622 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



president, upon being elected, rose with a glass of brandy in his 

 hand and gave the toast : " Gentlemen, fill your glasses. Let us show 

 the world that we know how to drink in moderation." 



To sum it all up. Why, since we can not set out with a club 

 or a headsman's axe to reform mankind; since there are substantial 

 rights to adjust and innocent parties to protect, why is not the propo- 

 sition to prevent by law the exposure of adulterated liquors for sale 

 as beverages the best so far suggested? Is there another which at 

 the same time is constitutional, equitable, peaceable, and so con- 

 servative of the public safety, which creates no law-breaking class 

 out of honest citizens, sheds no blood (as blood was shed in South 

 Carolina in 1875 because men of Anglo-Saxon breed could not be 

 readily made to concede that a man's house was not his castle), and 

 which imports no new doctrine into American policy? 



I, for one, believe that, with it, the solution of the drink problem 

 would be in sight. High license and personal damage laws are two 

 thirds of it. If a man desires to sell liquor let him pay one or two 

 thousand dollars, or other substantial sum of money, to the school 

 or the police or the poor fund of his neighborhood. Let him be 

 liable in damages, as are common carriers or any others who deal 

 in conveniences or commodities in which there is possible risk to 

 the community, for what is injured by his operations. As to the 

 remaining third of the remedy: the sole objections to local option 

 (viz., that it may be abused at the polls, where the total-abstinence 

 interest might be as capable of a wrong use of money or of other 

 undue influence as the liquor interest, or that it might be incon- 

 venient to the public) are fully met by making adulteration impos- 

 sible and providing for a compulsory, rigid, and universal inspection 

 of liquors exposed for sale as beverages. 



And then, besides, it will be unnecessary to burn down our village 

 to roast our pig. 



A CURIOUS experiment, at Carnot, in the Congo, is described in the 

 journal Le Chasseur Franc ais in the shape of the collection and raising 

 of the animals which the natives bring in from the bush. Large numbers 

 have been taken in. Some of the animals die, some escape. Among those 

 that have stayed are two wild hogs, which roam at liberty, eat from the 

 hand, and follow like dogs. There are a jackal, mangoustes, small ro- 

 dents, a company of monkeys, and a young tiger cat, " which is the law- 

 giver to the others." None of the animals is confined, except that the 

 jackal is tied, though he follows; but it has been necessary to separate the 

 guinea-pigs from the rest. A large monkey has assumed the office of 

 shepherd's dog, and takes care of the sheep. There are also dogs " good 

 company, but not of much value " eight horses, with a colt that will eat 

 at the table if allowed to ; forty horned cattle, which are multiplying ; and 

 .asses, which are also increasing. 



