POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



6 35 



will marvel that I write thus, for no man 

 hath seen God at any time, yet in his works 

 we see him daily, but now after a more spe- 

 cial manner." Then, after giving a clear 

 account of the whole occurrence, the writer 

 concludes with an exhortation to unbeliev- 

 ers : " Now let the atheist stand amazed at 

 this work of the Lord." In certain districts 

 of Berkshire there is still a tradition of the 

 fall of these meteorites, and old people 

 speak of it as such an event as to have 

 created a belief at the time that " the world 

 was coming to an end." 



Education in the Pnblic Schools of Mas- 

 sachusetts. Mr. Wendell Phillips recent- 

 ly delivered an address on the subject of 

 education, in which occurred the follow- 

 ing remarks upon the value of the intel- 

 lectual training a girl receives in the pub- 

 lic schools of Massachusetts : " The public 

 schools teach her arithmetic, philosophy, 

 trigonometry, geometry, music, botany, and 

 history, and all that class of knowledge. 

 Seven out of ten of them, remember, are to 

 earn their bread by the labor of their hands. 

 Well, at fifteen, we give that child back to 

 her parents utterly unfitted for any kind of 

 work that is worth a morsel of bread. If 

 the pupil could only read the ordinary news- 

 paper to three auditors it would be some- 

 thing, but this the scholar so educated, so 

 produced, cannot do. I repeat it : four- 

 fifths of the girls you present to society at 

 fifteen cannot read a page intelligibly." But 

 the current system of school-education is 

 faulty and defective no less with regard to 

 boys than with regard to girls, for, as Mr. 

 Phillips further observes, "we produce only 

 the superficial result of the culture we strive 

 for. Now, I claim that this kind of educa- 

 tion injures the boy or girl in at least three 

 ways : first, they are able, only by forget- 

 ting what they have learned and beginning 

 again, to earn their day's bread; in the 

 second place, it is earned reluctantly ; third, 

 there is no ambition for perfection aroused. 

 It seems to be a fact, which many of the 

 public educators of to-day overlook, that 

 seven-tenths of the people born into this 

 world earn their living on matter and not 

 on mind. Now, friends, I protest against 

 this whole system of common schools in 

 Massachusetts. It lacks the first element 



of preparation for life. We take the young 

 girl or the young boy whose parents are 

 able to lift them into an intellectual profes- 

 sion ; we keep them until they are eighteen 

 years old in the high schools ; we teach them 

 the sciences; they go to the academy or the 

 college to pursue some course of prepara- 

 tion for their presumed course through life. 

 Why not keep them a little longer and give 

 them other than intellectual training for the 

 business of life ? " 



Influence of Color of Soil on Potatoes. 



Having observed that potatoes grown in 

 dark-colored soil are less subject to disease 

 than those grown in soil of lighter color, 

 Mr. J. B. Hannay, member of the Edinburgh 

 Royal Society, conjectured that the dif- 

 ference must be due to the greater absorp- 

 tion of heat by the darker soil. He ac- 

 cordingly made the following experiment : 

 A piece of ground, consisting of a kind of 

 blue till, was divided into two parts, both 

 being planted with potatoes in the ordinary 

 way. One of the parts was then covered 

 with soot, which had been carefully washed 

 till no soluble matter remained in it ; the 

 other part was left as planted. The pota- 

 toes in the soot-covered portion sprouted 

 first, and throughout were much healthier 

 than the others. The temperature of both 

 portions was from time to time noted on 

 sunny days with the following result : 



From this table it clearly appears that 

 the potatoes grown in dark soil have a 

 warmer climate, so to speak, than those in 

 a light one. The tubers with no soot were 

 weak, and had a great deal of disease among 

 them, while the other lot were nearly all 

 healthy. 



Chemical examination showed the prin- 



