THE ROTATION OF THE FARM. 383 



with the following results : England (London), 1 ; Canada (Mont- 

 real), 2; "Washington, D. C, 1 : Texas, 1 ; Illinois, 2; Michigan, 3 ; 

 Montana, 1 ; Ohio, 2 ; Florida, 3 ; North Carolina, 1 ; Virginia, 4 ; 

 Washington Territory, 1 ; Pennsylvania, 5 ; California, 1 ; Iowa, 

 1 ; Connecticut, 10 ; New Hampshire, 4 ; Vermont, 1 ; Ehode Isl- 

 and, 9 ; New York city, 79 ; Massachusetts coastwise counties, 140. 

 It certainly seems to me that there could be no clearer proof 

 than this that the desire to move inland comes from the thickly 

 populated coast lines and the vicinities of the larger cities. That, 

 after all, the greatest demand for Massachusetts farms comes from 

 Massachusetts itself must be a glory and a pride to that noble old 

 Commonwealth, and an acquittal from the charge that her thou- 

 sands of common schools and hundreds of town libraries have 

 cultivated in her sons and daughters a distaste for the life of an 

 independent farmer. It is not abandonment, but rotation, and 

 seems to illustrate one of Emerson's postulates, viz., that "de- 

 mand and supply run into every invisible and unnamed province 

 of whim and passion." But, apart from whim and passion, there 

 is a great justice in this rotation. The catalogue might have been 

 entitled A List of Farms in Massachusetts whose Owners are 

 willing to sell them rather cheaply, and better express what ac- 

 tually appears to be the situation. The Rotation of the Farm, or 

 the Rotation of the Owner of the Farm, would seem to be the 

 better title. 



Mr. Francis Galton avows himself a qualified believer in the possibility of 

 signaling to Mars. Accepting as a fact that the Lick telescope can bring the 

 planet optically to within 50,000 miles, he has found that a reflected beam of sun- 

 light, sent through a hole one tenth of an inch square, is visible as a glint at a 

 distance often miles. Hence, with fairly clear atmospheres, the flash from many 

 mirrors simultaneously, whose aggregate width is fifteen yards and their aggregate 

 length, say, to allow for slope, twenty-five yards, would be visible in Mars, if seen 

 through a telescope such as that at the Lick Observatory. "With funds and good- 

 will there seems no insuperable difficulty in flashing from a very much larger 

 surface than the above, and sending signals that the inhabitants of Mars, if they 

 have eyes, wits, and fairly good telescopes, would speculate on and wish to 

 answer. One, two, three, might be slowly flashed over and over again from us 

 to them, and possibly in some years, to allow time for speculation in Mars to bear 

 fruit, one, two, three might come back in response." 



The remarkable pit of the Creux de Souci, France, is situated in a sheet of 

 recent basalt on the south side of the Puy de Montchal. The opening is eighty- 

 two feet in diameter and thirty-eight feet deep ; but at that depth a hole about 

 ten feet wide communicates with a hollow seventy feet deep, at the bottom of 

 which is a stagnant pool overladen with carbonic acid which forbids access to the 

 water surface. The interior is a vast vaulted hollow, apparently formed in the 

 basalt when semi-fluid, by an explosion of volcanic gas. The temperature falls 

 from 51° Fahr. in the open air to 34° near the water. 



