372 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



collecting a tax upon that species of property in the State. When the 

 property is out of the State, there can be no tax upon it for which 

 interest can be retained. The tax laws of Pennsylvania can have no 

 extra-territorial operation." 



The decision of the United States Supreme Court, of which an 

 analysis has been above given, ought therefore to be regarded as con- 

 stituting a real chapter of progress in American local taxation; be- 

 cause, by contributing powerfully to break down the present popu- 

 lar system, which, founded on an erroneous and impracticable prin- 

 ciple, never has been and never can be executed with justice and 

 efficiency, the time is thereby hastened when a better system shall 

 be accepted and inaugurated. The logic of this decision, moreover, 

 will not only pervade courts — State and Federal — but will be felt 

 in legislative halls, and be impressed upon the conscience of the 

 people. The court itself, in referring to the tax under considera- 

 tion, says with great point and truth: " It is only one of many cases 

 where, under the name of taxation, an oppressive exaction is made, 

 without constitutional warrant, amounting to little less than an arbi- 

 trary seizure of private property. It is, in fact, a forced contribu- 

 tion levied upon property held in other States, where it is subjected, 

 or may be subjected, to taxation upon an estimate of its full value." 



But this new decision teaches us that all personal property, if 

 taxed at all, must be taxed in the city or town where found, and not 

 elsewhere. The injustice and oppression are also the same as in the 

 case of State exterritorial taxation when the tax is levied upon a per- 

 son for property not within the district where the property is actually 

 located and protected. It is only a degree of oppression, and this 

 authoritative opinion of the United States Supreme Court can not 

 fail to give a new impulse to the feeling that taxation without protec- 

 tion is merely legalized brigandage. 



" Why do we study animals at all ? " asks Prof. L. C. Miall, in his British 

 Association address. " Some of us merely want to gain practical skill be- 

 fore attempting 1 to master the structure of the human body ; others hope to 

 qualify themselves to answer the questions of geologists and farmers ; a 

 very few wish to satisfy their natural curiosity about the creatures which 

 they find in the wood, the field, or the sea. But surely our chief reason for 

 studying animals ought to be that we would know more of life, of the 

 modes of growth of individuals and races, of the causes of decay and ex- 

 tinction, of the adaptation of living organisms to their surroundings. 

 Some of us aspire to know in outline the course of life upon the earth, and 

 to learn or, failing that, to conjecture, how life originated. Our own life 

 is the thing of all others which interests us most deeply, but everything 

 interests us which throws even a faint and reflected light upon human 

 life." 



