tfov. t, 1891.] 
Tua tropical 
AGRICULTURIST. 
3ii 
THE FARMER AND MODERN INVENTIONS- 
la modern liEa one of tho moat striking feat- 
ures ihat has been and i3 being developed more 
and more rapidly is the interdependence of the 
members of the human family. As the popu- 
latioa increases, tha hermit or quaai-hermit life 
so frequent years aga, when the farmer for months 
in the winter saw hardly any faces esaept those 
of his own family, and when he conduoced his 
farming opara'.ions in almost complete independ- 
ence of the rast of the world, is faat becoming an 
impossibility. In old times toe farm was a self- 
supporting world in itself. The welda, springs 
and cisterns supplied water; the domestic animals 
got all their food from it, and it produced its own 
fertilisers. By rotation of orops, by letting land 
lie fallow, and by the use of fertilising material 
produoed on the farm, the land was kept fertile. 
Rain descended from the olouds without any human 
a^enoy. Now the conditions are very different. 
The farmar's children wish to compete with city 
children in education and in general oultura. But 
outside of the personal aspect, of which this is 
but one elemeut, modern conditions affect his 
life in a mujh broader sense. The tendency 
now is to work the soil in large areas devoted 
to a single orop, and to usa machinery in all 
farming operations. For many years past the 
American inveutor has beea busy inventing most 
ingenious machines for cultivating the ground, 
for sowing the seed, and for harvesting the crops. 
On aaoouot of the inventor's work the Western 
firms, with fields of wheat reaohing to the horizan, 
cultivated by st3am-drawn ploughs, and whose 
crops are harvested by great maobines drawn by 
teams of maay horses, have became a possib : lity. 
The great cere il orop of the United States is due 
to the mechanical inventor. 
In the same order of things is the modern 
fertiliser. For different orops different fertilisers 
are made in factories. As the great natural sources 
of phosphorio aoid were overdrawn, the Europeau 
agriculturist has utilised tbe finely ground slag 
of the basio st^el procass. The farmer depends 
no longer 0.1 hi a barn yard, but purohases his 
plant food in the moat approved form, made in 
faotories from the most unpromising sources of 
supply Tbe Atlantic coast ia patrolled by steamera 
whase oooupatiou ia the oatoh ng of menh dan or 
bony fish. After the oil is extracted from thesa 
fiib, the farmer has a claim on what is left as 
a souroe oi uitrogen for his crops. Sautu Ameri- 
can nitrate of soda is another souroe oi aitrogeu. 
The German mines supply him with his potash, 
anl the blending of all the eUmjn.s is cifeotoi 
in the feriliser faotories, whoae process are guide i 
by tbe most txaot chemical analyses of thjir 
materials. Even in the mitterof local transport 
atioi the farmer is being taken care of. Tne 
eleotrio road, to whose operatims, haed.ess of 
vestel rights, so many highways have beea 
surrenders I, bids fair to revolutionise the aspeots 
o( rural life. It ia believed by many that the 
eleotrio road will eventually haul the farmer's 
products to the oitiea or railroad stations, and .ha 
improvement of oountry roads has actually been 
diaoouraged by those wha believe in the highest 
dev lopuaeut of this form of traction. 
Whdre tne praeess of djvelopment of modern 
life will end, it is hard to see. Taa farmer, 
who would snem to be the last to be sub- 
jected to modern soiontifio advaucamenfcs, ia 
realljr, spaakmg relatively, the one most aff sated, 
Meoaaoioal, cQamiual, aid el.otnoal saience have 
changed his entiro statua. Among inventors 
the farm is raoogniaad aa the field for moat 
u.-.'ful work in invention, Man may yet lea.ru to 
dispense with oall, and the ateam-engiae may be 
relegated to the pa3t. The self-contained energies 
of the cosmic system may yet be used to replace 
the motor which duriag the last deoadea has 
replaced tlaem. Windmills and water-wheels re- 
present the utilisation of cosmib energy, and man- 
kind may yet bo driven to a more extensive use 
of the mechanical p.wars of ua:ure. But for food 
production, it seems as if the soil for many years 
to come must be the only resource. Synthetirj 
ohemistry has to mate enormous advanoes before 
it can produce palatable food. Already it has done 
something in producing glucose and sacoharine 
as sugar substitutes, but until the synthesis on the 
large scale o£ oarbon and hydrogen is effected, the 
synthetio chemiaty will be inohoate. In the modern 
maroh of progress the farmer will hold his own. 
The ohanges in hie processes, the abolishment of 
the quiet rural lifp, and of the farm aa an almost 
self-contained unit of existence, are brought about 
by the devotion to his interests of the enlighten- 
ment of the world, and the world in its turn 
is more and more dependent on hira. — Scientific 
American. 
ECHOES OF SCIENCE. 
Mr. A'exaider MoAdie, of tbe U. S. Department 
of Agriculture, states in a report just published that 
tbe danger from lightning is five times greater in 
tbe country than in a town. He recommends that 
the lightniug rod, where it parses near gas or water 
mains, should be connected to them by soldered 
wire, aud be prefers for the rod an independent 
connection with the earth or ground by an " earth- 
piato," to a connection by a water or gas pipe. Au- 
other rejo nmendation, which we heariily endorse, 
and which cannot be too wed known ia that every 
person str .ck by lightuing, and to all appearance 
d^ad, sh >uld be treated like a drowned person, and 
every effort made to restore bim or ber to life by 
ar iricial respiration anj stimulating the circulation 
for an hour at least. Experiment and experieuoe 
have shown that persons apparently killed by light- 
ning and the electric sbook are not always really 
dead, but iu a condition of suspended animation. 
Probably many livis have been lost heretofore by 
mare ignorauoe of this fact, both in tbe case of 
ligh suing siroke and the electrio shock. 
Humboldt, the great German traveller aid natnraliat, 
argue J with mucb force tbat ancient Mexican civi- 
lisation showed an Asiatic influence, and, as Dr. E. 
B. Tjlor has recently pointed out, the Azteo picture 
wr tin^ of the Soul's Journey the Land ot Spirits, 
as given in the Voticin Omitx, is almost ideniicai 
w.th BieLes of the Buddhist purgatory iu Japanese 
temples. Tbe Aztec repiVBouted the eonl crossing 
a .iver, then passing between two mountains .hat 
c ashed together, then oliuabiLg a mountain bri-tliog 
witn knives of obnidiau, and exposed to danger from 
other knives, hurled through the air. Tht. Japanese 
depicts the soul wading across a river, then pastkg 
between two iron mountains which are pushed to- 
geiuer by demons, then climnin s ' a mountain of 
kuives, and olso blades flying tnrough the air. For 
our own part, wa thiuk few can compare tbe human 
features to be teen on some Centra 1 American monu- 
ments iu the South Kensington Museum with those 
of Ja^an without being struck wi.h their remarkable 
lilt ^uess ; and when we remember that even in his- 
torical times Jipaue e and other Asi itics have teen 
driven by s resa of weather lo the West Ooast of 
America, we nead not be surprised at the fact. 
Olivine ia a nruiral oil which does not beooroe 
rancid, aud of vege:able origin. Since its recent 
introduction, it h»a superseded olive oil in iu»ny 
qurte s, Lot only for lubrication mechanism, but iia 
perfumery, pbarmicy, and ao on. It ooumu from 
Maisoihea, anl its use is extending r.ip dly in Fraiioe, 
Belgium, Germany, and the Levant.— Globe, 
