countrythe obtaining for Russia this elementary guarantee of civil freedom and constitutional government which all the nations of Europe already possess. Of his companions who began the struggle he almost alone has escaped scatheless. The reason why he did not perish with the rest was because of the unexpected success of his book, "Underground Russia."

It was then that the dream I have mentioned took hold of me. To conquer the world for the Russian revolution; to throw upon the scales the huge weight of the public opinion of civilised nations; to bring to those whose struggle is so hard that unexpected help; to find without a lever to move the minds of the Russians themselves within-this was the dream which glistened before me.

The opportunity was unique.

Was it worth while to withdraw from the ranks of the combatants one active member and make a writer of him?

I answered the question in the affirmative, and remained abroad permanently.

He has not yet conquered the world for the Russian revolution, but he thinks that the great success of the Russian novelists and Mr. George Kennan's articles have brought the realisation of his dream within practical range. Thousands are interested now in Russia who were not interested before, and the question is how to utilise that powerful current of thought and emotion for the benefit of the country which has excited them. He answers it by suggesting that the creation of a stream of public feeling hostile to the present Government in Russia would weaken its position as much as to withdraw a part of its support at home. Foreign disapprobation has induced the Russian Government to take steps which native public opinion could never have enforced. Foreign agitation is a new weapon in the struggle. This agitation is also an indirect though powerful means of stirring up public opinion in Russia herself. It is thus a real power, a source of actual help in the struggle for freedom. Public demonstrations, he thinks, are valuable in exceptional circumstances, but the real battering-ram is the press. Therefore they have started "Free Russia" with societies of Friends of Russian Freedom in England and America. Other societies are to be founded in Germany, Austria, Italy, and France. After speaking of the sympathy in the West, which is felt for the Russian people, Stepniak says:—

There are thousands who feel thus in the towns and cities of the States. They could start a movement which, by its usefulness, magnitude, and character, would be the glory of the enlightened century which renders it possible. They would certainly start such a movement if only they could believe that their efforts would be, not a waste or energy, not mere sentimental outpourings, but a real work for Russian enfranchisement, a real means of strengthening the party of freedom and weakening the party of despotism.

This seems to me the gist of the question. There is no limit to the extensions of our work and of the good that can be done, if people only come to believe in it.

THE FALLEN BISMARCK.

BY SEÑOR CASTELAR.

IN the Arena for November Señor Castelar devotes all the wealth of his adjectives and his rhetoric to Prince Bismarck, whose appearance in the German Parliament Bismarck, he deprecates, and over whose fall he exults.

he says, forgot that madness is a malady of kings, and although he does not suggest that the present Emperor is mad, he brings into clear relief the dangers to which Cæsars, liable to lunacy, expose the nations which entrust their destinies to despots.

But a thinker of his force, a statesman of his science, a man of his greatness, should have remembered what physiologists have demonstrated with regard to heredity, and should have known that it was his duty, and that of the nation and the Germans, to guard against some atavistic caprice which would strike at his own power. A king of Bavaria singing Wagner's operas among rocks and lakes; a brother of the king of Bavaria resembling Sigismund de Caldéron by his epilepsy and insanity; Prince Rudolph, showing that the double infirmity inherent in the paternal lineage of Charles the Rash and in the maternal line of Joanna the Mad continues in the Austrians; a recent king of Prussia itself shutting himself up in his room as in a gaol, and obliged by fatality to abdicate the throne of his forefathers during his lifetime in favour of the next heir, must prove, as they have done, what is the result of braving the maledictions of the oracle.

Castelar sees Providence in Bismarck's fall, or if not Providence, at least Nemesis.

But the Chancellor, in his shortsightedness, filled young William's head with absolutist ideas; spurred and excited him to display impatience with his poor father; and when thus nurtured, his ward opened his mouth to satisfy his appetite, he swallowed up the Chancellor as a wild beast devours a keeper. Whom can he blame but himself? Emperors are accustomed to be ferocious with their favourites when they are weary of them. Just as Tiberius expelled Sejanus, just as Nero killed Seneca, just as John II. hanged D. Alvaro de Luna, just as Phillip II. persecuted Antonio Perez till he died, just as Philip III. beheaded D. Rodrigo Caldéron, William II. has morally beheaded Bismarck, without any other motive than his imperial caprice. ic volo, sic jubeo. So now will the Chancellor venture to present himself in parliament because he has been dismissed from the royal palace like a lackey?

Señor Castelar literally gloats over the autocratic Chancellor's discomfiture. He says:

In the sessions of Parliament he will resemble the plucked and cackling hen thrown by the Sophists into Socrates' lecture-room. And yonder, in the parliament, where formerly he strode in with sabre, and belt, and spurred boots. a helmet under his arm, a cuirass on his breast, he will now enter like a chicken-hearted charity-school boy, and that assembly which he formerly whipped with a strong hand like schoolboys, laughed at and caricatured in often bruta' sarcasm, will trample on him like the Lilliputians on Gulliver, and history will bury him not like a despot in Egyptian porphyry, but like a buffoon. Society, like nature, devours everything that it does not need. The death of William I., the Cæsar; the death of Roon, the organiser; the death of Moltke, the strategist, all say to him that the species of men to which he belongs is fading out and becoming extinct. Modern science teaches that extinct species do not reappear. Bossuet would say that the Eternal has destroyed the instrument of His providential work, because it is already useless. Remain, then, Bismarck, in retirement, and await, without neurotic impatience, the final judgment of God and of history.

DR. CLUTTERBUCK IN POLITICS;

OR, THE ISSUE IN THE FOREST OF DEAN.

THE Welsh Review for December contains an article by Mr. W. T. Stead, entitled "The Issue in the Forest of Dean." Mr. Stead points out that it is a great mistake to speak of the issue of the next election as if it were of considerable, or even of national, importance. Sir Charles Dilke, if M.P. to-morrow, would still be an outcast from social and political life. The vote of the Foresters can no more put him back where he stood before his fall than the vote of the electors at Stoke in favour of Dr. Kenealy was effective in restoring "Sir Roger" to his Tichborne estates.

THE ELECTION AS A TEST.

Wherein lies the importance of the election? Only in this. It is a test of how far the Foresters, who, at least, speak English, and are nominally Christian, have been left behind in the general, intellectual, and moral progress of the country. As Stoke discredited the popular intelligence by returning Dr. Kenealy, so, if the Foresters were befooled and wirepulled into returning Sir Charles Dilke, the Forest of Dean would replace Stoke in the list of constituencies whose credulity and ignorance have brought discredit upon the principle of representative government. The Nonconformists of the division are in a special manner upon their trial. It is as a gauge of the intelligence of the electors of the Forest of Dean, and as a test of the reality of the regard of Nonconformists for the moral law, the coming election is interesting, and, from some points of view, important.

THE ANALOGY TO DR. CLUTTERBUCK.

The question is how far a rural and mining electorate can be humbugged by artifices and subterfuges, which would hardly succeed in hoaxing a bumpkin at a country fair.

There are credulous people, no doubt, everywhere. Even educated men and clergymen seem to be capable of believing in the word of the Rev. Dr. Clutterbuck, that the British Government was anxious to negotiate short loans at 10 per cent. Dr. Clutterbuck raised thousands of pounds by this shameless lie, and it is possible that a candidate may secure thousands of votes by representatives as impudent in their unblushing mendacity. The unfortunate investors who lost all their money through Dr. Clutterbuck's representations, lost it because they argued it was impossible that a clergyman and an inspector of schools could possibly be a barefaced swindler. The very enormity of Dr. Clutterbuck's fraud was in their eyes the best argument in favour of speculating in his bogus 10 per cent. stock. It is just so in the Forest. The candidate himself declares, in so many words, that if he is guilty, he is a monster; and then he appeals to the soft-headed charitable: "Can you believe that I am a monster? I, whom you see on my knees at the Communion rails taking the Sacrament with what, in that hypothesis, must be a hideous lie in my mouth. Can you believe it?" and so forth. A Liberal clergyman in the Forest put it succinctly in a letter to me when he wrote:-" The sin of Ananias and Sapphira was not in it beside his guilt if guilty," which is true. But the clergyman drew the wrong inference. He recoiled from the supposition that this "Christian scholar and gentleman," who is so constant in attendance at all the services of the Church, could be worse than Ananias. It would be interesting to know what my correspondent would have thought of Dr. Clutterbuck. He also was a Christian scholar and gentleman, and in Holy Orders to boot. But all that did not make his 10 per cent. Government Stock other than a fraud. It is unnecessary to waste more time over an argument which would make the very enormity of a crime the most effective shield of the criminal.

THE ONLY FEASIBLE INFERENCE.

Let us look for a moment at the obvious absurdities of the case which the electors of the Forest are asked to swallow. If Sir Charles is innocent, why does he not prove his innocence

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before competent judges? Is it possible to devise any explanation of this strange and significant refusal to take what he himself admitted was the only course to rehabilitate bis character, if he be innocent? Neither regard for his own career, nor for his own reputation, nor for the honour of the name which he will hand down tarnished to his son, was sufficient to urge him to keep his pledged word, and vindicate his character in the same arena in which it had been destroyed. What is the only possible inference? Is it not as clear as daylight, that Sir Charles Dilke's failure to fulfil his promise is due to one cause, and one cause only-to the fact that he is not innocent but guilty, and that he knows it too well to dare to invoke again the opinion of a British jury? He narrowly escaped seven years' penal servitude-in his own opinion fourteen years would have been a by no means improbable sentence in 1886-he might not escape so easily a second time.

If he were innocent, he could have everything he coulo sigh for by simply fulfilling his repeated and solemn pledges, public and private, and taking those proceedings by which alone he can establish his innocence in the eyes of the world. Instead of doing this he sneaks off to the Forest of Dean, publishes an ex parte rigmarole at that centre of civilisation and intelligence, Cinderford, and claims-with his tongue in his cheek. that he has vindicated his character, and that he is returning to public life!

If this is not the conduct of a guilty man, can any one suggest what course a guilty man could adopt better calculated to confuse and confound the clear issues before the public? It is simply Dr. Clutterbuck over again-Dr. Clutterbuck in politics.

A MEAN AND COWARDLY SUBTERFUGE.

Instead of vindicating his character, Sir Charles Dilke attempts to force his way into public life by vilifying the woman whom he has ruined.

She asks for nothing but silence and oblivion. He, her seducer, in the forlorn and desperate attempt to re-establish his own reputation, heads an attack upon her, holds her up to public obloquy as a "perjured woman," and constantly assumes that she has committed a crime for which the legal penalty is penal servitude. A baser, meaner, and more cowardly act it will be difficult to find if we ransack the copious annals of adulterous cowardice.

The Nonconformists of the Forest can be in no doubt as to the judgment of the public conscience upon the flagitious attempt of Sir Charles Dilke to wriggle his way into Parliament. in defiance of all his pledges. There is not a single body of all the religious denominations which has not indicated its vehement reprehension of Sir Charles Dilke's candidature.

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE NONCONFORMISTS. Mr. Stead's conclusion is as follows:

The protest against his election, which has been so influentially signed by leading representatives of all the Churches, throws upon all the Nonconformists of the Forest of Dean a grave responsibility. It is not enough for them to say they are not well enough informed to be responsible for their action. That might have been an excuse once, but now this protest, signed by those who are well informed, renders it impossible for them to go on in ignorance. If they do not oppose his candidature by every means in their power, they will incur a grave moral responsibility. If they fail, they and their constituency will become a byword and a reproach among the Churches of the land. They will retard disestablishment by strengthening distrust in the moral stamina of the free Churches, and they will compel the extension of the protest against Sir Charles Dilke into every sphere into which he may attempt to intrude. If, on the other hand, they stand firm and give Sir Charles and his supporters to understand that the Nonconformist ministers of the Forest are not behind the Catholic clergy of Ireland in their devotion to the moral law and the sanctity of the home, they will find that the game of bluff and deceit will be abandoned long before the General Election. If they but do their duty Sir Charles Dilke will never go to the poll.

COUNT MATTEI AND HIS MEDICINES.

M. VENTUROLI MATTEI IN LONDON.

THIS last month M. Venturoli Mattei, the representative and manager of Count Mattei, has reached London for the purpose of inspecting the provisional arrangements which have been made for supplying the Mattei remedies, and of hearing on the spot of the progress of the experimental test as to cancer. I am glal to be able to state that M. Venturoli Mattei is so well satisfied with the progress that has been made, and so gratified by the public recognition of the worth of the remedies, that he has been authorised by the Count Lo express his satisfaction in a very tangible shape.

The Central Dépôt at 18, Pall Mall East, which has hitherto been worked on a provisional understanding in correspondence with Bologna, will henceforth become one of the head offices of Count Mattei, from which he will supply direct all the remedies required by the Englishspeaking world. The office, 18, Pall Mall East, will thus become as directly the Count's dépôt as the palace in Bologna or the castle at Rochetta, and will be under the direct personal control of M. Venturoli Mattei. All business in the Mattei remedies throughout the Empire and the Republic will be done through the Central Dépôt.

In acknowledgment of the public spirit which has been shown in the recognition of the value of the Count's remedies, the Count has undertaken to make over at the end of each year to a committee, all the profits accru ing from the sale of his remedies in the English-speaking world, after all expenses of management, advertising, and the production of the remedies have been defrayed. The committee will be authorised to devote the profits accruing from the establishment of the Central Dépôt to any charitable, religious, social, and other public objects which may from time to time seem good in their eyes.

Such public spirit on the part of Count Mattei demands and will receive a hearty recognition from the public. It is rare indeed that the discoverers of great remedies thus make over in their own lifetime the profits accruing from the sale.

A BRAVE MAN AND TRUE.
THE LATE REV. HUGH GILMORE.

THOSE Who knew Mr. Gilmore- the Rev. Hugh Gilmore, of the Primitive Methodist Church-need not be told with what sincere sorrow the news of his death, which took place at Adelaide, October 23, has occasioned both here and at the Antipodes. I knew Mr. Gilmore well of old times. He was a doughty fighter in all good causes, but genial withal, and full of an overflowing human sympathy. He was one of those broad Evangelicals who are so rare inside the Establishment, but who tend every year to become more and more the prevailing type of the most influential Nonconformists. was one, from first to last, of indomitable courage and buoyant hopefulness No difficulties daunted him, no opposition dismayed him. When, little more than two years ago, he left for South Australia, he left his country and his denomination poorer by the loss of one of the stalwartest, simplest, and most foresighted of her sons. An old friend and ministerial colleague who knew him, writes me as follows:

His career

He gave evidence in England of exceptional gifts and of great devotion to the public weal. His career in Australia

has been remarkable for the confidence and attent accorded to him, and the wide influence he exerted. He a Primitive Methodist minister, but his labours were extensive outside his own community as inside. Aft painful illness he died last October, leaving a widow and e children. His numerous friends in Australia and in Eng are signalising their appreciation of his eminent services Gilmore Memorial Fund on behalf of the family. In Eng the Treasurer is Mr. Adam Lee, of Oldham; and the Secre Rev. John Atkinson, Green Close, Kendal, to either of w subscriptions may be forwarded. Mr. Hartley subsc £25; Mr. Ambler, of Preston, £20; Mr. Adam Lee, £ Mr. J. H. Lee, of Widnes, £5; W. T. Stead, £5.

I can only say, in conclusion, that it is a privileg contribute to such a fund in honour of such a man, that I hope all those who knew and loved him here help now in providing for his widow and orphans.

he

TIGERS AND TIGER-HUNTING.
BY SIR SAMUEL BAKER.

THE most interesting paper in the Christmas n of the English Illustrated Magazine is Sir Samuel E account of Tigers and Tiger-Hunting. Sir Samuel is a veritable Nimrod and is as familiar with tig most people are with cats. The difference between says, is that the tiger is extremely fond of wat is fond of lying all day in pools, and thinks noth taking a swim of a mile at a time. He is also thirsty animal, always drinking immediately eating. The result is that in the hottest is the driest season, he is very easily dis and killed. In the dry season the drinking are SO few that the hunter has little d in discovering his prey. As a rule, a tiger only two square meals of an animal which he kills. seizes his victim, he grasps the back of its neck jaws, and then driving his claws into the flesh h the head round so as to break the neck. Then by the throat, he drags it into the nearest cover he eats one of its thighs. If the buffalo is a f one, a haunch lasts the tiger a da then drinks and sleeps until night. At he eats another haunch, and that is abou gets of the carcass, for the jackals finish it befor come back a third time. Leopards always stomach, heart, lungs, and liver before they t flesh. Sir Samuel then describes the science hunting in cool weather. The first indispensa unfortunate buffalo of at least two years old an tethered by a leg to a tree. This is as a bai tiger. When he kills the buffalo he cuts the his teeth, and drags it off to the nearest ravine wish to follow up the tiger after he has killed h you must turn to Sir Samuel Baker's own arti points, however, may be noticed-first, that tig in India have yet to learn the advantage of pack of half-a-dozen dogs to follow up a woun and that in tiger hunting it is much bette behind a pad made of a flour sack stuffed straw than in a howdah. One disagreeable fa tiger, which is not generally known, is that it poisoned, and that a scratch from a tiger's claw bring about inflammation. Sir Samuel bring to a close by a graphic account of a long p man-eating tiger which nearly baffled him, but slain, after nineteen days' search. He measure from tip to tail, and weighed 400 lb.

LIFE AMONG THE KALMYYKI.

AN article that should especially interest those who, like Mons. Gustav Le Bon, have nervous fears respecting the wholesomeness of civilisation and culture, is the clever paper by Dr. Hans Kaarberg, in Tilskueren, on "The Degeneration of the Race."

Dr. Kaarberg is one of those delightful people who are extremely reluctant to believe in the degeneration of the race, or, at any rate, in culture as the cause of it. So, with the view of making mince-meat of the whole unsalubrious decadence doctrine of the anti-culturists, by proving that amongst the uncivilised races there exists as much of ill-health, discontent, and misery as amongst the cultured, he betook himself to the land of the Kalmyyki-a race almost entirely unknown, mysterious as to origin, thoroughly raw as to character, and dwelling in the cold and sterile Steppes.

By many, these people have been supposed to be descendants of the fierce, awe-inspiring Hun, but this they themselves deny. "We are not Ghunni. We are Kalmyyki!" There would seem to be some sort of relationship between them and the Hindoos and Chinese.

Their speech is Mongolian, their writing Tibetan, their dress, to some extent, Chinese. The land of the Kalmyyki is bleak and unpicturesque in the extreme.

THE STEPPES.

One can travel hundreds of versts in the Steppes without finding a single stone or tree or bit of green to rest the eye upon. Only round the German colonies, and a few of the better class Kalmyykan Kasakstanitzas, may a solitary little spot of starving corn be found. For the rest, all is one dark, empty, greyish-brown waste. Morning, evening, and night may be fresh and of peculiar beauty, but during the rest of the day a steady wind sweeps over the land. Now it is scorching hot-presently, freezing cold. Heaven and earth are united in one blur by clouds of fine dust. When "warmth blows down" the blood seethes out of the skins of the wretched horses, which are covered with blood-boils, and flies and all sorts of vermin help themselves to one's own blood. Next morning comes tropical shower of rain. The Steppes are flooded, and become impassable. On a sudden, out shines the sun again, the wind rises afresh, and the dust begins its dance anew, then once more the rain and the rest, and so on ad infinitum.

THE KALMYYK.

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The Kalmyyk is a curious mixture as to character. He is sanguine, erotic, naïve-usually an affectionate husband, though his wife is his slave, and overloaded with work. Faithlessness in marriage is unusual, and the unmarried woman is always chaste. Immorality is less frequently met with amongst the Kalmyyki than amongst the cultured nations, and is almost entirely confined to the married. The unfaithful husband, with them as with us, is judged more leniently than the unfaithful wife, who in accordance with the old Mongolian law, is tied to the tail of a wild horse, and driven out over the Steppes. The Kalmyyk is extremely hospitable. His guest and the belongings of his guest are at all times secure in his tent. He is, otherwise, a clever robber and an incorrigible horse-thief. Naturally good-natured and even-tempered, he is, nevertheless, brutal when roused. As a soldier, he is brave and enduring, though, under everyday condi

tions, he will be found indolent, easily duped, and often a thorough coward. Wilful murders are unusual. Indirect murders-such, for example, as leaving a helpless creature to perish in the Steppes are, on the other hand, very common. In such cases, the Kalmyyk washes his hands of the whole concern, calmly murmuring, "God has done it!" As a servant, he is faithful and trustworthy. So quick and clever, otherwise, at stealing, he is a patient watcher over the goods willingly and confidently entrusted to him. He has a wonderful appetite, and is extremely partial to strong drink.

That is the Kalmyyk-the unschooled Adam we have to compare ourselves with. Well, he seems, on the whole, not such a bad sort. What could one not make of him if one could only send him to school, present him with a decent climate, and interest him in the progress of the world and the upward trend of man! Dr. Kaarberg must not be discouraged and come to believe in the decadence of the race and the futility of civilisation because he has found so few suicides, so little ill-health and so much content in the uncivilised land of the Kalmyyki. He must only believe, what is quite evident, that the Kalmyyk would be an excellent subject for civilisation to work upon, if he would allow it himself. But since the Kalmyyk refuses to be civilised, and is content to be, so far as culture is concerned, a perfect fossil, it is, perhaps, just as well that his race is dying out-probably for want of the beneficent influence of civilisation.

Dr. Kaarberg gives a careful account of the health of the land of the Kalmyyki. It would seem to be a dull place for the medical man consumption, bronchitis, rheumatism, gout, blindness, epilepsy, anæmia, measles and such complaints being fearfully scarce. Fevers are, however, pretty brisk, and black pox steady. The Kalmyyki woman is not much troubled with the sufferings of childbirth. The anti-culture agitators need not, however, take this to be a fact in favour of their theory, as, when civilisation has so far advanced with us that our own women shall be able to understand that the Almighty can fashion prettier figures than their favourite modiste, a great proportion of their diseases and sufferings will become in the not, I hope, far-distant future part of the evils that belonged to the "good old times!

We say meanwhile without hesitation that, if it be correct as it stands, the obtaining from hypnotism an absolute and unfailing cure for every disease with which mankind ever has been or ever will be afflicted, would be too dearly purchased at such a price.

La Revue de l'Hypnotisme et de la Psychologie Physiologique appears every month, price 75 cents per number. It is edited by Dr. E. Berillon, and published at 170, Rue Saint Antoine, Paris. Of more general interest is the Journal de l'Initiation which is devoted to occultism, and contains, among other things, a terribly gruesome description of the life of a dead man from the theosophical standpoint. The dead man was a scoundrel, vicious and depraved, who came to a sudden and violent death. The adventures of his astral body on quitting the corpse revive the horrors of Dante's hell.

WHAT FARMING IS COMING TO.

AN AMERICAN DREAM OF THE FUTURE.

IN the New England Magazine for November, Mr. C. S. Plumb, vice-director of the Purdue University Agricultural Experiment Station, publishes a fanciful paper. It describes the future of agriculture, an account of which he places in the mouth of a director of an Indiana experiment station delivered in the year 2,000 as a telephonic lecture to the students of the National Agronomic University of France.

ALL SMALL HOLDINGS.

The following is his description of what farming will be when science has revolutionised agriculture :—

Our farms are all small holdings, the largest being fifty acres, while the ordinary size is ten acres. Each homestead is located about ten rods from the asphalt roadway, while the barn (we have but one barn on a farm in America) is located in the centre of the farm. A pneumatic tube running under ground connects the cellar of the house with the barn, so that when having no other means of transit, except to walk, persons may enter the pouch of the tube and be conveyed to and from the barn with electric rapidity. Horses are used by some farmers, but generally vehicles having pneumatic rubber-tired bicycle wheels, with ball bearings, are conveyed from point to point by means of electric motors stored beneath the wagon bed.

ELECTRICITY AND AGRICULTURE.

The influence of electricity on our farming occupation is exceedingly great. Every farmer has an electric plant in his house, which connects with the whole establishment, and not only materially lightens the labour of the women, but assists in farm-work in many particulars. In the house the rooms are lighted by electricity; doors and windows are opened and closed by pressing an electric button; butter extractors are operated by electric power; an inverted brush-box with a handle, worked by a motor, is passed over the floor to sweep, requiring simply the guidance of hand power; dish-washing machines are run by the lightning-like fluid, and likewise the elevator in houses two stories high; all cooking is conducted in electric stoves; and all clothing is washed and ironed by simple, inexpensive machinery, run by electricity.

On the farm, electricity serves many important purposes. Barn doors are operated by electric power; an electric fork conveys the hay and fodder from the wagon to the barn, and from mow to manger; automatic electric shovels clean out the manure troughs behind the cattle; the farm bell is rung by electricity; ploughs, mowing machines, hay tedders and rakes are operated by electric motors; and all animals are slaughtered by means of electric connection. It has been demonstrated that electrically grown vegetables are of superior quality and tenderness. Lines of electric wires distributed through the propagating pits, and even in the fields on the farm, have greatly increased the yield and early maturity of crops, while destroying all fungus growth and insects adjacent to the wires.

INSECTICULTURE.

Everybody possesses apparatus for spraying plants for the destruction of injurious insects and fungi, and he would be considered a singular farmer at the present day who neglected to use his insecticides and fungicides. Injurious insects, however, are held in check by many farmers by the use of beneficial insects. On every well-regulated farm are small pens for breeding beneficial insects. Farmers proɔagating beneficial insects train them to come at the call of a whistle, so that the trained ones are easily collected in the field whenever desired.

The [care of our live stock has been reduced to such a science, that seemingly a maximum of profit is secured. Animals of all classes are fed on a scientific basis. By following the directions of the Henri Prescription Book, one is enabled to deposit alternate layers of lean and fat upon the animal carcass, or entirely one or the other. Through our knowledge of the effects of food upon the animal system, we

are also enabled to secure nothing but pure cream from our cows, if we see fit, or the reverse.

Automatic milking machines are commonly used here now. None of our American cattle have horns, though two hundred years ago hornless cattle were uncommon.

GROWING MANURE.

Perhaps one of the most important discoveries yet made by one of our stations is the method of producing root nodoles on clover and other leguminous plants, which contain nitrogen. By a careful system in-and-in breeding we have produced a number of nodule-bearing varieties of clover and alfalfa that yield us great quantities of nitrogenous fertiliser. The roots, differing from those of ordinary varieties, grow near the surface, like potatoes. At the proper time of maturity they are ploughed out, and the nodules which are of good size are uncovered, dried and ground, thus furnishing a most important source of nitrogen, In consequence of our excessive care and judicious use of manures at the present time, we gather an average of fifty bushels of wheat per acre, where we grew but twelve a century ago, and shell two hundred bushels of corn per acre, where we formerly harvested but forty.

FOUR STRAWBERRIES ONE QUART.

On the same area of land, with a smaller number of plants, to-day we can grow a far larger crop than could be grown one hundred years ago. The plants have been bred with such wisdom, and the soil fertilised with such care, that each plant develops its maximum growth, Our strawberries are of delightful flavour and flesh and colour, and four or five average ones make a quart. The seeds have all been eliminated from our cultivated raspberries, blackberries, currants, and gooseberries. Their fruit is marvellously delicate in flavour, especially so the two former.

In all the centuries man has discovered no more nutritious, stable food than milk, and to-day our dairy interests, with our population of five hundred millions, are vast.

In their relation to the people, the farmers of America Occupy a high position. As our constitution provides that the various industries shall be represented in our legislative halls according to the proportion of the people engaged in each the farmers have a leading voice in the construction of our laws, and the social, moral, and financial conditions resulting from their supervision and influence are eminently satisfactory, not only to the farming population, but to the body of our citizens as a whole.

A farmer is not satisfied that a hen lay one hundred eggs of two ounces weight each in one year, eating one bushel of grain to do the same. He rather aims to make the hen produce three hundred and sixty-five eggs in one year, each weighing one-half pound, eating one-half bushel of grain to produce said eggs.

We may as well stop here.

The Heresies of Dr. Briggs.-The Andover Review for November publishes the report of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America on the charges brought against the Rev. Charles A. Briggs, D.D. It is a very interesting document, setting forth, under two charges, the first of which has seven specifications or subdivisions, the various offences which Dr. Briggs is supposed to have committed against the Scriptures in the first instance, and the Confession of Faith in the second. The charges range from an accusation that he makes the Church and reason each to be an independent and sufficient testimony of Divine authority, instead of making that authority depend solely upon the Bible, to a heretical view as to the future state and sanctification of believers after death.

DR. JOSEPH Cook, of Boston, takes what he describes as Professor Briggs's self-contradictions as the text for his Monday Lecture which appears in Our Day for November.