Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/291

Rh March is preferred for its keeping properties. The mill in use at the present day to crush the olives differs but little from those which have been used for centuries. A mill has lately been invented which, as it crushes the pulp, extracts the stone and throws it out, thus allowing the pulp, the true virgin oil, to be obtained from the press without any admixture of that obtained from the stone or kernel. To prepare virgin oil, olives are taken, free from blemish, when only three quarters ripe, slightly crushed, with care that the seed be not touched by the millstone, then placed in a heap so arranged that the oil shall run out of itself and be collected. Oil thus prepared is greenish, has an exquisite perfume, and can be kept for many years. A second quality of oil is extracted by the aid of water; and after all the usual means of extracting the oil from the pulp have been employed, ten per cent of oil can still be obtained by using bisulphide of carbon. After the oil is extracted, the skins and refuse are employed in heating boilers; the muddy substance found at the bottom of the most inferior quality of oil is used as manure; and the broken stones, or grignons, make an excellent fuel.

The Pace of Mind.—The appearance of a new quickly calculating man, Jacques Inandi, a Piedmontese, in Paris, has suggested the inquiry, What is the nature of the power that gives men of this kind their remarkable faculty? The Spectator suggests that such cases are abnormal instances of the difference in pace which we all know exists between the working of different and even of equal minds. "Everybody who has studied his acquaintance at all," it says, "knows that this difference is very great; that one man can comprehend an interrogation in half the time taken by another; that no two children are alike in quickness of thought, as distinguished from accuracy or depth of thought; and that clever women constantly reach results, which can only be reached by their thinking more rapidly than men." The difference is especially marked in mental arithmetic; and the difference, though it can be affected by practice or neglect, is ultimately independent of both. Inandi was asked to mention the day of the week on which a given date would fall some years hence, and answered accurately, Monday. It is not to be supposed that he guessed, for he had done the like before, and there was no ground for assuming collusion; then "his mind must, say, in three seconds, have traversed a calculation which it would take the few men who could do it in their minds at all, many minutes. Such pace is almost unthinkable, even if we remember that, the date on which this day falls in this year being once ascertained, the rest of the problem is only a swift effort of memory, the days advancing in a regular sequence, accelerated by leap-years; but still, superior pace is a theory which does meet all the conditions." The existence of differences in the pace of mind being conceded, the question next arises whether speed can be cultivated. If it can, we have a way pointed out by which intelligent life may be rendered longer and fuller. Dr. Martineau is said to believe, what many other persons fancy, that the English middle class has in the last two generations gained so greatly that the gain is perceptible in mental quickness. The Brahmans of India are celebrated for their superiority in this faculty. Teachers admit that the children of the educated poor are easier to teach than children of the uneducated poor; that "they have not only more 'receptive minds,' which may mean only better memories, but that their minds move positively quicker." On the other hand, the English educated never seem as quick as the Irish uneducated.

The Destiny of Sea-coast Land.—Among the results of his examination of the provisions of the shore towns of Massachusetts for public places of resort, and the industries and resources of the people, Mr. J. B. Harrison says, in Garden and Forest, that he found "everywhere recent changes in the ownership of land and a movement of people of means from the cities and the interior of the country to the shore regions of the State. I found leagues and leagues together of the shore line all private holdings, without a rood of space in these long reaches to which the public has a right to go. . . . I found a great population inland hedged away from the beach, and all the conditions pointing to a time, not remote, when no man can walk by the ocean in Massachusetts without payment of a fee, as we formerly had to pay