MISCELLANIES. 369 



that its first year's produce was sold for about jC57, nearly ten 

 pounds more than the annual rent of the entire farm. Encouraged 

 by this result, M. F'errus applied to the admistration des hospitcaiix 

 to have the patients transferred from the Bicetre altogether, that 

 they might live entirely on the farm. The ruined house, and the 

 want of funds at head-iiuarlcrs applicable to its repair, seemed at 

 first powerful objections to this measure ; but M. Fcrrus, having 

 good workmen at his command, overcame them. He got the govern- 

 ment to supply tools, as it had previously done for the farming 

 operations ; the homestead was soon put in a habitable stale by 

 those for whose occupation it was designed, and, in 1835, was ten- 

 anted by a number of the insane The farm is now regularly orga- 

 nized ; an experienced agriculturist, M. Beguin, was engaged to 

 direct and superintend the operations of the laborers ; the whole 

 land belonging to the estate was taken into the original enclosure, 

 and each succeeding year has been crowned with not only an increase 

 of agricultural produce, but with an increase in the list of cures 

 amongst the patient^<. The only inconvenience the managers of the 

 farm have to contend with, arises from an accidental want of em- 

 ployment which may happen. So anxious are the majority of the 

 unfortunates for work, that they become troublesome when ihcy do 

 not obtain it. This was most fell in the winter, when farming ope- 

 rations are for a time suspended ; but to fill up this blank space, 

 the farmers at St. Anne are annually set to bleach the whole of the 

 linen used in the two hospitals ; a tas^k which they perform cheer- 

 fully and well, saving to those establishments upwards of four hun- 

 dred pounds per annum. 



Besides the excellent effects which have been produced on those 

 patients employed and residing on the St. Anne farm, it has been 

 found of the utmost benefit to less convalescent inmates of the in- 

 sane hospitals. By allowing them at first to see the others at work, 

 they soon get a desire to join in it, which, when the medical officers 

 deem them well enough, they are allowed to do. In short the effects 

 of such healthful employment as that necessary to the culture of 

 land, has been found of the utmost benefit to all classes of insane 

 patients. The success of the French farm will, we trust, encourage 

 the directors of our native lunatic asylums to adopt similar methods 

 of cure ; which, properly managed, appear to be as profitable as 

 they are efficacious. 



THE YOUNG PHILOSOPHER. 



Children, says Professor Olmsted of Yale College, in the preface 

 to his Rudiments of Natural Piiilosophy and Astronomy, are natu- 

 rally fond of inquiring into the cause of things. We may even go 

 farther, and say that they begin from infancy to interrogate nature 

 in the only true and successful mode — that of experiment and ob- 



