animal and vegetable world for our food, our medi- 

 cine, our dyes, our clothing, our fuel, as well as for 

 the luxuries of life generally. All this is however 

 undergoing a change. Our fuel is now mostly of 

 mineral origin and the same may be said to a large 

 extent of our medicine and our dyes. Our food still 

 comes from the old sources, but the rapid sequence of 

 the artifical manufacture of food principles needs 

 little but the production of the proteids or album- 

 inoids, to make the chain complete. The synthesis 

 of these latter are still in the future, but when accom- 

 plished, as many competent to judge believe will be 

 the case, the artijieial production of food itself in its 

 totality is only a question of time and points as one 

 consequence to the disuse of the soil for the growth of 

 food. In the interests of a depressed state of agricul- 

 ture, let us hope that this event is in the far distant 

 future and that its development will be as gradual in 

 the future as it has been in the past, and that when 

 the full time of its accomplishment has arrived the 

 earth may at least be spared to yield it? treasures of 

 trees and flowers and that " the desert may yet re- 

 joice and blossom as the rose." 



w 



15 MAY 'l'^ 



