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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



for measuring furnace temperatures. Scien- 

 tific discovery, he declared, wiiether costly 

 or cheap, is, in its results, beyond price, 

 for you never know whether the abstract dis- 

 covery will not lead to inventions of great 

 industrial importance. He could point to 

 quite small physical discoveries which later 

 received great technical applications. When 

 Huygens investigated the singular double 

 refraction of calcareous spar, no one sup- 

 posed that so small a point in physics would 

 have a commercial value over the whole 

 world in the sugar industry and in brewing. 



Agricultural Depression. A recent edi- 

 torial in Garden and Forest, under the above 

 title, deserves the careful attention of the 

 farmer. It is based on an address delivered 

 by Prof. Bailey before a horticultural school 

 in this State. Prof. Bailey protested, in the 

 first place, against the prevalent idea that 

 the farmer is suffering more than other mem- 

 bers of the community. He is suffering 

 from the general stagnation of business, and 

 is no worse oif than his neighbor. There is 

 no special road to renewed prosperity for the 

 farmer unless the condition of the whole coun- 

 try is improved, and any legislation designed to 

 aid farmers as a class would be not only in- 

 effective but pernicious. The farms of New 

 York State average from three thousand to 

 five thousand dollars in value, and with this 

 capital invested prudent farmers are able to 

 support their families, while it is doubtful if 

 the same amount of capital invested in busi- 

 ness would average as much. Prof. Bailey 

 added that under the homestead act great 

 areas of free and railroad lands were taken 

 possession of by numbers of immigrants who 

 rushed into the West to make homes for 

 themselves. The area of cultivated land in- 

 creased at a much more rapid rate than the 

 population grew, and a surplus of breadstuffs 

 soon caused depressed prices. Since the 

 greater part of our arable lands are now 

 occupied, the population is growing more 

 rapidly than the area of cultivated land is 

 xpandmg, so that we may look for the time 

 in the near future when the demand for food 

 will, in some measure, equal the supply, and 

 then the stringency will cease and the farmer 

 may expect a greater reward for his labor ; 

 and not only this, but we may expect a great 

 advance in agricultural and horticultural 



science and practice in the next few years. 

 " Phosphates from rock and potash from the 

 Stassfurt mines are already cheap, and even 

 now it is announced that German investiga- 

 tors are on the eve of perfecting processes 

 for drawing upon the vast stores of nitrogen 

 iu the air, so as to make that most expensive 

 element of plant food as cheap as the others. 

 Prof. Nobbe, of Saxony, the distinguished 

 plant physiologist, claims that he has pro- 

 duced on a commercial scale pure cultures of 

 the different bacteria which are efficient in 

 affixing the free nitrogen of the air in a 

 form available for plant food, and has them 

 for sale in small glass bottles. It is claimed 

 that the soil can be inoculated with these 

 organisms for the modest sum of one dollar 

 and twenty-five cents an acre. Of course, it 

 may be premature to place much confidence 

 in this new method of securing fertility, but 

 it has long been considered probable, and is 

 of enough importance to have been made the 

 subject of several papers read before the 

 Royal Agricultural Society of England." 



Exploration of Spitzbergen. The ex- 

 ploring expedition of Sir Martin Conway and 

 Mr. Trevor-Battye to Spitzbergen had among 

 its members a geologist, a naturalist, and an 

 artist three factors to the production of as 

 complete a picture as possible of what they 

 saw. The object of the journey was to pene- 

 trate into the interior of the island, of which 

 the coast was already fairly well known. The 

 spectacle as they entered one of the western 

 fiords was described by Sir Martin Conway 

 in the British Association as having been 

 extraordinarily brilliant. " They thought 

 Spitzbergen must be in heaven." They had 

 anticipated, from what had been written of 

 the country, that they would have to cross 

 either glaciers or a snow sheet, and had 

 therefore provided themselves with Nansen 

 sledges. But as they proceeded it proved that 

 their journey was to be over broken stones 

 and bogs. On the first day, when they had 

 journeyed half a mile, they found that their 

 path lay between a slope on the right and 

 cliffs on the left, while every four or five 

 hundred yards there was a deep gully with 

 practically vertical sides. These gullies were 

 filled with rotten snow. On the first day 

 they covered about three miles, and their 

 progress through the island was a repetition 



