Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/584

568 the flow of water and facilitating its entrance into the earth, is an essential part of a true forest."

Popularizing Agricultural Colleges.—In the Convention of Delegates from Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations, which was held at the Department of Agriculture in July, 1885, the question was considered how the colleges can be made more directly useful and more in sympathy with the people. President Fairchild, of the Kansas State Agricultural College, said that' the Michigan College had arranged in 1875-'76 for a series of farmers' institutes to be held each winter in the different counties of the State. At each institute, the college undertook to provide only half of the programme, and insisted that the place where the meeting was held should provide the other half. The expenses of the institute were also divided equitably. Every question brought forward was open to discussion, to which close attention was given, and which was always encouraged. From that day to this, the institute has grown in favor with both the farmers and the professors in the Agricultural College. "The same thing," Mr. Fairchild added, "has been in vogue with us in Kansas since I went there in 1879. We opened a series of institutes in the winter of 1880-'81, and have continued them from that day to this, with growing interest, and with especial favor as regards the farmer. We promote discussion upon just such questions as the farmers wish discussed, and the professors take especial pains to meet the questions which may be raised by the farmers themselves." The people are thus brought into full fellowship, which they demonstrate, with the college; and in Michigan the reports of the State Board of Agriculture, which formerly had to be "thrown at the heads of politicians," are in demand and are read.

More about the Effects of Tobacco.—Dr. Hobart Amory Hare, of the University of Pennsylvania, after an elaborate dissertation on "The Physiological and Pathological Properties of Tobacco," expresses the conclusions that "tobacco does no harm when used in moderation—to the man who, by occupation, leads an out door life, or one in which much physical exercise is taken, but rather does good, by quieting any tendency to continued action which may exist; to those who, by exceptionally long use, have become inured to the effects of the drug, and whose systems depend upon it; or to those whose temperaments are naturally phlegmatic and easy-going. Tobacco does harm to the young and not yet full-grown; to the man of sedentary habits; to the nervous and those whose temperaments are easily excited; and to the sickly and those who, by idiosyncrasy, are strongly affected by the drug." The different methods of using tobacco are harmful in the following order: Chewing, cigarette smoking, cigar smoking, pipe smoking, Turkish-pipe smoking. The quality of the drug governs the degree of its harmfulness more stringently in some cases than in others, as do also the character and constituents of the paper in which cigarettes are wrapped. Finally, the oft-repeated words "excess" and "moderation" "form the keystones of the arches which the writers on tobacco, pro and con, have raised."

Life in New Guinea.—The Rev. J. Chalmers, a missionary, recently visited the country west of Maclatchie Point, Southeastern New Guinea. He found the people generous and hospitable. They are certainly cannibals, but only as concerns their enemies. Sorcery and superstition have their home among them. In a dubu, or sacred house, which Mr. Chalmers describes as the finest he has ever seen, two large posts, eighty feet high, support a large peaked portico, thirty feet wide, while the whole building is one hundred and sixty feet long, and tapers down in height from the front. A large number of skulls of men, crocodiles, cassowaries, and pigs ornament it. The human skulls are those of victims who have I been killed and eaten by the tribe; and they speak of this kind of food as the greatest luxury, and think those are fools who despise it. The whole district from Orokolo to Panaroa is one great swamp, and the villages are all surrounded by muddy water. Canoes are a necessity in making morning calls. Bridges of logs or trunks form the streets, and the roads arc more easily traversed barefoot than in boots. The houses