Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/733

Rh remedy which General Greely proposes is to replace the second lieutenants in the Weather Service by officers of higher rank, and that future vacancies in the lowest rank of commissioned officers in the service shall be filled by transfer from the line of the army. This latter provision, by taking away hope of promotion from the sergeants and privates, would deter able men from entering the lower grades, and gaining the experience necessary for filling the higher positions. Moreover, the Weather Service has so absorbed the Signal Corps that the major-general in command of the army is now urging the formation of a special Signal Corps for actual army purposes. Both these schemes would involve additional expense, but the transfer of the Weather Service to, say, the Department of Agriculture, would secure the same ends by leaving the present Signal Corps free for signaling service, and allowing the meteorological work to be put in charge of scientific men instead of soldiers, while the cost of the work would be lessened instead of increased.

Open-air Travel for Consumption.—Dr. Henry L. Bowditch has given the Climatological Association an account of the treatment which seems to have counteracted a strong tendency to consumption in his own family. In 1808 his father, then thirty-five years old, was undoubtedly threatened with consumption. On August 29th of that year, when thus ill, he started from Salem, Mass., with a friend as his companion and driver, in an open one-horse chaise, for a tour through New England. The trip lasted thirty days and covered 748 miles. During that time he passed from the deepest mental discouragement and physical weakness through all stages of feeling up to a real enjoyment of life. His journey, though benefiting him immensely, probably did not wholly cure him, but it proved to him the absolute need he had of regular, daily, physical, open-air exercise. Afterward, under walks of one and a half to two miles, taken three times daily, all pulmonary troubles disappeared. He died, thirty years after the journey, from carcinoma of the stomach, his lungs being normal except that one presented evidences of an ancient cicatrix at its apex. He prescribed for his children the same regular out-of-door exercise which had been so beneficial to him. As soon as they were old enough they were required to take daily morning walks of about a mile and a half. If at any time they were observed to be drooping, they were taken from school and sent into the country to have farm-life and out-of-door play to their hearts' content. In consequence of this early instruction, all his descendants have become thoroughly impressed with the advantages of daily walking, of summer vacations in the country, and of camping out, etc., among the mountains. Dr. Bowditch's father had married his cousin, who, after long invalidism, died of chronic phthisis in 1834. Certainly a consanguineous union of two consumptives foreboded nothing but evil. Yet, of their eight children, six are either now alive or they arrived at adult age, married, and have had children and grandchildren, but not a trace of phthisis has appeared in any of these ninety-three persons. Dr. Bowditch sees nothing but the influence of out-of-door life to which this immunity of his family from consumption can be attributed. He has prescribed it, under proper precautions, in his practice for years, and says, in conclusion: "I have no objection to drugs, properly chosen, and I almost always administer them; but if the choice were given me to stay in the house and use medicines, or to live constantly in the open air without them, I should infinitely prefer the latter course in case of my being threatened with pulmonary consumption."

Precious Stones in the United States.—Mr. George F. Kunz's report on precious stones to the United States Geological Survey's Division of Mining Statistics shows that the industries of our country in that line, though not very extensive, are more considerably developed than they are generally known to be. The principal localities where gems are sought for systematically are at Mount Mica, Paris, Me., and Stony Point, N. C. Considerable quantities of tourmaline and other gems are produced at Mount Apatite, Auburn, Me. Several localities in North and South Carolina and Kentucky have been opened and are worked for the production of zircon and several other comparatively rare minerals which have been looked on heretofore only as gems, but are