Nature takes the time when one is lying down to give the heart rest, and that organ consequently makes ten strokes less a minute than when one is in an upright posture; multiply that by sixty minutes and it is six hundred strokes. Therefore in eight hours spent in lying down the heart is saved nearly 5,000 strokes, and as the heart Jumps six ounces of blood with each stroke, it lifts 30,000 ounces blood in a night of eight hours spent in bed than when one is in an upright position. As the blood flows so much more slowly through the veins when One is lying down, one must supply

less of

then with extra coverings the warmth usually furnished by the processes of circulation.

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BLIND MEN'S DREAMS.

One of the most intelligent inmates of a blind asylum, who came into the world blind, says that he never dreams of the things he has read about and never dreams of any thing or person that he has not in some way come in personal contact with.

He dreams of music. of the voices cf persons he knows, of such incidents as might happen at the home or in some place in which he has actually been, but never of incidents in other places or in other lands. Even although he has read descriptions of localities, of natural beauties, of the appearance of a street or a city, no idea of what they look like comes to him in the fancies of his sleep.

There is a class of blind people who become blind when quite young. Such blind people never dream of any scene or object except those which have remained in the memory from what they actually saw before they became blind. --Pearson's Weekly.

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A LITERARY DISEASE.

"A well known French writer," says "Humanitarian," "has recently been discussing the question of literature as a disease. In his opinion France is suffering from a new and insidious discase-literaturitis. Among the educated classes there is a positive craze for decadent literature, and the demand only creates the supply. The result is that the minds of both writers and readers are poisoned by unwholsome mental

food, and the men who write are, as a rule, the reverse of manly, and are given to effeminacy, drunkenness, immorality, and vice generally. In point of fact, writing appears if we may believe this authority, to be an occupation only pursued by the diseased in body and of mind."

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REASONS FOR BEING A CANNIBAL.

per

According to a French writer named Petrie, whose conclusions are quoted in "The Medical News," twenty cent. of all cannibals eat the dead in crder to glorify them; nineteen per (ent. eat great warriors in order that they may inherit their courage, and eat dead children in order to renew their youth; ten per cent. partake of their rear relatives from religious motives, either in connection with initiatory rites or to glorify deities, and five per cent. feast for hatred in order to avenge themselves upon their enemies. Those who devour human flesh because of famine are reckoned as eighteen per cent. In short, deducting all these there remains only a proportion of twenty-four per cent. who partake of human flesh because they prefer it to other means of alimentation."

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A SOLAR ENGINE TEST.

For some time several Boston capitalists have been working on a solar engine machine, and on last Monday afternoon the completed engine, which has been set up at Longwood, near Boston, crude though it is, was tested successfully. The engine consists of three parts, a reflector, which concentrates the heat, a cylinder for generating the steam, and a device for keeping the sun's rays constantly in focus on the cylinder. In the test, after an adjustment of the machinery and the turning in of cold water into the boiler, the formation of steam began almost instantly. The gauge registered pressure

of about 85 pounds in half an hour, which drove the engine steadily, doing the work of about two horse power.

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GERMAN TECHNICAL SCHOOLS.

It is no small wonder that "made in Germany" is already the most familiar trade mark in the world, for the whole German people are being educated scientifically in the arts of industrial production. Nowhere in the world does manufacturing become so nearly a skilled profession as in Saxony, for in this small kingdom' there are no less than 111 technical institutes; Prussia has 260 such schools, with over 12,000 pupils; 35 of the schools are for painters and decorators, 16 for tailors, 9 for shoemakers, etc., other trades having at least one school. The government appropriates $600,000 for their support and the various towns and cities give liberal subsidies, Berlin alone giving $70,000 per annum. Baden, with 1,600,000 inhabitants, spends $280,000 a year in technical schools. Hesse, with a population of 1,000,000, has 83 schools of design, 43 of manufacturing industries, and many others for artisans of various trades. Bavaria and Wurtemberg and other cities have similar systems.

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MUSICAL WHEELS.

The bicycle has reached another phase of its constant development through a novel and highly interesting invention consisting in a musical instrument which may be attached to any bicycle and plays popular airs, without the aid of the rider, in a loud and melodious manner, when the machine is in motion. The instrument constitutes an entertaining companion for the bicyclist on his roamings, which are frequently rather lonely; it is so much more welcome as it will be a companion entirely submissive to the rider's wishes. It has been invented patented and placed upon the market

by a firm in Hamburg, and is fittingly called "troubadour," after the wandering musicians of the Middle Ages.Scientific American.

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THE PATTERAN.

A woodsman

may blaze his way through the trackless forest, but he leaves the gash on the tree as a sign of his course, while the gypsy can travel a thousand miles and leave no sign that any eye but a gypsy's can see, and yet the route he has gone is perfectly plain to the laggard who follows a day's journey behind. Gypsy has followed gypsy hundreds of miles, day after day. guided only by the patteran-the mark at the cross-roads. The patteran is sometimes made of a handful of grass, sometimes of a heap of sticks placed with significance, sometimes of a pile of icose stones so arranged that they show the way the wanderers have taken. Different families have usually a different form of the patteran but all know and rely upon it.-Paul Koster.

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A THREAD FROM THE EARTH TO A STAR.

Professor Ball, the astronomer royal of Ireland, and one of the most popular astronomical writers in Great Britain, has finished a curious calculation on the distance to the nearest of the "fixed stars." The calculation was inspired by a visit to one of the great Lancashire thread factories. The superintendent of one of the factories inspected by the astronomer informed the star-gazer that the combined output of the various Lancashire thread factories was 155,000,000 miles of thread per day. Those figures were certainly enough to astonish anyone, unless it should be an astronomer. Professor Ball has long since passed the point where he expresses surprise at a string of figures which represent even billions of miles. Instead of falling stunned at the thread

"I am satisfied that the United States can gain the supremacy in shipbuilding it had when wooden ships were in vogue. It only needs an enterprising Western ship-building concern to establish a yard near New York and manage it with the skill and energy which have characterized those of the lakes. This is the only prominent department of manufacturing in which our country is behind, and it is one in which it easily can obtain front rank. It would justify steel manufacturers to guarantee to such a ship-building concern a continuance of the present extremely low rates on steel for a term of years, and also that steel of all kinds and armors and guns should always be furnished to the lowest price paid by European ship-builders. But there is nothing to fear from the prices of steel, for these henceforth are to rule lower in our country than in any country of Europe. It will not be long before a large portion of the steel supply must be drawn by Europe from the United States."-Carnegie.

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THE ETHNOLOGY OF KISSING.

The kiss was unknown. I think, among the aboriginal tribes of America and of Central Africa. From the most ancient times, however, it has been familiar to the Asiatic and European races. The Latins divided it into three forms the osculum, the basium and the suavium; the first being the kiss of friendship and respect, the second of

The

ceremony and the third of love. Semites also knew the kiss, and Job speaks of it as part of the sacred rites, as it is to-day in the Roman Church.

The Mongolian kiss, however, is not the same as that which prevails with us. In it the lips do not touched the surface of the person kissed. The nose is brought into light contact with the cheek, forehead or hand; the breath is drawn slowly through the nostrils, and the act ends with a slight smack of the lips. The Chinese consider our mode of kissing full of coarse suggestiveness, and our writers regard their methods with equal disdain.

Darwin and other naturalists have attempted to trace back the kiss to the act of the lower animals who seize their prey with their teeth, etc. An interesting recent study of the subject is by M. Paul d'Enjoy in the Bulletin of the Paris Anthropological Society, vol. viii, No. 2.-Dr. Daniel C. Brinton in "Science."

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ENGLAND'S BOOK OUTPUT.

The "Publishers' Circular" says that the output of books during the past year was larger by some 1,400 tomes than in 1896. In theology there is a rise of about 100 books, and in education 160, while politics and commerce show the notable augmentation of 300 books. While the demand for light reading also grows, the total increase in fiction is not so great as was expected. Travels and poetry are much the same as last year. The total number of books and new editions published in the past twelve months is 6,573. The smallest number is on law, 140, and the largest is novels, 2,677. There is revived interest in theology, while the arts and sciences show a falling off.

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MURDER AND MONEY.

The able lawyers of the country are establishing very definitely the relation.

ship between cash and crime. They long ago demonstrated the power of money to delay and defeat the operations of justice in civil procedure in the courts, and they are now furnishing material for reflection by law-abiding citizens in the results achieved by money for the protection of criminals. It is becoming more notorious every year that the criminal backed by money has more than an even chance of escape from the consequences of his unlawful acts. The man who has committed murder need not despair for either life or liberty if he has means to enlist capable legal talent in his cause and to pay the expenses of a trial fought to the last ditch by modern methods of legal warfare.

"This is not an overdrawn view of the situation, startling as are the facts which it assumes to exist. The court records of the country show that in the larger cities not more than three per cent of the persons indicted for murder go to the gallows, and only a slightly larger proportion of them get long sentences to the penitentiary."

THE EVOLUTION OF COURTSHIP.

In the dim and misty ages of the past, when wandering bands of apelike human beings had not developed their tribal customs to he level of priestly ceremony-when the medicine-man had not arisen a marriage between a man and a young woman was generally consummated by the man beating the girl into insensibility, and dragging her by the hair to his cave. Added to its simplicity, the custom had the merit of improving the race, as unhealthy and illfavered girls were not pursued, and similar men were clubbed out of the pursuit by stronger. But the process was necessarily painful to the loved one, and her female children naturally inherited a repugnance to being wooed.

When a civilized young lady, clothed and well-conducted, anticipates being

kissed or embraced by her lover, she places in the way what difficulties are in her power; she gets behind tables and chairs, runs from him, compels him to pursue, and expects him to. In her maidenly heart she may want to be kissed, but she cannot help resisting. She obeys the same instinct that impelled this wild girl to spring from the outstretched arms of the boy and go screaming out of the cave and down the beach in simulated terror--an instinct inherited from the prehistoric mother, who fled for dear life and a whole skin from a man armed with a club and bent upon marriage.-From "Primodial," by Morgan Robertson, in "Harper's Magazine" for April.

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LONG LIFE AND ALCOHOL.

"The secretary of the Order of Rechabites, a total abstinence workingmen's organization in England, has recently made a careful study of the vital statistics of the society as compared with other associations in which abstinence from alcohol is not a feature," says "The Medical Record." "He finds at the age of 18 the expectation of life is, among the Foresters, 44.74 years; among the Rechabites the expectancy is 50.62 years a difference in favor of the lat

ter of 5.88 years. Compared with the Odd Fellows, the latter's advantage is even greater by 7.75 years. Applied to the whole population, the expectancy at 18 among abstainers is better by 8.72 years. The mortality of the Foresters at the same age is 0.723 per cent. and of the Rechabites 0.589 per cent. The percentage of the Foresters' death-rate to that of the Rechabites at eighteen is

as 123 to 100, and at 38 as 189.3 to 100. The conclusion reached by the compiler of these statistics seem to be corroborated by the report of an English lifeinsurance company, in which a distinction is made between the abstainers and the non-abstainers among the policyholders. Among the abstainers the expected deaths were 744, while there were only 432, a percentage of 58.06. Among the ron-abstainers, the number of deaths looked for was 1,399 and the actual number who died were 1,131, or 80.84 per cent of the expectancy. These figures are suggestive, yet there is consolation even for the moderate drinkers to learn that nineteen of them out of every hundred live longer than the actuaries' table says they should.

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FOOLISH DELAYS.

"It is sometimes thought a mark of respect to the deceased to delay the funeral. This practice often involves great hardship, especially to the poor and those who live within very narrow space, and it is attended with grave sanitary dangers. In one instance within our knowledge a family of five were living in a single room, and when a child died the body remained in the room for, perhaps, three days. Such practices should be forbidden by law.

"The viewing of the remains is another practise harrowing to the family and often leading to most painful expressions of grief, and sometimes tending to perpetuate and spread disease. Was ever anything more repulsive than the spectacle presented, when the body of the Czar was carried from town to town and kissed by tens of thousands?"