24 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



the invention of gunpowder diminished the importance of personal 

 prowess, our anti-natural dogmas accomplished their tendency in the 

 rapid physical corruption of their devotees. The dull and gloomy 

 slavery of the monasteries was transferred to the management of all 

 educational institutions ; for several centuries the bodily rights of the 

 poor convent-pupils were not only disregarded but willfully depreci- 

 ated. Educational influences became the chief cause of physical de- 

 generacy, and the superficialness of our reformatory measures proves 

 that we have not yet recognized the root of the evil. 



But the voice of Nature has repeated its protest in the yearnings 

 of every new generation. Our children still long for out-door life, for 

 active exercise, for the free development of every bodily faculty ; and, 

 if we cease to suppress those instincts, the regenerative tendency of 

 Nature will soon assert itself, and the time may come when man will 

 be once more the physical as well as mental superior of his fellow- 

 creatures. 



-- 



THE MINERAL SPRINGS OF SARATOGA.* 



bt chaeles f. fish. 



ASIDE from the rich field for scientific research that the mineral 

 springs of Saratoga present to the student of natural phenomena, 

 the majority of the members of this Association are undoubtedly in- 

 terested to a greater or less extent in a product that forms, with many, 

 a large, important, and increasing item of trade, there being probably 

 no one class of mineral w^aters of domestic production, or from any 

 one locality, that are used to so great an extent as those from Saratoga 

 Springs. On this account, as w^ell as for the reason that our Associa- 

 tion holds its twenty-eighth annual meeting in this village, w^here an 

 opportunity is afforded of personally inspecting the source of supply 

 of these w^aters, it will, perhaps, not prove uninteresting to present 

 some facts regarding an article that has contributed so largely to the 

 prosperity of Saratoga in the past, and upon which its future interests 

 to a great degree depend. 



Saratoga Springs is an incorporated village, having a resident popu- 

 lation of about ten thousand, which is largely augmented during the 

 summer season. It has an altitude of three hundred and five feet 

 above tide-water, is one hundred and eighty-eight miles north of New 

 York City, on the line of the Rensselaer and Saratoga Railroad, and is 

 situated in and on either side of a valley extending from northeast to 

 southwest. Prior to 1767 little or nothing was known by the whites 

 regarding the waters of this section. In August of that year Sir 



* Read at the Saratoga meeting of the American Pliarmaceutical Association, Septem- 

 ber 16, 1880. 



