254 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



their assistants, and the students are fa- 

 miliarized with chemical manipulation, the 

 determination of the different kinds of min- 

 erals and plants, draughting, land-survey- 

 ing, the management of animals, agricult- 

 ural machines, etc. The farm attached to 

 the school comprises 300 hectares (about 

 750 acres). 



Noxious Vapors and Health. — In the 



report of an English commission on noxious 

 vapors given off in the course of various 

 manufactures, a principle is laid down 

 which, if accepted by courts, would afford 

 a speedy remedy for many of the ills of 

 modern life. What the report says with 

 special reference to alkali and copper works 

 may be applied to such nuisances as fat- 

 rendering and petroleum-refining establish- 

 ments ; also to such destroyers of quiet as 

 elevated railroads. " To be free from bod- 

 ily discomfort," says the report, quoting the 

 words of Mr. Simon, " is a condition of health. 

 If a man gets up with a headache, ^ro tanto 

 he is not in good health ; if a man gets up 

 unable to eat his breakfast, pro tanto he is 

 not in good health. When a man is living in 

 an atmosphere which keeps him constant- 

 ly below par, as many of those trade-nui- 

 sances do, all that is an injury to health." 

 But it is more than doubtful whether the com- 

 mission will be able to enforce any measures 

 that will effectually abate these nuisances. 

 It is admitted that, besides the direct in- 

 jury to the public health, noxious factory- 

 gases are chargeable with doing serious 

 damage to agriculture. Cattle die from graz- 

 ing on poisoned herbage, farms become 

 parched up, yellow, and cannot be tenant- 

 ed ; parks, woodlands, and hedges, are slow- 

 ly annihilated. But the factories give em- 

 ployment to the population, and working- 

 people are content to labor even in an un- 

 wholesome atmosphere for their daily bread. 

 To require the entire suppression of nui- 

 sances involves outlay of money, and, in the 

 present depressed state of manufacturing 

 industry in Britain, proprietors are unwill- 

 ing to incur expense. They would close 

 their establishments, so throwing people 

 out of employment, rather than burden 

 themselves with the cost of carrying out 

 the provisions of such a law as the sanitari- 

 ans demand. Said the President of the Salt 



Chamber of Commerce : " We are taking 

 no steps whatever to consume our own black 

 smoke. The local authority must fine me 

 as long as they can ; if they fine me to too 

 great an extent I shall have to shut up. 

 This will be the case with all of us, and the 

 trade will be driven from the district." 



A Defense of the Sparrows. — Dr. Elliott 

 Coues's " railing accusations " against the 

 English sparrow have called forth many a 

 hot-tempered reply from the friends of that 

 bird, some of whom are so unpatriotic as 

 to prefer the foreign intruder to the feath- 

 e.red songsters of their native land. Among 

 these partisans of the English sparrow must 

 be numbered Mr. Robert B. Roosevelt, who, 

 in a late number of Forest and Stream, scru- 

 ples not to answer "railing with railing." 

 Dr. Coues, it will be remembered, makes five 

 distinct categories of the sparrow's friends ; 

 Mr. Roosevelt does not care to differentiate 

 the bird's enemies, but lumps them in one 

 class, the " sparrow-hawks." The sparrows 

 are worthless idlers, say these sparrow- 

 hawks ; but what, asks Mr. Roosevelt, was 

 the condition of our city parks and tree- 

 shaded streets before the advent of the 

 sparrows ? Were they not practically im- 

 passable from the numbers of disgusting 

 measuring-worms which hung in festoons 

 from the limbs of the trees? The parks 

 were abandoned absolutely to the worms, 

 which by June had stripped every leaf, often 

 killing the trees, and making them as bare 

 and denuded as in mid-winter. The spar- 

 rows came, and everything was changed. 

 " But," say the sparrow-hawks, " our native 

 birds might have done the same service." 

 "Might have done!" exclaims Mr. Roose- 

 velt, contemptuously ; " they never did." 

 On the other hand, the sparrows " did not 

 pave the parks with good intentions, but set 

 about their appointed work and did it. 

 They did not idle on bush or limb to squeak 

 a feeble attempt at harmony " (such is the 

 fling the author makes at our native feathered 

 songsters); "they did not slip off to steal 

 fruit ; they did not satisfy their minds and 

 feel that they had performed the whole duty 

 of birds by setting up their feathers and 

 saying, ' How pretty I am ! ' They were ex- 

 pected to kill worms, and they killed them. 

 Early and late, without folly or idleness or 



