POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of which are in active service, two are kept 

 for reserves, and one has been esliibited in 

 many parts of the State as a sample. Mr. 

 Frank A. Hutchins, in his account of the li- 

 braries, says that the eagerness of the public 

 for them " is touching, and as evident among 

 people who read little as among the more in- 

 telligent." Illiterate parents seemed to know, 

 almost by instinct, that if their children could 

 read good books freely, they would be likely 

 to be better men and women, and to hold 

 better stations in life. Even rough men ac- 

 knowledged the value of good literature. 

 One place that had been described as a " hell 

 hole " took the books notwithstanding its bad 

 reputation, and in a few weeks showed double 

 the circulation of its " scoffing neighbor." 

 A storekeeper took in a library, hoping it 

 would help get the loafing boys out of his 

 store. " They are good boys," he said, " ex- 

 cept for their habit of loafing, but they 

 haven't anything to do and I can't turn them 

 out." Of the thirty-four stations in Dunn 

 County, twenty-two are in farmhouses, nine 

 in post offices, two in country stores, and one 

 in a railway station. The success of the li- 

 braries in all parts of the county was imme- 

 diate and the interest has continued to grow, 

 an increase in the circulation being men- 

 tioned in each succeeding report. Other 

 places have taken up the idea, and there are 

 now one hundred traveling libraiies at work 

 in Wisconsin. 



A Tornado's Work on Trees. — After the 

 tornado that swept a part of the city of St. 

 Louis, May 27, 1896, a study was made of 

 the injury done to the trees, the general re- 

 sults of which, with some of the technical 

 details, were communicated to the Academy 

 of Sciences by Mr. Hermann von Schrenck. 

 Hardly a tree escaped injury of some kind, 

 except possibly a few cypresses, which with 

 their conical forms yielded to the force of 

 the wind. Some of the uprooted maples and 

 elms were simply turned over, and when 

 straightened up a few days afterward re- 

 sumed their former growth. Most of them, 

 however, lost all their principal branches, 

 and some were reduced to the trunk with 

 perhaps two forks. These were trimmed up 

 to look like very heavily pollarded trees. The 

 new leaves were in their most active growth, 

 and the destruction of them was very marked. 



The leaves were wet, and the injuries were 

 evidently largely due to rubbing against 

 branches. Flying missiles of various kinds 

 aided in the destruction. " Grains of sand 

 and small bits of wood and stone, flying 

 through the air at velocities ranging from 

 fifty to eighty miles per hour, were well able 

 to shred the tender leaves." Many trees 

 were left with hardly a sound leaf on their 

 remaining branches. Other injuries were in- 

 flicted, not so evident as those to branches 

 and leaves. " Numerous trees had trunks of 

 sufficient elasticity to bend before the force 

 of the wind without breaking. In swaying to 

 and fro, the bark was considerably stretched 

 on one side and compressed on the oppo- 

 site side, and in the next instant the condi- 

 tions were reversed. When this took place 

 repeatedly, the bark was torn horizontally for 

 several feet, sometimes on but one side, more 

 often on both. The violent wrencliing of a 

 tree with a large top, like the maple, produced 

 considerable strain upon the bark, especially 

 when the force applied was a twisting one. 

 When the strain was too great, the bark came 

 off in sheets, or split longitudinally. ... In 

 many trees there was no outward sign of this 

 injury for several months ; not until the 

 loosened bark died did any shrinkage take 

 place, but then it split and curled up." 

 Wounds made by flying pieces of wood and 

 slate cutting away bark or imbedding them- 

 selves in the wood healed rapidly. In the 

 course of June the axillary buds for 1897 on 

 such twigs as were left began to unfold, and 

 produced new leaves ; and by September a 

 growth of six inches or more had been made 

 from these buds. In trees that had no such 

 buds to fall back upon, numerous adventi- 

 tious buds broke out from all parts of the 

 trunk and remaining larger branches. In 

 many of the most injured trees this growth 

 was very small, and they failed to revive the 

 next spring. 



Archseology a True Science. — Following 

 Sir John Evans's presidential address in the 

 British Association on the Antiquity of Man, 

 Lord Kelvin spoke for the claims of archae- 

 ology to be placed among the strict sciences. 

 There is too much tendency among scientific 

 men, he said, to include under the term true 

 science nothing but dead physical facts and 

 certain definite branches of biological knowl- 



