Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/886

862 Strathpeffer in Scotland, and Ballynahinch and Lisdoonvarna in Ireland. But these places are now not so much in fashion or so attractive as the Continental resorts, and afford, as Dr. Yeo has pointed out, an inferior variety of advantages. The great variableness of English seasons is, however, very embarrassing in the case of consumptive patients, although there are places among the milder resorts where benefit is derived in favorable seasons. Great Britain is, however, wholly without places where the rarefied air of great altitudes can be applied to cures, as at Davos Platz, and will probably never have them, for the British winter presents meteorological conditions diametrically opposed to the brilliant sunshine and intense dryness to which the climate of the upper Alps owes a large part of its efficacy.

The Inconveniences of Law-Codes.—Mr. E. T. Merrick, in a letter to David Dudley Field and others, committee on the delay and uncertainty of judicial administration, objects to the formation of codes, as tending to give laws too rigid a character. According to his reading and observation, "the transition from the elastic system of principles, resting on pure reason, to a system of positive law, is marked at first by a liberal interpretation corresponding more to the equity of the older system. But, little by little, from veneration or some other motive or cause, the words of the statute law are considered of more sanctity and come to be more rigorously executed, until at last it is thought that it is of more importance that the law should be strictly observed than that equity should be done. How often have the judges felt constramed to enforce statutory laws, against which their sense of justice revolted! "It would be much better, in Mr. Merrick's view, to leave it to wise judges "to select from the great storehouse of principles, which admit of an infinitude of exceptions, such as are fitting the new subjects brought for their determination, than to leave it to less experienced men who happen to have the power as legislators to freeze principles into rigidity." Codes may be a matter of necessity under some circumstances, but room should be left in every system of laws for adaptation of judicial construction to special conditions and contingencies, "for it seems presumptuous in any body of men to attempt to regulate, by absolute terms, future affairs and rights respecting things the existence and relations of which they can not possibly foresee." Provision for giving flexibility to the English common law is afforded by chancery; and in the United States, the opinions of the courts of every State are exerting more or less of influence on the courts of every other State, on all questions arising under the common law, whereby the judges of all the States are building up one homogeneous system.

Meerschaum.—Meerschaum ranks among the most important mineral products of the Turkish Empire. It is a magnesite or hydro-silicate of magnesia, and is found in extensive masses in the lower transition beds, in the Crimea and the Island of Negropont, but most abundantly in Asia Minor. The center of the principal district where it is mined is at Eski-Sheir, the ancient Dorylaion, a town of nine thousand inhabitants, situated in a valley watered by the Thymbres River, in a district famous for its thermal waters. Most of the meerschaum mined here is exported by way of Brusa to Vienna, while the waste is bought by the North-German manufacturers of pipe-bowls and mouth-pieces, whose chief center is at Rubla, in the Grand-duchy of Saxe-Weimar. Some twenty beds of the magnesite are worked near Eski-Sheir, They belong to the Turkish Government, but are farmed out to European companies, some of which have been on the ground for more than twenty years. The companies employ some four thousand workmen, who come chiefly from Germany and Italy, Magnesite earths are also found at Yallecas, near Madrid, in Spain, under saliferous clays, at Salinelle, in the department of the Garo, and at Saint-Ouen and Coulommiers, France, where they occur in fresh-water beds under the gypsum.

A Fruit-Evaporator for the Public.—The Fruit and Vegetable Growers' Association of the United States, at its meeting in Columbus, Ohio, gave especial consideration to the question of the best methods of