Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/498

482 should be taken out of the propagating pond and put into a smaller pond with a solid bottom of clear loam or sand, from which they may be taken in the spring to the marshes and bogs, in which, from that time, they will increase quite rapidly.

The question whether leeches can be cultivated on a large scale with profit may be answered decisively in the affirmative by pointing to a few examples in which the business has been carried on successfully. The brothers Béchade hired a large swamp from Baron Pichon, near Bordeaux, as grassland, for a rent of three hundred francs; after stocking it with leeches they were able to have the rent gradually raised to 25,000 francs without feeling overcharged. Since they began their enterprise, in 1835, leech-culture has risen at Bordeaux to be a source of great profit, involving the application of 5,000 hectares (12,500 acres) of land to the purpose, employing a great many work-men, and representing a capital of several million francs. A land-owner in Mecklenburg is said to receive an income of not less than 18,000 marks ($4,284) from his share of the rent of a leech-farm. A physician at Liegingen, in Würtemberg, stocked a marsh of two and a half hectares (six and a quarter acres) with leeches in 1827, and succeeded so well with it that he was able to sell his worms by the hundred-weight.—Translated from Die Natur.

 

OME able and scholarly articles appeared in one of the leading New York dailies during the last winter, comparing Harvard with the principal universities abroad. The writer evidenced his thorough acquaintance with the curriculum and requirements at Harvard, but the original work done there outside the lecture-room was almost completely ignored, and dismissed with hardly a passing mention. This would tend to confirm the impression of the great majority that a university is simply a vast class-room, a place where young men study and recite certain time-honored branches of learning, varying their intellectual labors by feats of physical prowess, and are rewarded at the end of a specified time with mysterious parchment rolls, currently supposed to possess a subtile and awful power. Of the higher aims of a university, and of the distinction between instructors and investigators, the public at large realize almost nothing.

With a view to showing the inner intellectual activity of a university, I recently visited Harvard studies and laboratories to ascertain what work was being carried on aside from the regular routine of instruction. The spirit that prevails among the gentlemen with whom 