834 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of moving them about the greasy deck of a rolling ship was attended 

 with a terrible amount of risk. For only four men at most could get 

 fair hold of a cask, and when she took it into her silly old hull to 

 start rolling, just as we had got one halfway across the deck, with 

 nothing to grip your feet, and the knowledge that one stumbling man 

 would mean a sudden slide of the ton and a half weight, and a little 

 heap of mangled corpses somewhere in the lee scuppers — well, one 

 always wanted to be very thankful when the lashings were safely 

 passed. 



The whale being a small one, as before noted, the whole business 

 was over within three days, and the decks scrubbed and rescrubbed 

 until they had quite regained their normal whiteness. The oil was 

 poured by means of a funnel and long canvas hose into the casks 

 stowed in the ground tier at the bottom of the ship, and the gear, all 

 carefully cleaned and neatly " stopped up," stowed snugly away below 

 again. 



SKETCH OF MANLY MILES. 



TO Dr. Manly Miles belongs the distinction of having been the 

 first professor of practical agriculture in the United States, as 

 he was appointed to that then newly instituted position in the Michi- 

 gan Agricultural College in 1865. 



Professor Miles was born in Homer, Cortland County, New 

 York, July 20, 1826, the son of Manly Miles, a soldier of the Revolu- 

 tion; while his mother, Mary Cushman, was a lineal descendant of 

 Miles Standish and Thomas Cushman, whose father, Joshua Cush- 

 man, joining the Mayflower colony at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 

 1621, left him there with Governor Bradford when he returned to 

 England. 



When Manly, the son, was eleven years old, the family re- 

 moved to Flint, Michigan, where he employed his time in farm work 

 and the acquisition of knowledge, and later in teaching. He had 

 a common-school education, and improved all the time he could spare 

 from his regular occupations in reading and study. It is recorded of 

 him in those days that he was always successful in whatever he un- 

 dertook. In illustration of the skill and thoroughness with which he 

 performed his tasks, his sister relates an incident of his sowing plaster 

 for the first time, when his father expressed pleasure at his having 

 distributed the lime so evenly and so well. It appears that he did 

 not spare himself in doing the work, for so completely was he 

 covered that he is said to have looked like a plaster cast, " with only 

 his bright eyes shining through." A thrashing machine was brought 



