secretary's budget. 409- 



From all Ihisit appears that there are great stimulating proper- 

 ties even in the unfermented juice of the grape; and as this is free 

 from alcohol, all can take not only a little, but a good deal, " for their- 

 stomach's sake." 



ARE LIVING PLANTS IN R003IS HEALTHFUL? 



The general impression seems to prevail that growing plants in the 

 house are injurious to health, and we know of many instances where 

 they have been turned out of doors simply because their influence on 

 the atmosphere was considered deleterious. This conclusion seems 

 very strange when we take into consideration the fact that but for 

 vegetation we could not exist at all. The leaves of plants, trees and 

 shrubs purify the atmosphere upon which we subsist, restoring it to its 

 normal condition, rendering it healthy and salubrious when vitiated by 

 the breath of animals. The plant feeds upon that in the atmosphere 

 of the living-room that is injurious to us, and in return gives us an at- 

 mosphere adapted to our necessities. It is by no means uncommon to 

 hear this objection raised against plants by him who is constantly 

 poisoning the atmosphere with tobacco smoke. While we are confi- 

 dent the plant in the living room does far more good than harm, we 

 are also confident that the moral influence the geranium exerts upon 

 the household is far greater than that which evolves from an old pipe, 

 or even the best Havana cigar. 



STEAM HEATING. 



1 quote from Prof. Silliman, of Yale College, as follows : 

 ''In passing into a state of vapor water absorbs nearly six times 

 as much heat as is required to raise it from 32° to 212°. This increase 

 of heat would render a solid body red hot by daylight and still the 

 steam produced by it has only 212° of sensible heat. This quantity of 

 heat is twenty and one-half times as much as an equal weight of air 

 can contain and is consequently capable of heating to the same point 

 twenty and one-half times its own weight. The thermometer indicates 

 only 212° of heat in steam at the atmospheric pressure, and still it is 

 susceptible of proof that the steam has really absorbed nearly six 

 times as much heat in becoming vapor as the water from which it arose 

 absorbs in passing from 32° to 21ii°. That the steam really contains 

 this prodigious quantity of heat (essential to its condition as a vapor) 

 we know is an established scientific fact, but it is stowed away, so to 

 speak, in the steam, in a perfectly hidden and insensible manner, and 

 hence it has been called latent heat of steam. But the instant the 



