and light, spongy, sweet, and wholesome bread is made more readily by the use of the Royal Baking Powder than with yeast or with any other leavening agent. The action of the baking powder is mechanical entirely, and causes no chemical change in the flour. The leavening gas is obtained by the decomposition or destruction of the leavening agent itself, instead of at the expense of the constituents of the flour. There is no destruction of the gluten or sugar, but all those elements are preserved which were intended by nature, when combined in our bread, to make it literally the "staff of life."
Bread raised in this way, it is asserted by the hygienists, possesses greater wholesomeness, because of its superior lightness and tenderness, which permit its more ready and perfect assimilation, and because of its assured freedom from acidity.
It will not be astonishing if the next decade shall witness the substitution of the Royal Baking Powder in the place of yeast for bread-making to the same extent—and that is almost wholly—that it has taken the place of the old-fashioned cream of tartar, soda, and sour milk in the making of biscuit, cake, and the lighter forms of pastry.
A correspondent writes to us from Macon, Georgia, to call our attention to the fact that Vassar College is not, as Miss L. R. Smith asserted in her article on social life at that institution, the first woman's college in the world. "Just twenty-three years before the date assigned as Vassar's first start in life was founded the old Georgia Female College at Macon, in this State. … It suffered the usual penalties of being in advance of its age, and struggled through the difficulties of its early years with varying success,—or perhaps I should say want of success,—being at one time actually sold under the sheriff's hammer. It was bought in, however, by friends, and was finally placed under the management of the Georgia Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. As public opinion became more enlightened, the fortunes of the college gradually improved, and under the presidency of Dr. W. C. Bass it had already entered upon a career of solid prosperity, when, in 1881, Mr. Seney's generous donation of one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars set it upon a firm financial footing and brought its merits prominently before the world. The last annual catalogue shows an attendance of over three hundred students, and the college building is one of the handsomest to be found anywhere, North or South."
Oxygen—Its Agency in Therapeutics.—It is true that oxygen in an uncombined state did, and probably always will, disappoint what would seem to be a reasonable expectation of its results. So, too, has a mixture of it with common air, in various proportions, failed to produce the healing effects which have been looked for with so much hope.
But it can now be demonstrated that all these strong convictions, that oxygen ought to prove an inestimable boon to the millions who are suffering from disease, had their foundation in truth.
What, then, is Compound Oxygen? It is a combination of oxygen and nitrogen, the two elements which make up common or atmospheric air, in such proportion as to render it much richer in the vital or life-giving element.
It is a preparation of which chemists know nothing. It is not "nitrous oxide or Laughing gas;" and it differs essentially from all substances used in medical inhalations. It contains no medicament, unless the elements of pure air
