breed a habit in a man;" and Bacon, "habits wisely formed become truely our second nature;" and Paley, "man is but a bundle of habits;" and Cowper, "habits are soon assumed, but when we strive to strip them, 'tis like being flayed alive." While the pupils are thus encouraged to save, important truths are at the same time impressed upon their minds.

The reports of the schools of the city of Ghent show that the system became very popular. After an experience of six years, of the 15,383 pupils, 12,982 participated in the weekly savings exercise and had pass books of the city savings bank which shows the aggregate sum of $92,982, an average of more than $7 to each depositor.

66

Nearly all the children in the city are by this means serving an apprenticeship in economy, and hence promise to be a generation profoundly ameliorated," says A. de Malarce in his Manuel Des Caisses D'Epargne.

The following official report demonstrates the popularity of school savings banks in France:

There is no lack of enthusiasm on the part of the friends and promoters of this scheme for inculcating habits of saving in the rising generation. They say: "The boy is treated like a man, performs the act of a man, receives the deposit book of a man, and hence feels like a man." The children show their bank books at their homes and there repeat the lessons of the school, thus making impressions that have had a marked influence in improving the condition of whole communities, and in increasing surprisingly the number of depositors in savings banks.

Three hundred and forty-nine thousand children in France, while forming habits of industry and frugality, have gained credits in their little savings bank pass books amounting to more than a million and a half of dollars, or an average of

$4.50 each. Who will not say that the money thus accumulated is insignificant, when compared with the value of the habits which they have acquired? Who will say, in view of such facts, that it is unwise for a government to exercise its paternal care and foster, even at considerable expense, savings institutions.

Do school savings banks tend to make children penurious or avaricious? Experience answers no.

The great inundation in the south of France; a few years ago, caused great destitution and suffering, so that contributions were called for. The generous as well as economical pupils in the schools of Bordeaux, drew from their savings and put into the relief fund, nearly 10,000 francs.

In view of such facts is not this system of gathering and saving the pennies worthy of attention and adoption in our own country?

Superintendent Searing, in his report for 1877, recommending the introduction of school savings banks in Wisconsin, says: "To teach children the value of money, to induce the desire and habit of saving and to practically acquaint them early with some buisness forms and usages, must certainly be recognized as legitimate school work."

If school savings banks are so worthy of adoption why are they not engrafted upon our school system? First, because their advantages are not understood and appreciated, and secondly, because we have no savings banks nor postal banks where the money can be safely deposited.

Why do we not have postal savings banks in this country as in England, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy Austria, India, Japan and elsewhere? Postmaster General James, and Postmaster General Howe, both have recommended their adoption, and there is a bill now pending in congress for their establishment. Why is congress so slow in putting in operation a system that promises such great advantages? Because the savings banks of New York and New England, through misapprehension, are wielding their influence against them. This opposition is perhaps voiced by a prominent bank official in Boston, who intimates March, 1882, number of Rhodes' Journal of Banking - that a postal system of savings banks would result in the com

plete extinction of all the savings banks in the country, that the $250,000,000 in the Massachusetts bank would be transferred to Washington and there lie idle, and that New England would become the home of a poor and discontented people.

Depositors in the 450 savings banks of England who received only three per cent. dividends did not withdraw their funds and place them in the postal bank, where two and onehalf per cent. is the rate of interest.

When the latter was organized in 1861, the former had on deposit $207,000,000. Seventeen years thereafter the amount had increased to $221,000,000, showing a gain of $14,000,000, and the postal banks had in the meantime accumulated $152,000,000.

If, with a difference of only one-half of one per cent., the two systems work harmoniously and prosperously in England, the savings banks in this country, with a difference of two per cent., have little to fear from the establishment of postal banks.

The bank examiner of New York, in his report, February, 1882, presents his objections to postal banks, objections that facts, and the light of reason and experience dispel as the sun dispels the fogs of an autumn morning.

The committee to whom the bill, now before congress for the establishment of postal banks in the United States, was referred, have made a report containing statistics and facts in regard to the operation of such banks in other countries sufficient to show that objections to their inauguration in this country are groundless.

In closing, they say: "Your committee believe the provisions of this bill to be wise, and that by its operations both the depositor and the government would be mutually benefited. We also believe that this business can properly be conducted by the post-office department. The latter is now engaged in carrying merchandise and selling exchange for the sole purpose of adding to the commercial facilities of the people, while the system hereby proposed will not alone prove a great convenience, but will elevate the standard of citizenship and largely promote the prosperity and happiness of all."

Let us hope that our western and southern states will soon reap the benefits of savings banks, of postal savings banks, and of school savings banks.

THE INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS OF OUR BIRDS.

By Prof. F. H. KING, River Falls.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen-Now that type, steam and electricity have rendered such extensive, rapid, and intimate communication possible, there comes a growing realization of a deep under current of human interests which knits all nations into an organic union scarcely different from, or less intimate, than that which exists between the various members of our bodies.

Let the blood be drained of its nutritious elements, and there flies along the nerves a demand for food. The sensation of hunger is the signal for definite action of many organs to meet that want. It is the same way to-day with nations. When England's great stomach is emptied, and she grows hungry, the sensation of want throbs through those long submarine telegraphic nerves, and in less than three days the world is moving toward her capacious mouth with something to fill it.

But man is not more closely wedded to his fellow-man, for weal or for woe, than he is to the lower forms of life, both plants and animals, which surround him.

How fundamental, intimate and far-reaching these relations are, it seems that we are but fairly in the dim dawn of realization; and as the farmer's profession is the applied science of life in the very largest sense, it follows that you, of all men, are most intimately and irrevocably bound up in this complicated net-work of living forms. The importance of your domesticated animals and cultivated plants you fairly realize. It is to the other side of your relationship with the world of life that I would be glad to turn your attention during the few minutes at my disposal.

So simple and, one would say, unimportant an animal as the angle-worm, Charles Darwin has shown to be the great

soil producing agent the world over. Eating its way deep into the ground it swallows the sand and gravel as it burrows, grinding it to fine powder as it passes through the body. This is voided on the surface as fine soil and a tribute to husbandry. You have all recognized the loss of soil from your fields through the action of wind and running water. The Mississippi river is estimated to pour enough sediment into the Gulf of Mexico annually to cover 268 square miles one foot deep. This and much more must be replaced year by year, and if you will observe the little piles of dirt thrown up by angle-worms, during and after showers, you will see by whom it is replaced.

But these same angle-worms have been shown to be instrumental in spreading that terribly contagious disease of domestic animals, anthrax or splenic fever, by burrowing down to the buried bodies of animals which have died of the disease and bringing the germs to the surface even after an interment of perhaps ten years. This does not teach that angle-worms should be destroyed, but, on the contrary, that the animals dying of contagious diseases should be burned completely and at once rather than buried, and in this fact too is to be found the very strongest possible argument for cremation in similar cases. I presume that it need not be said to most of you that that other terrible disease of cattle and sheep, known in England as fluke-rot, which has destroyed in a single locality in Europe, during one season, 300,000 sheep, and which has ruined large herds of choice cattle, is due to a parasite which is believed by those who have studied its habits to pass through one stage of its transformations in the bodies of fresh water snails. A knowledge of these facts has led to a better drainage of pastures and greater care during wet seasons with the result of much greater immunity from the disease.

Darwin and others have found that if clover heads are covered so as to prevent the visits of insects, they produce very few or no seeds, whereas the heads not thus guarded are likely to mature the usual number of seeds. Bumblebees have been shown to be largely the agents which fertilize red clover, which they do by carrying the pollen from one flower to another. The honey of the blossoms is the cash