108 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Feb. 



NECESSARY BTJLES OP SLEEP. 



There is no fact more clearly established in 

 the physiology of man than this, that the brain 

 expends its energies and itself during the hours 

 of wakefulness, and that these are recuperated 

 during sleep. If the recuperation does not 

 equal the expenditure, the brain withers — this 

 is insanity. Thus it is that, in early Enghsh 

 history, persons who were condemned to 

 death by being prevented from sleeping, al- 

 ways died raving maniacs ; thus it is also that 

 those who are starved to death become insane, 

 — the brain is not nourished, and they cannot 

 sleep. The practical inferences are three : — 

 1st. Those who think most, who do most 

 brain work, require most sleep. 2d. That 

 time "saved" from necessary sleep is infallibly 

 destructive to mind, body, and estate. Give 

 yourself, your children, your servants — give 

 all that are under you, the fullest amount of 

 sleep they will take, by compelling them to 

 go to bed at some regular hour, and to rise in 

 the morning the moment they awake ; and 

 within a fortnight, Nature, with almost the 

 regularity of the rising sun, will unloose the 

 bonds of sleep the moment enough repose has 

 been secured for the wants of the system. 

 This is the only safe and sufficient rule ; and 

 as to the question how much sleep any one re- 

 quires, each must be a rule for himself — great 

 Nature will never fail to write it out to the ob- 

 server under the regulations just given. — Dr. 

 Forbes Winslow. 



QEEAT GLACIEB OP NEW ZEALAND. 

 The Westland (Eng.) Observer has an ac- 

 count of a visit paid recently by the chief offi- 

 cers of the geological department to the great 

 glacier on the west side of Mount Cook. The 

 foot of the glacier, which is but thirteen miles 

 from the sea, is 1900 feet wide. Neither the 

 glacier nor the immense field of snow which 

 feeds it is visible from the river until within a 

 quarter of a mile of it, when the stupendous 



mass of snow and ice at once breaks upon the 

 view. Below the glacier a recent moraine ex- 

 tends for several hundred yards, consisting of 

 debris of the rock, twenty feet deep, under- 

 laid by ice and snow, through which consider- 

 able streams of water run, which are rendered 

 visible in round holes, caused by the giving 

 way of the ice and by cracks in the surface. 

 On the southern side there has recently been a 

 great fracture of the ice and breach of the 

 rock, which had fallen in immense masses. 

 The party ascenJed on the northern side, 

 where the snow or ice formed rounded hills, 

 undisturbed by any cracks or fissures. The 

 glacier matter is porous, and presents tolerable 

 footing; it is of a gray color, full of small 

 dirt with occasional stones, which had evidently 

 fallen from the surrounding hills. The great 

 peculiarity of this glacier is not only its im- 

 mense size but the consequent fact of its de- 

 scending to so low a level — 640 feet above the 

 sea level — instead of ending, as is usually the 

 case at an altitude of some 3000 or 4000 feet, 

 close to the limit of perpetual snow, among 

 Alpine vegetation. Here the green bush ex- 

 tends some thousands of feet above the gla- 

 cier, on the steep sides of the range in which 

 the glacier has cut the deep narrow gorge. 

 Not a single Alpine plant rewarded the re- 

 search of the party, and the temperature on 

 the glacier was scarcely below that on the fiat 

 below. With some ceremony the party named 

 it the Victoria Glacier. The height of the 

 peak of Mount Cook is found to be 12,632 

 feet. 



SiUK-GEOwrNG IN California. — California 

 promises not only to furnish the best wines, 

 but the choicest silks. At the recent Santa 

 Clara County Fair, specimens of superior wa- 

 tered silk dress goods were exhibited ; also, 

 sample cocoons from the neighboring counties, 

 and the fact demonstrated that the entire State 

 is well adapted to silk growing. ^ 



