seed may be made to yield twenty-eight to thirty-two pounds of crude oil, the available quantity is very great. At present only a small quantity is made, the surplus seed being used as manure. Its fertilizing value would not be diminished by removing the oil, which is only a hydro-carbon, i. e., material supplied by air and water. All the fertilizing constituents of the seed are left behind in the oil-cake from which the oil has been pressed.

Hitherto cotton-seed oil has fallen among thieves. It is used as an adulterant of olive-oil; sardines and pilchards are packed in it. The sardine trade has declined lately, some say from deficient supplies of the fish. I suspect that there has been a decline in the demand, due to the substitution of this oil for that of the olive. Many people who formerly enjoyed sardines no longer care for them, and they do not know why. The substitution of cotton-seed oil explains this in most cases. It is not rancid, has no decided flavor, but still is unpleasant when eaten raw, as with salads or sardines. It has a flat, cold character, and an after-taste that is faintly suggestive of castor-oil; but faint as it is, it interferes with the demand for a purely luxurious article of food. This delicate defect is quite inappreciable in the results of its use as a frying medium. The very best lard or ordinary kitchen butter, eaten cold, has more of objectionable flavor than refined cottonseed oil.

I have not tasted poppy-seed oil, but am told that it is similar to that from the cotton-seed. As regards the quantities available, some idea may be formed by plucking a ripe head from a garden poppy and shaking out the little round seeds through the windows on the top. Those who have not tried this will be astonished at the numbers produced by each flower. As poppies are largely cultivated for the production of opium, and the yield of the drug itself by each plant is very small, the supplies of oil may be considerable; 571,542 cwt. of seeds were exported from India last year, of which 346,031 cwt. went to France.

Palm-oil, though at present practically unknown in the kitchen, may easily become an esteemed material for the frying-kettle (I say "kettle," as the ordinary English frying-pan is only fit for the cooking of such things as barley bannocks, pancakes, fladbrod, or oatcakes). At present, the familiar uses of palm-oil in candle-making and for railway grease will cause my suggestion to shock the nerves of many delicate people, but these should remember that before palmoil was imported at all, the material from which candles and soap were made, and by which cart-wheels and heavy machinery were greased, was tallow-i. e., the fat of mutton and beef. The reason why our grandmothers did not use candles when short of dripping or suet was that the mutton-fat constituting the candle was impure; so are the yellow candles and yellow grease in the axle-boxes of the railway carriages. This vegetable fat is quite as inoffensive in itself, quite as

wholesome, and—sentimentally regarded-less objectionable, than the fat obtained from the carcass of a slaughtered animal.

When common sense and true sentiment supplant mere unreasoning prejudice, vegetable oils and vegetable fats will largely supplant those of animal origin in every element of our dietary. We are but just beginning to understand them. Chevreul, who was the first to teach us the chemistry of fats, is still living, and we are only learning how to make butter (not "inferior Dorset," but "choice Normandy") without the aid of dairy produce. There is, therefore, good reason for anticipating that the inexhaustible supplies of oil obtainable from the vegetable world—especially from tropical vegetation-will ere long be freely available for kitchen uses, and the now popular product of the Chicago hog factories will be altogether banished therefrom, and used only for greasing cart-wheels and other machinery.

As a practical conclusion of this part of my subject, I will quote from this month's number of "The Oil Trade Review" the current wholesale prices of some of the oils possibly available for frying purposes. Olive-oil, from £43 to £90 per ton of 252 gallons; Cod-oil, £36 per ton; Sardine or train (i. e., the oil that drains from pilchards, herrings, sardines, etc., when salted), £27 10s. to £28 per ton. Cocoanut, from £35 to £38 per ton of 20 cwt. (This, in the case of oil, is nearly the same as the measured ton.) Palm, from £38 to £40 10s. per ton; Palm-nut or copra, £31 10s. per ton; Refined cotton-seed, £30 10s. to £31 per ton; Lard, £53 to £55 per ton. The above are the extreme ranges of each class. I have not copied the technical names and prices of the intermediate varieties. One penny per pound = £9 68. 8d. per ton, or, in round numbers, £1 per ton may be reckoned as one ninth of a penny per pound. Thus the present price of best refined cotton-seed oil is 34d. per pound; of cocoanut-oil, 3 d. ; palm-oil, from 34d. to 44d., while lard costs 6d. per pound wholesaleusually 7d.

is

I should add, in reference to the seed-oils, that there is a possible objection to their use as frying media. Oils extracted from seeds contain more or less of linoleine (so named from its abundance in linseedoil), which, when exposed to the air, combines with oxygen, swells and dries. If the oil from cotton-seed or poppy-seed contains too much of this, it will thicken inconveniently when kept for a length of time exposed to the air. Palm-oil is practically free from it, but I am doubtful respecting palm-nut-oil, as most of the nut-oils are "driers."— Knowledge.

THERE

SKETCH OF LAMARCK.

HERE are two classes of scholars. Those of the one class, who travel in the footsteps of their predecessors, increase the domain of knowledge, and add new discoveries to those that were made before them; their labors are immediately appreciated, and they enjoy their well-earned fame in full measure. Others, who leave the trodden ways, emancipate themselves from traditions, and expose to the light of the sun the germs of future discovery which lie buried in the teachings. of the present. Sometimes they are appreciated at their full value during their lifetime, but more frequently they pass away, misunderstood by the scientific public of their time, which is incapable of comprehending and following them. Indolence, routine, and ignorance oppose an invincible resistance against them during their career, and they die isolated and forsaken. In the mean time, science advances, facts increase, methods are perfected, and their contemporaries who survive them gradually come up to the mark they had left. Then all their forgotten services are brought into the light, justice is partly done to their labors, their genius is admired, it is recognized that they foresaw the future, and a tardy posthumous fame comforts their pupils for the neglect which the masters had to endure during the years of vain struggle for the triumph of the truth.

Lamarck belonged to both of these classes. By his descriptive labors in botany and zoölogy, and by the improvements which he introduced in the classification of animals, and which were accepted by his contemporaries, he gained a first place among the naturalists of his time; but his philosophical views on organic beings in general were rejected, and did not even enjoy the honor of a sincere testing. They were only accorded a polite silence, or treated with scornful. irony.

Jean Baptist Pierre Antoine de Monet, known as the Chevalier de Lamarck, was born on the 1st of August, 1744, at Bazentin, a little town between Albert and Bapaume, in Picardy. He was the eleventh child of Pierre de Monet, lord of the manor, who was descended from an old family in the county Béarn, and called only a small hereditary estate his own. His father had designed him for the church, then the common destination for the younger sons of noble families, and took him to the Jesuit college at Amiens. This, however, was not the natural vocation of our young nobleman. Everything in his family associations inclined his mind toward military fame. His eldest brother had fallen in the breach at the siege of Berg-op-Zoom; the other two brothers were still in the service, while France was exhausting its forces in an unequal contest. His father opposed his wishes on this point; but, when the father died, Lamarck, following his own inclina

tion, betook himself on a poor horse to the army, which was encamped near Lippstadt, in Westphalia. He was furnished with a letter of introduction from Frau von Lameth, proprietor of a neighboring estate, to Colonel de Lastic, of the Beaujolais regiment. This officer, when he saw the seventeen-year-old youth, who looked much younger, sent him to his quarters. A battle took place on the next day. M. de Lastic drew up his regiment, and noticed his protégé in the front rank of a company of grenadiers. The French army was under the command of Marshal Broglie and Prince Soubise while the allied troops were commanded by Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick. The two French officers, who did not agree together, were killed. The company Lamarck had joined was broken up by the enemy's fire, and was forgotten in the confusion of the retreat. The officers and under-officers were killed, and only fourteen were left standing. The oldest of these counseled retreat; Lamarck, who had, on the spur of the moment, improvised himself to the command, answered: "We have been assigned to this position, and we must not forsake it till we are relieved." The colonel, who now remarked that the company was not with his regiment, recalled it by an order which he managed to get back to it by a secret way. On the next day Lamarck was appointed an officer, and soon afterward a lieutenant. Fortunately for science, this brilliant beginning of a military career was not decisive of the future of the youth. After the conclusion of peace he performed garrison duty in Toulon and Monaco, till an inflammation of the lymphatic glands of the neck made it necessary for him to go to Paris to undergo an operation by Tenon, the scar of which he carried all his life.

The aspect of the vegetation in the neighborhood of Toulon and Monaco had attracted the attention of the young officer, who had already acquired some knowledge of botany from the "Traité des plantes usuelles" of Chomel. After he withdrew from the military service and had been awarded a modest pension of four hundred francs, he became engaged with a banker in Paris. Moved by an irresistible impulse to the study of Nature, he observed from his attic-room the forms and movements of the clouds, and made himself acquainted with plants in the royal gardens, and by means of botanical excursions. He felt that he was on the right way, and recalled Voltaire's judgment on Condorcet, that discoveries to come would secure him more fame with posterity than a company of soldiers. Dissatisfied with the botanical systems in use, he wrote in a half-year his "Flore française," and published his "Clé dichotomique," by the aid of which it is easy for a beginner to ascertain the name of the plants he is accustomed to This was in 1778. Through Rousseau botany became a fashionable study; the lords and ladies of the world of society busied themselves with plants; Buffon had the three volumes of the "Flore française" published at the Royal Printing-House; and in the next year

see.

Lamarck entered the Academy of Sciences. Buffon, who wished his son to travel, gave him Lamarck as a conductor, with a commission from the government. They journeyed through Holland, Germany, and Hungary, and Lamarck became acquainted with Gleditsch in Berlin, Jaquin in Vienna, and Murray in Göttingen.

The "Encyclopédie methodique," begun by d'Alembert and Diderot, was not yet finished. Lamarck composed four volumes of this work, and in them described all the then known plants the names of which begin with the letters from A to P-a huge work, which was completed by Poiret, and included twelve volumes, appearing between 1783 and 1817. A still more important work, which also forms a part of the "Encyclopædia," and is continually quoted by botanists, is entitled "Illustration des genres" ("Illustration of Genera "), in which Lamarck described the characteristics of two thousand species. The work, says the title-page, is illustrated with nine hundred copper-plate engravings. Only a botanist can form a conception of the researches in herbaria, gardens, and books, which such an undertaking demanded. Lamarck accomplished it all by means of the most restless industry. If a traveler came to Paris, he was the first one to announce himself to him. Sonnerat returned from India with immense collections. Nobody but Lamarck took the trouble to look at them, and Sonnerat was so pleased with him for this that he presented the splendid herbarium to him. In spite of his indefatigable labors, Lamarck's situation was miserable enough. He lived by his pen, and in the service of the book-sellers. Even the petty position of overseer of the Royal Herbarium was refused him. Like the majority of naturalists, he contended for many years with the difficulties of life. A fortunate circumstance, which gave his activity another direction, brought improvement in his condition. The convent ruled over France. Carnot organized victory. Lamarck undertook to organize the sciences. The Museum of Natural History was founded upon his motion. They had been able to name professors for all the branches except zoology; but, in those times of ardent enthusiasm, France found warriors and men of science wherever it needed them. Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire was twenty-one years old, and was engaged with Haity in mineralogy. Daubenton said to him: "I take the responsibility for your inexperience upon myself; I have the authority of a father over you. Be so bold as to assume the chair of zoölogy, and it may be said some day that you have made a French science of it." Geoffroy acceded, and undertook the higher animals. Lakanal had well comprehended that a single professor would not be adequate to the task of working out the whole animal kingdom. Since the classification of the vertebrates only was taken care of by Saint-Hilaire, the whole list of invertebrates, including the insects, mollusks, worms, zoöphytes, etc., still remained in chaos-in the unknown. Lamarck, says Michelet, undertook the unknown. He had busied himself a little, under Bruguières's