570 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



be the least fatigued, and so the first to 

 awake, or the most exhausted, and there- 

 fore the most difficult to arouse. The secret 

 of good sleep is, the physiological condi- 

 tions of rest being established, so to work 

 and weary the several parts of the organism 

 as to give them a proportionally equal need 

 of rest at the same moment ; and, to wake 

 early and feel ready to rise, a fair and equal 

 start of the sleepers should be secured ; and 

 the wise self-manager should not allow a 

 drowsy feeling of the consciousness or 

 weary senses, or an exhausted muscular 

 system, to beguile him into the folly of go- 

 ing to sleep again when once he has been 

 aroused. After a very few days of self- 

 discipline, the man who resolves not to 

 doze, that is, not to allow some sleepy part 

 of his body to keep him in bed after his 

 brain has once awakened, will find himself, 

 without knowing why, an early riser. 



Reafforesting of Ireland. — At the sug- 

 gestion of Dr. Lyon, M. P. for Dublin, Mr 

 D. Howitz, Forest Conservator of Denmark, 

 has made an examination of the resources 

 and the need of Ireland for forest cultiva- 

 tion, and his observations and conclusions 

 have been embodied in a parliamentary re- 

 port. He has found that "swamps and 

 morasses are created in Ireland from the 

 want of trees to drink up the superfiuous 

 moisture. Irish rivers inundate the dis- 

 tricts they traverse because there are no 

 forests on the mountain-tops to arrest and 

 retain the autumn and spring rains. In 

 summer there is a dearth of water because 

 the trees are gone which would have served, 

 each, as a reservoir. . . . Irish agriculture, 

 by its system of straight drains, which Mr. 

 Howitz entirely disapproves, has acted as if 

 water were poison instead of nutriment. 

 In the past by felling the mountain-woods, 

 and in the present by planting no successors, 

 it has done worse by tapping the supply at 

 its source. Irish fruitfulness is gradually 

 being drained and washed away into the 

 lakes and seas, and no preparation has been 

 made to replenish it." Yet the island pre- 

 sents the especial conditions for rendering 

 forestry easy and beneficial. Five million 

 of its twenty million acres are waste, and 

 might be planted with a reasonable certainty 

 of profit ; and these lands would grow valu- 



able timber, instead of the commoner and 

 cheaper kinds. The list of available trees 

 includes thirty-six conifers, thirty-eight de- 

 ciduous and hard-wood species, and eight 

 sorts of bushes. Mr. Howitz has drawn up 

 from personal inspection a scheme for plant- 

 ing a hundred thousand acres every year for 

 the next thirty years. By the end of that 

 time a plantation, he estimates, will come to 

 full productive capacity, besides having al- ' 

 ready given incidental returns from brush- 

 wood and saplings. The cost per acre, at 

 the end of thirty years, will have been, at 

 the highest, £20, or $100 ; while the lowest 

 annual profits are computed, at present 

 prices, at one pound, or five dollars per 

 acre ; and as the demand for timber is all 

 the time rising, and the area of supply nar- 

 rowing, they are hkely to be higher. 



Tbe Training of a Medicine-Man. — The 



medicine-man among the Indians of French 

 Guiana, who is called the piayc, is priest, 

 doctor, wizard, and mountebank, chiefiy the 

 last, all in one. He prepares himself for his 

 office by going through a course of special 

 training, full of terrible experiences, to 

 which he submits willingly for the sake 

 of the advantages he expects to g-ain. The 

 candidate, who is supposed to have had 

 some kind of a call to the office, must ob- 

 ligate himself to submit, without flinching, 

 to all the processes of discipline that are to 

 be imposed upon him. Except for a little 

 mstruction in the concoction of poisons, the 

 discipline has no reference to the medical 

 art. For six months he is put upon a diet 

 of manioc, which he must feed himself with 

 his feet, using his hands only to guide his 

 feet to his mouth ; then he is allowed dried 

 fish, to be taken in the same way, and to- 

 bacco, of which he must swallow the juice. 

 Having survived this for a year, he is " ex- 

 amined " by being held under water till he 

 is almost strangled, and then made imme- 

 diately to walk over red-hot coals, deliber- 

 ately. Another year of the former regimen 

 is given him to prepare for his second ex- 

 amination, when he is tied up in a bag full 

 of red ants, previously well shaken to a 

 pitch of savage excitement. He is next 

 treated to a most ingeniously devised ap- 

 plication of wasp-stings, and to a trial of 

 snake-bites, against which he is permitted 



