reason and conscience alike, was irresistible. This new and alarming phenomenon must, after all, be judged by the question: "Does God use it?"—"Wesley and His Century."
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UTILIZATION
Darwin made the great experiments which
have changed the whole aspect of natural
history, with the common glasses of his house,
and the common flower-pots in his garden.
There is a legend of an artist who sought long for a piece of sandalwood out of which to carve a Madonna. He was about to give up the search when in a dream he was bidden to shape the figure from a block of oak-*wood which was destined for the fire. Obeying the command, he produced from the log of common firewood a masterpiece.—Hugh Macmillan.
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Not so long ago there arrived at a Pacific port a ship from Belfast, Ireland, after a voyage that was in one respect remarkable. It appears that this vessel's ballast consisted of about 2,000 tons of Irish soil. This, when leveled off, made a pretty good-sized garden patch, and the members of the crew, with commendable thrift, took it into their heads to improve it.
They planted a good stock of garden truck—cabbages, leeks, turnips, radishes, peas, beans, lettuce and other things. These came up in due course, and flourished admirably, especially while the ship was in the tropics, and the men had fresh "garden sass" to their hearts' content.
As they rounded Cape Horn they replanted the garden, and by the time they reached the equator everything was again green and the table well supplied.
The two drawbacks were the weeds, which grew apace, and the inroads of the ship's drove of pigs, which were kept in the "farm-*yard attachment," and which, on several occasions, when the ship was rolling heavily, broke out of bounds and, of course, did their best to obtain their share of the garden truck.
The last pig was killed and served with green vegetables just before the vessel entered the port on the Pacific. On the arrival of the ship the sod was taken to its destination, ready to be used again for terrestrial gardening.—Harper's Weekly.
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A public sentiment that fluctuates irregularly
can be as little depended upon
in making progress as the sun's energy
noted in the following:
The energy falling upon an ordinary city
lot should run continuously a hundred-horse-power
plant. If all the coal deposits in
Pennsylvania were burned in one second,
they would not produce as much power as
the sun furnishes us in the same time. The
difficulty in the practical utilization of the
solar energy lies in its extreme variability.
In the morning and afternoon, when the sun
is low in the heavens, but a small amount of
energy reaches the surface, and even at noon
a passing cloud will absorb the greater part
of the solar radiation.—Charles Lane Poor,
"The Solar System."
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UTILIZATION OF RESOURCES
A writer on the coal areas of the nation says:
A good geologist, Baron von Richthofen,
has reported that he has found a coal-field
in the province of Hunau covering an area
of 21,700 square miles, which is nearly double
the British coal area of 12,000 square miles.
In the province of Shansi, the baron discovered
nearly 30,000 square miles of coal,
with unrivaled facilities for mining. But
all these vast coal-fields, capable of supplying
the whole world for some thousands of
years to come, are lying unworked.
If "the course of manufacturing supremacy of wealth and of power" were directed by coal, then China, which possesses 33.3 times more of this directive force than Great Britain, and had so early a start in life, should be the supreme summit of the industrial world. If this solid hydrocarbon "raises up one people and casts down another," the Chinaman should be raised thirty-three times and three-tenths higher than the Englishman; if it "makes railways on land and paths on the sea," the Chinese railways should be 33.3 times longer than ours, and the tonnage of their mercantile marine 33.3 times greater.
China is thus shown to be, potentially,
the wealthiest coal-bearing country
in the world. Actually, she is one
of the poorest. The difference lies in
her lack of utilization of that which is
hers. So many a man fails of the best
results. He possesses untold wealth,
