2 8o* THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



matter who was President or what London bankers charged for 

 exchange. Shredded by ice and frost all winter, washed from 

 impurities during the spring, and dried in sunlight in the 

 early summer, the paper was completed and ready to store away 

 when the grasses were high enough to shade the ground. 



Thus the work went on all the year and all years until the 

 present large supply is on hand. Before now I have been told, 

 and indeed I have read in cyclopaedias, that the wasps were the 

 earliest paper makers, and that wasp nests were the first paper 

 the world ever saw. This is evidently an erroneous idea. Grasses 

 and rushes came on this planet long before wasps or bees, and 

 coarse grasses with water and sunlight have perhaps been in part- 

 nership in the paper business since long before the coal age in 

 America. Out here on my farm I can trace the history of this 

 mill back to a time long before Adam walked in his garden, and 

 I have every reason to believe there were other and similar mills 

 in operation eons or cycles previous to the time mine began its 

 work. 



It is an interesting study to take up this latest issue of the 

 great serial record and glance over the events which it noted right 

 here during last summer. Of course a full story of the field's do- 

 ings is not told, but I find enough to keep me busy and cause me 

 to search for more. The tale is not twisted or distorted by re- 

 porters' imagination in order to make it read well, neither is it 

 marred by typographical errors, causing the reader to guess at 

 what was the writer's intention. The matrix was good and the 

 impression was perfect all over the sheet. Writers of the realistic 

 school, like Zola and Howells, can take lessons from this author, 

 for here are the remains of the conflicts and tragedies narrated 

 pressed flat upon the paper and terribly in evidence to vouch for 

 every detail. Modern newspapers, with all their boasted push 

 and enterprise, can never hope to equal this aged annual which 

 dates its first number back to two thousand years before Methu- 

 selah began to grow whiskers. 



Records of the whole season are found on this paper, telling 

 the story of what has been going on in the animal world as 

 plainly as if it were printed with life photographs and for sale on 

 the street. Here are a half dozen "wiggler boats" that once 

 served as skins for mosquito larvae. When the wigglers grew 

 large and were ready to quit the waters these cases cracked open 

 along the back, and out stepped the mosquitoes, armed and 

 equipped to prey upon the summer visitors. Near by are two 

 legs and portions of the wing cases of a big locust. It is hard to 

 tell whether he died a natural death or perished from violence. 

 On looking at the fragments more closely, however, faint threads 

 may be seen here and there, showing that he succumbed to some 



