that he is able to answer the social calls of the metropolis. He is a frequent participator in gatherings about the banquet board; and when he rises to speak he brims over with quaint conceit and humor, and says things that stick. A The Message Bearer NAME which is just coming to be well known in the country is that of Poulsen, the great Danish electrician and scientist, whom his countrymen proudly called "the Edison of Denmark." His inventions have already won him wealth and his present experiments are at present carried on in a large group of connected buildings which stand on the outskirts of Copenhagen. Herr Poulsen is a stalwart man of thirty-eight, sturdy in figure and able to endure long and severe strains, both physical and mental. Often, when on the track of a discovery, he works straight ahead for twenty hours at a stretch, hardly stopping for meals or sleep and rushing from shop to shop in his great plant, at a sort of a gliding run, so strong his interest in the work and so great his energy. Though admitted to be one of the most advanced students of the mystery of electricity and a scientist who ranks with Lord Kelvin and Prof. Syl vanus Thompson, he is at the same time wonderfully expert with his hands and, as he goes about the shops, the workmen. are constantly appealing to him for advice and assistance. Personally, those who know him say that the inventor is modest and retiring, living almost without society and being entirely devoted to and absorbed in his work. His most spectacular invention up to the present time is that of the telegraphone, which was described several months ago in this magazine. The telegraphone, it will be recalled, records by magnetic action, the human voice on spools of fine wire or thin sheets of steel. A business man, for instance, can dictate a letter to one of these thin sheets of steel, drop it into an envelope and mail it, quite in the usual way. The person receiving the sheet has only to insert it in his machine to have the message delivered vocally, with every inflection of the voice preserved. Poulsen is said to look forward to the day when most business and personal correspondence will be carried on in this way. Crocodiles, water-moccasins, Seminole Indians, plume hunters, and occasional fugitives from justice have been for more than a hundred years the principal inhabitants of the Everglades of Florida-that vast tangled morass which occupies almost the whole of the southern end of the peninsula. Now the Everglades are to be drained. Both State and national governments are at work. When the great work is done more than seven million acres of the richest sugar land in the world will be added to the productive domain of the State.- EDITOR. O most minds the name Everglades has an indefinite meaning, carrying with it an idea of Indians and alligators, pathless forests and immense surfaces of water. Very few understand that it occupies almost the entire southern half of the peninsula of Florida, and that its millions of acres of water and mud are exciting the attention of engineers and scientists throughout the country. In round numbers its area is six or seven million acres and it occupies most of the counties of Lee, DeSoto, Dade and St. Lucie. Its surface varies in character from the shallow waters of Lake Okechobee and the slight highland north of this lake to the tide level region of the extreme southern point of the state. is generally covered with saw-grass, a vegetation which is absolutely worthless, and is entirely without trees except It around its outer margin where it approaches the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the Gulf of Mexico on the other. Soon after the admission of Florida into the Union, in the same year in fact, Congress was petitioned through Florida representatives to take steps toward the investigation, survey, and reclamation of this section. Two years later Congress was requested "to grant to this State all the swamp and overflowed lands south of the Caloosahatchee River and of the northern shore of Lake Okechobee and between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean." In 1850 as a result of the Arkansas Bill, Florida became possessed of the land herself under the proviso, as stated in the bill, that she should devote the moneys derived from the sale of these lands, first, to their reclamation, and afterwards, to the public education of the State. The State accepted this trust and in 1855 organized by an act of the Legislature a Board of Trustees for the Internal Improvement Fund, consisting of the Governor, Comptroller, Treasurer, Attorney General, and Commissioner of Agriculture, in whom the title to these lands was vested, and who were given supervision of them to carry out the conditions of the grant. Of the millions of acres comprising the swamp and overflowed lands which became the property of the State as stated, legislatures subsequently granted and trustees have deeded to railroads and other corporations and to individuals, for who were sufficiently acclimated to withstand the ravages of malaria and swamp fever. Explorations were made, it is true, but they were generally unsatisfactory and unscientific and only served to fix the idea of their apparently absolute worthlessness. It was generally considered impossible to reclaim them as they were thought to be on the sea level and directly affected by the ocean tides. Since the establishment of the trustees, the belief in the feasibility of drainage has grown with every survey, and engineering investigation and spasmodic efforts have been made to effect a reclamation of a portion of the area. The most important effort of this kind was that of the Hamilton Disston company, which owns by purchase and otherwise about four million acres. A survey made by the company's engineers, among whom were V. P. Keller and J. M. Kreamer, showed that the surface of Lake Okechobee was a little over twenty-one feet above the sea level. The Disston Company, acting upon this information, began operations on the Gulf side in 1881, opening a waterway from Lake Okechobee to Lake Hicpoche and thence along the Caloosahatchee River to the Gulf. This gave direct communication through a distance of sixty-five miles from Lake Okechobee to the Caloosahatchee valley and the Gulf. This passage was not successful, for the immense volume of water from Lake Okechobee, coming annually through the canal during the summer rainy season, overflowed the banks of the Caloosahatchee River and flooded the lands along its course. Although these operations were carried on for fifteen years, and not abandoned until 1896, it was not until 1902 that the canal was closed again. This backed the water into the Okechobee region and the MAP OF FLORIDA, SHOWING EVERGLADE COUNTRY, AND ROUTE OF PROPOSED CANALS THAT WILL DRAIN ITS SWAMPS. cash and internal improvements, a very large share, leaving only about three million acres now vested in the State. Before their grant to the State by the national government these lands figured only in story, and their actual occupation, as far as the Everglades were concerned, was left to a few half-breeds and Indians |