Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 23.djvu/151

Rh ownership, visitors will be attracted in greater numbers than ever before, as the facilities of access are improved, and what now offends their eyes is removed. The present condition of the falls and the character of their visitors, the imminent danger they are in of being robbed of all that makes them attractive, and the facts that make the question of their immediate rescue a pressing one, are forcibly presented by Mr. J. B. Harrison, Corresponding Secretary of the Niagara Falls Association, Franklin Falls, New Hampshire, in a pamphlet "On the Condition of Niagara Falls and the Means needed to preserve them." California has reserved the Yosemite Valley and the Big Tree Grounds, and the United States the Yellowstone Lake and Geysers, as public parks. It should be the duty of the State of New York to add to the list its stupendous cataract.

Dyspepsia.—The late Dr. Leared, in his recently published essay on "The Causes and Treatment of Indigestion," lays down as a fundamental principle that the amount of food which each man is capable of digesting with ease always has a limit which bears relation to his age, constitution, health, and habits, and that indigestion is a consequence of exceeding this limit. Different kinds of food are also differently adapted to different constitutions. Dyspepsia may be brought on by eating irregularly, by allowing too long an interval between meals, and by eating too often. Frequently the meals are not gauged as to their relative amount, or distributed with a due regard to health. Thus, when we go out after taking a light breakfast and keep at our work, with a still lighter lunch only during the interval, till evening, we are apt, with the solid meal which tempts us to indulgence, to put the stomach to a harder test than it can bear. "When a light breakfast is eaten, a solid meal is requisite in the middle of the day. When the organs are left too long unemployed they secrete an excess of mucus which greatly interferes with digestion. One meal has a direct influence on the next; and a poor breakfast leaves the stomach over-active for dinner. . . . The point to bear in mind is, that not to eat a sufficiency at one meal makes you too hungry for the next; and that, when you arc too hungry, you are apt to overload the stomach, and give the gastric juices more to do than they have the power to perform." Persons who eat one meal too quickly on another must likewise expect the stomach finally to give notice that it is imposed upon. Other provocatives of dyspepsia are imperfect mastication, smoking, and snuff-taking, which occasion a waste of saliva—although some people find that smoking assists digestion, if done in moderation—sitting in positions that cramp the stomach, and the pressure that is inflicted on the stomach by the tools of some trades, as of curriers, shoe-makers, and weavers. The general symptoms of dyspepsia are well known. Some that deserve special remark are fancies that the limbs or the hands are distorted, mental depression, extreme nervousness, hypochondria, and other affections of the mind. The cure is to be sought in avoiding the food and habits by which dyspepsia is promoted, and using and practicing those which arc found to agree best with the system of the subject. Regularity in the hours of meals can not be too strongly insisted on. "The stomach should not be disappointed when it expects to be replenished. If disappointed, even a diminished amount of food will be taken without appetite, which causes the secretions to injure the stomach, or else impairs its muscular action."

Scotch Funerals in the Olden Time.—Mr. William McQueen, in "Macmillan's Magazine," gives a somewhat amusing description of the Scotch funeral customs of the olden time. The usages varied in details in different parts of the country, but were marked as a whole by a general similarity. In some places every man who heard of a death made it a point to attend the funeral; if a Sunday intervened, the time of the funeral was intimated in the church-yard between the services. In other places messengers were sent around to give information of the death—not to invite friends to attend, for that was regarded as a matter of course; but in Glen Urquhart the next-door neighbor of the deceased would not go to a funeral without receiving a direct invitation. The custom of supplying drink at the funeral was once