7H 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that since the meeting of the British Associa- 

 tion in Montreal in 1884 the mineral produc- 

 tion of the Dominion had more than doubled. 

 The principal metals of Canada are gold, sil- 

 ver, nickel, copper, lead, and iron ; besides 

 these, manganese, chromium, antimony, and 

 zinc occur, with platinum and rarer metals. 

 The gold is at present obtained from the 

 provinces of British Columbia, Ontario, and 

 Nova Scotia. In Ontario, discoveries of this 

 metal have been made over an area of about 

 two thousand square miles, in a tract one hun- 

 dred miles wide and two hundred miles long. 

 As for silver, the Slocan mines and those of 

 Trail Creek and East and West Kootenay 

 appear to be of extraordinary richness. The 

 lecturer dwelt at some length on the impor- 

 tance of the resources of Canada in iron and 

 steel, and mentioned nickel, which greatly 

 affects the quality of steel, as a metal the 

 importance of which it is impossible to 

 overestimate, and chromium as a metal with 

 which the manufacturer of projectiles would 

 probably triumph over the man who put nickel 

 into his steel armor. 



The Cruelties of Antivivisectionists. — Dr. 



Charles Minor Blackford, after reviewing the 

 present position and needs of pathology in 

 an address on that subject before the Medi- 

 cal Society of Virginia, spoke of a danger as 

 confronting it which has passed away from 

 every other science. Prof. Andrew D. White, 

 he said, " has lately given us a history of The 

 Warfare of Science, in which he has told, 

 plainly and simply, the story of the army of 

 martyrs to scientific truth, and his record is 

 one that may well make us blush for human- 

 ity. It is true that we no longer have to 

 fear the stake and rack in investigating Na- 

 ture, but, though life and limb are safe, the 

 same spirit survives in other forms. A num- 

 ber of persons, whom, for the sake of our 

 civilization, we will assume to be well in- 

 tended, are striving in many ways to oppose 

 freedom of thought as much now as in the 

 fifteenth century. They lay great emphasis 

 on the commandment ' Thou shalt not kill,' 

 but ignore ' Are ye not worth many spar- 

 rows ? ' Assuming a number of facts that 

 they are unable to prove, they endeavor to 

 make those whose lives are devoted to saving 

 life and relieving pain appear the most cruel 

 of wretches. Never having seen the interior 



of a laboratory, they erect an imaginary one, 

 and coolly assert that the scenes that their 

 own imaginations have conjured up go on in 

 them, and at their meetings vote resolutions 

 condemning physiologists for attempting to 

 save life, and legislatures for forbidding the 

 wearing of our song birds on their hats. In 

 our climate there are not five days in as 

 many years that it is necessary to wear furs 

 for shelter from cold, yet two of the greatest 

 nations of the world have been on the brink 

 of war for some years past, and a harmless 

 and beautiful race of animals have been well- 

 nigh exterminated to supply what is purely 

 an article of vanity and luxury. To supply 

 the ' aigrettes ' worn on woman's bonnets, 

 female herons have to be killed at a time 

 when the death of the mother means the 

 death of her brood ; and yet when a British 

 Humane Society appealed to the leader of 

 the British fashionable world to give up this 

 senseless and cruel ornament, it met an ab- 

 rupt refusal. Similarly, the American bison 

 has been exterminated to gratify vanity ; the 

 same fate awaits the elephant; and, I will 

 venture to say, the pain endured by geese to 

 supply the ' live-goose feathers,' and by horses 

 in having their tails docked and in wearing 

 the ' kimble- jack ' — both thoroughly useless 

 affectations of fashion — is greater than that 

 endured by any animals in a laboratory. In 

 this latter case, not merely do the horses 

 have to endure, without an ancesthetic, cutting 

 through a highly nervous part, but they are 

 rendered defenseless from the attacks of 

 flies and other insects by the loss of Na- 

 ture's weapon, and are forced to drag heavy 

 vehicles at high speed with the head held in 

 an unnatural position by a rough bit in the 

 tender mouth. We can picture the members 

 of antivivisection societies driving to their 

 meeting with horses so mutilated, removing 

 their sealskin coats and aigretted bonnets, 

 and denouncing attempts to find a cure for 

 diphtheria. 



" ' Oh, wad some power the pif tie gi'e us 

 To see oursel's as ithers see us 1 ' " 



Economical Experiences in Canada. — In 



a study of certain characteristics of the his- 

 tory of economics in Canada, presented to 

 the British Association, Prof. Adam Scott 

 describes this history as having been, up to 

 the beginning of the present century and for 



