SECRETARY'S PORTFOLIO. 355 



same article that we suppose we buy for tlie table, but the kind with which 

 the sugar refiners are now charged witli adulterating or rather diluting the com- 

 mon sugar; namely, glucose, or fruit sugar, it being precisely the same as our 

 table or cane sugar, with about ten per cent, of water chemically combined 

 with it. S. B. Peck. 



Muskegon County, Mich. 



EATING FRUIT. 



For most persons ripe fruit is very healthful food. To be sure, there are 

 abnormal people to whom even the delicate strawberry is a poison. But too 

 many bad feelings are laid to the consumption of fruit when they are due to 

 the accompaniments of fruit. One may go into the strawberry patch and eat 

 his fill, raise up, move about a little and be ready for more, and still eat on 

 indefinitely and receive no harm. The same person, by consuming a tenth 

 as many berries done up in a four-story short-cake enveloped in sugar and rich 

 cream, may feel very unpleasantly thereafter, and in a majority of cases the 

 strawberries Imve to take the blame. The same is true of the long list of fruits 

 that follow the strawberry. We are too apt to accompany the eating of fruit 

 with things that impair digestion, and lay the foundation of disease. In 

 eating most kinds of fruit the diet should be as simple as possible ; a little 

 sugar is proper, but cream and pastry should be avoided in much quantity. 

 They are very palatable, to be sure, but it is a question how much w^e can 

 alford to please the palate at the expense of a healthy stomach. 



S. Q. Lent. 



BIRDS. 



HE LOVES THEM ALL. 



Professor A. J. Cook of the Michis^an A2:ricultural Colle2:c, writes to The 

 Scientific Farmer that having given the subject no little research and observa- 

 tion he is fully convinced that nearly all of our birds, not excepting robin, jay 

 and grackle, are the farmers efiBcient aids and very worthy of his fostering 

 care. He has made ^^ actual examination of the birds' stomachs pur]">osely to 

 eliminate every possible source of error." 



THE ENGLISH SPARROW. 



Gentry in his work on sparrows, after a thorough examination of the habits 

 of the English sparrow, thus concludes : 



In Europe the sparrow has been placed by eminent and well qualified inves- 

 tigators foremost in the rank of useful birds. When it has been exterminated 

 it has been necessarv to re-establish and foster it at infinite trouble and 



