POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



861 



Nearly five hundred dollars were paid out in 

 Michigan from July, 1889, to March, 1890, 

 "for 15,697 sparrow-heads." Most of the 

 birds, Mr. Cook says, were red-polled linnets 

 valuable birds. It would perhaps be bet- 

 ter to protect the good birds more efficiently 

 and not worry so much about the sparrows. 

 That plan has had excellent results in New 

 Jersey. 



Permanency of the Earth's Features. 



A paper was read in the American Geologi- 

 cal Society by Prof. E. W. Claypole, trav- 

 ersing the doctrine toward which a few 

 geologists are tending, that the sea-beds and 

 the continental masses are permanent and 

 date back to the original consolidation of 

 the earth's crust. After reviewing the sev- 

 eral arguments by which this theory is sup- 

 ported, the author concluded that " we have 

 ample evidence of change of level to ac- 

 count for the conversion of the deep sea 

 into dry land and vice versa, and that the 

 absence of deep-sea deposits among the 

 stratified rocks is not a valid objection. It 

 would also follow that the depression may 

 occur in any part of the world according to 

 laws as yet unknown, but that when a de- 

 pression is full of sediment re-elevation is 

 likely to occur ; that the deep ocean-beds, 

 instead of being permanent outlines of the 

 earth's contour, are subject to the same laws 

 of elevation that govern the rest of nature. 

 On this view the ocean abysses would be 

 areas of subsidence unfilled by deposit be- 

 cause they were out of the reach of shore 

 action, rather than permanent depressions 

 on the earth's surface." 



Democracy and the Chnrchcs. The In- 

 fluence of Democracy on Religion is the sub- 

 ject of an article in the London Spectator, 

 suggested by the popular enthusiasm aroused 

 by the funeral of Mrs. Booth, of the Salva- 

 tion Army. The author accepts the story 

 of the Salvation Army, and the story of the 

 Wesleyan movement of the last century, as 

 testimony to the unconscious influence of 

 democratic feeling on ecclesiastical organi- 

 zation ; and he believes that the whole char- 

 acter of the Reformation and its offshoots 

 has been gravely affected by the attraction 

 of democratic forms and phases of feeling 

 for religious natures. Both Judaism and 



Christianity have always placed the poor, 

 and especially the poor in spirit, above those 

 accounted the possessors of this world's 

 privileges ; and, as a consequence, these re- 

 ligions have struck at the heart cf slavery, 

 and have raised women to the spiritual level 

 of men. The earlier Protestant enthusiasm 

 may have profited by the democratic aver- 

 sion to specially privileged spiritual orders, 

 like the priesthood and the episcopate. The 

 recognition by the Wesleyans of the minis- 

 terial capacity of the laity, and the jealousy 

 against a hierarchy manifested by many 

 other of the Nonconformist churches, gave 

 the religious world a consciousness of the 

 popular advantage which a more emphatic 

 development of the democratic idea in re- 

 ligion bestowed on those churches and sects 

 which were founded on free choice by the 

 laity of their ecclesiastical representatives. 

 The Nonconformists have been compensated 

 for their rejection of state privileges by be- 

 ing brought thereby nearer to the people. 

 The influence of democratic tendencies in 

 other churches is also marked. The univer- 

 sal tendency in Ireland, where the priest- 

 hood are of the class which feels most keenly 

 the pressure of democratic principles, to 

 modify and even defy the authority of the 

 Roman Catholic Church in the interest of 

 the peasantry, has been very startling. In 

 England the Episcopal churches, both An- 

 glican and Roman Catholic, are curiously 

 divided between the strong democratic sym- 

 pathies which their rulers feel under the 

 pressure of public opinion and the natural 

 leaning of their theology against anything 

 like concession to the lawless cravings of 

 the human heart. Roman Catholic dignita- 

 ries in England express their sympathy with 

 Irish offenders against the law and with re- 

 calcitrant bishops in Ireland. Church con- 

 gresses discuss social reforms with a dispo- 

 sition to find a middle ground between the 

 old principle of individual right and liberty 

 and the new collectivism. In the United 

 States even Roman Catholic priests take 

 part with the Knights of Labor and ignore 

 the authority of their bishops. English Ro- 

 man Catholics support earnestly movements 

 known to be popular, and when there is a 

 struggle between labor and capital the great- 

 est man is on the side of labor, often when 

 labor is in the wrong. Everywhere the 



