Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/883

Rh hardly any deformity or shortening are largely due to the material assistance afforded by the quills of the primary and secondary feathers, which act as splints. Were this not the case, and if deformity ensued, the bird would be crippled in its power of flight, or deprived of it.

Food and Economical Plants of Abyssinia.—The most important of the food plants of Abyssinia is the taff (Poa Abyssinica ), a cereal bearing grains as small as a pin's head, from which the general bread is made. An inferior black bread is made from a kind of millet that grows in low grounds. Roasted flax-seed is sometimes eaten. The flower-stock of the plantain, cooked with milk and butter, is very tender, has the flavor of new bread somewhat underdone, and is an excellent dish. From the leaves of the ensete mats are made. The eeca, an asclepiad, furnishes a tough fiber, which is used in making cordage and twines. Other fibers, for various uses, are furnished by the bark of the Calotropis gigantea; and the tender leaves newly pulled from the stipe of the doum-palm are wound into all kinds of matting and basket-ware. The powdered seed of a large tree called herebera (Milettia ferruginea) is thrown into the water to stupefy fish, and makes it more easy to catch them. The chief articles of export are calves' hides, salted and dried, beeswax, ivory, tamarinds, ostrich-feathers, gutta-percha, gum arable, mother-of-pearl, leopard skins, musk, honey, and tobacco.

Interest in Reading.—The primary object of ordinary reading or study, Mr. Balfour holds, in his rectorial address at St. Andrews, is the enjoyment to be obtained by the possession and acquirement of knowledge. Knowledge is most easily attained in those subjects which we like most and take most interest in; and by that principle we should be directed to the kind of reading which we should take up. By the same principle we should not try to read the books on the list of the hundred or so best, merely because they are on the list; but when our interest is fixed on a particular line, the list is good to refer to for the best books bearing upon it. What interests the ordinary man at one time does not interest him at another; but "his interests change with the changes that are going on around him in the world. He sees some natural curiosity, reads something in the newspapers, hears of some incident or character in history, or goes to some place which awakens his interest and attention, and induces him to read. If the ordinary man, then, is to read what interests him, he is pretty sure to read widely, and therefore necessarily, since life is short, superficially. . . . Now, can it be said, that the man who reads like this, with freshness and vigor, eager to find out something, to get light on a subject dark to him before, will not get more knowledge, and so benefit himself vastly more, than the man who, with slow and painful steps, heavily plods through a list of books, though that list has on it all the masterpieces of creation?"

House-top Summer-Resorts.—A plan to make our house-tops useful is sketched by Dr. Gouverneur M. Smith, in a paper on "Wasted Sunbeams—Unused House-tops." The Oriental has no difficulty in the matter; he lives on the top of his house a considerable part of the year, and builds his roof with an especial eye to that sort of occupation. Why may not we? By pitching our tents upon them, or by taking them as they are, except that the roof-coverings would have to be made more solid, we might make our roofs comfortable sojourning-places and inexpensive summer health-resorts. "Roofing," says the author, "can be contrived suited to this climate, and enduring as pavement. A pleasure resort might ornament each residence, its limits bounded by the area of the dwelling; neighborly consent could widen the range, turf and flowers brightening the plan. Iron-framed and glass inclosed rooms or cupolas could be added, which would prove useful during all seasons, artificial heat tempering brumal inclemency. If such adaptation of house-tops would be an advantage to the affluent, who can escape city life during the summer, how much greater advantage would be secured to the tenement-house districts!. . . For the higher graded tenement-houses, such fresh-air facilities would be hailed with delight by the inmates. The proximity of open breathing-places to their rooms would endear their humble homes. Summer moonlight