122 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
bloom to prevent them bearing seeds. Weeds may be all taken out in late fall, 
and more grass seeds sown. Men with table knives can get out a vast number of 
weeds in a short time. A thorough digging out of weeds, with table knives,. will 
keep the lawn nearly clean. Do it in late fall or early spring. The lawn should 
be firmly rolled down every spring. It is good to sow some more grass seeds in 
late fall or early spring, so as to insure a close turf the next summer. 
Barnyard manure, so fermented and rotted as to killall seeds of weeds in it, is 
the best fertilizer. It should be spread equally over the surface in fall or winter, 
as it is a most excellent fertilizer, when applied at the rate of five to ten bushels 
to the acre. Marl mixed with plaster of Paris is beneficial on sandy lands. Guano, 
and all the concentrated fertilizers are good, but their effects are different upon 
different lands. Lime, wood ashes and stone coal ashes should all be compounded 
with soil a year before using, and spread over the lawn in the fall.—Gardener’s 
Monthly. 
BALM OF GILEAD. 
_ Dr. De Hass gives the following particulars as to this far-famed specific for all 
diseases: The name of Gilead was sometimes applied to all trans-Jordanic Pales- 
tine; properly, however, it included only the country east of the Jordan from the 
head of the Dead Sea to the foot of the Lake Genesareth, of which Mizpeh Gilead 
was the crowning point. It was here, along the Jordan and about Jericho, the 
balsam or balm once so highly prized, was procured from an aromatic tree, sup- 
posed still to be found in this region, and known as Spina Christi, or tree from 
which the Savior’s crown of thorns was woven. This most precious gum was 
obtained by making an incision in the bark of the tree; it also oozed from the 
leaves, and sometimes hung in drops like honey from the branches. The tree 
which originally was found in Palestine, was transplanted to Egypt by Cleopatra, 
to whom the groves near Jericho were presented by Mark Antony. The shrub 
was afterward taken to Arabia and grown in the neihgborhood of Mecca, whence 
the balsam is now exported to Europe and America, not as balm from Gilead, but 
balsam from Mecca. The gardens around Heliopolis and the ‘‘ Fountain of the 
Sun,” in Egypt, no longer produce this rare plant, and it has long since ceased to 
be an article of export from the ancient Gilead.—/Journal of Chemistry. 
SEEING BY ELECTRICITY. 
As regards the general question of seeing by electricity, the principles in- 
volved are somewhat different from those which have entered into other electro- 
telegraphic problems; the element of “me, which plays such an important part 
in all telegraphic inventions hitherto brought out, is almost wholly absent when 
the question of sight is involved. In the transmission of sound, or of telegraphic 
signals by electrictlty, we have to cause a succession of signals to follow one 
