cies of the age. There is the sound of a going towards scepticism; a sound of going towards education and enlightenment; a sound of going towards political life and excitement; a sound of going backwards towards popery and superstition; a sound of going and sinking into drunkenness and increase of liquor power; a sound of going towards a love of power and war; the sound of going on with extensive mission work; and a sound of going and carrying the remains of those who had been good and useful to their last resting places. The moral is to turn the going toward benefiting and blessing the age.

Among other interesting short articles, sketches and skits in the "Trysorfa y Plant" for July, are two portraits and the lives of the Rev. W. Morris Lewis, Tyllwyd, Pembrokeshire, and the late Rev. T. Phillips, D. D., the faithful agent of the Bible Society for 34 years. Dr. Phillips was a native of Landovery, and began to preach in 1821, when in his 16th year. He moved to Hay, Radnor, in 1826, and to Hereford in 1839. In 1866 he represented the Society at the Jubilee of the American Bible Society in New York. He died in 1870, in his 64th year. The Rev. William Morris Lewis was born in 1839, and studied some time at the Bala and Trevecca Colleges, but his education was interrupted by sickness and by the death of his father. Mr. Lewis is a scholarly man, and has contributed largely to such religious publications as the "Expositor," the "Thinker," and the Biblical World." He has been appointed to prepare and deliver the "Davies Lecture" at the General Assembly of the Calvinistic Methodists at Llanberis, this year. When addressing the Bala students six years ago, he stated facetiously that years ago, his was the only name which stood between Principal T. C. Edwards and the worst in a certain way.

-This number also contains extracts

from two Welsh letters from Welsh settlers in Alexandra Colony, South America, one from a M. Morgans, and the other from Elizabeth Uribe. They number only 30 in the settlement, and they have not heard a Welsh sermon since they left Wales. They make great use of the Bible and other Welsh books which they prize highly. They get the "Trysorfa," which circulates amongst them, and is fondly welcome by all. Mrs. Uribe confesses that she could write Spanish better, but she preferred to express herself in her beloved Cymraeg.

The question naturally arises why did such men as Daniel Rowlands, Howell Harris, Jones, Llangan, Griffiths, Nefern, in Wales, and Wesley and Whitefield in England, break into nonconformity to work outside the discipline of the church they so loved and honored! There is only one reply. The state of religious affairs called for independent action. In the beginning of the 18th century, religion in England and Wales was in a very degraded state. Ignorance, infidelity, immorality and indifference to spiritual interests were general. As a natural result the church had fallen into a moribund state. Not the church alone, but also the nonconforming denominations. They were also inactive and shiftless; in fact, irreligion like a shadow had spread its gloom over the whole of Europe. So, it was not within the Church of England, this pitiable state of irreligion existed, but it was a general misfortune come over Christendom. Although this solemn fact is often used by Nonconformists and sectarians to reproach the Church, yet, in fairness, all religious partizans should be included in the condemnation. It was the winter of religion with very little sign of life, but yet underneath the seeming lifelessness the seeds of a future awakening were there waiting for the coming springtime.-"Yr Haul."

Although looked upon as an evil, pain is kind. It tells that the laws of nature have been violated, and warns us to correct the cause. If it were not for pain we should go on doing things that would destroy us. Pain is a warning that something is wrong, and, instead of trying to hush the pain with some drug we should seek to remove the

cause.

Chinese books are printed on board's on which the characters have been cut. There is no alphabet in the Chinese language, but 214 radicals or root characters, which enter into the formation of all the other characters, each of which represents a word. The characters are written one beneath another in columns and are read from top down, and the columns are read from the right to the left. The number of words in the language are about 40,000, but only a small part of these are known to any but the literati.

Dr. Edward Thorndike of the Western Reserve University, has made some on mental interesting experiments

fatigue. We are used to think of the mind as a machine, and our inability to work as a sign of its loss of energy. Sleep is supposed to restore the energy, as an accumulator is recharged with electricity. The incorrectness of this view might be questioned by the fact that mental action is too complex for such simplicity, and that some minds do not tire with large amounts of work. Dr. Thorndike's experiments show that certain persons are as fit for hard mental work after a day of it as in the morning, and seem to have no analogy with a charged accumulator.

More books are published in France each year than in Great Britain and the

United States combined; more books of a serious nature especially, since France publishes only a quarter as many novels as England, and only half as many as the United States. In pure learning and in science (in which latter, despite the deaths of the leaders of research, Pasteur and Charcot, she was never more earnest than now), she is second only to Germany, and her competition with Germany is growing keener every day.

Why is it that woman has always been more beautiful than man? In human beings the attractive qualities have always been on the side of the female. Why is it? Without wishing to cast any aspersion on the members of the superior sex, we may fairly answer that it is because they have hitherto been the less educated. But woman's ideas are changing; she has listened to the voice of the tempter, whispering in her ear all sorts of sweet fallacies about equality of the sexes, intellectual development and its necessity and the like, and she has yielded to the temptation. And the result of this will be that she will lose her beauty; she will suffer in appearance as man has done and is doing, and in the course of time the extremely civilized races of mankind will be ugly -irretrievably and lamentably ugly.Pearson's Magazine.

The pay of the Chinese soldier indicates that he must be an even more economical person than the New Zealand bushman, who was able to live on £4 10s. a year (on which he kept a horse and entertained)! The Chinese private at £2 8s. per annum is extremely inexpensive compared with the Englishman at £77, the Russian at £48, and the Italian-the cheapest of European soldiers-at £41. On this threehalf-pence a day there is little fear of

bursts of dissipation, though the cavalryman has an extra 8s. a month for his horse, out of which he replaces the animal if it be killed. The Japanese gentleman who keeps up a house and two servants on £100 a year, and the Swiss who expends as much as 2f. a day seem criminally extravagant, for in India only one man in 700 pays income tax (which is levied on everything over £33 a year)! Why not cable over a few pounds to buy off the entire Chinese army?

The so-called horse-sickness which is endemic in the Orange River Colony, Transvaal, Natal, Rhodesia, and Bechuanaland, and occasionally in Cape Colony, is getting to be very serious, and efforts are being made to render the horses immune. Fortified serum derived from immune horses almost invariably produces fatal results when injected into horses suffering from horsesickness. The fortified serum is a useful agent if properly used, and is capable of preventing the onset of horsesickness. Judicious treatment with the serum will assist in bringing about a cure, for if the animal is gradually accustomed to the toxin until it can receive an injection of 100 to 200 cc. of serum, virulent blood can be injected without danger.

In the large sawmills of Joseph Fialla, in Austria, the sawdust is utilized by being made up into briquettes; these form a good combustible for boiler furnaces or household use. The sawdust is impregnated with a mixture of tarry substances and heated to the proper temperature; it is then passed over a plate of iron heated by steam, from which a screw conveyor takes it to the screw-press, where it is compressed into briquettes of the required size. The press turns out 19 per minute, weighing 2-5 of a pound each, and measuring 6x22x12 inches. The calorific power is about the same as that of lignite, with

but 4 per cent. of ash. The factory turns out more than 6,000,000 briquettes a year; the cost is about 16 cents per thousand, and, the selling price reaches one dollar, leaving a considerable margin of profit.

Every step mankind has made in the direction of truth, enlightenment, and progress is to be credited to agitators. The prophets of old were agitators; Christ was one; every pioneer of liberty and civilization was an agitator. Without agitators the world would still be plunged in darkness, and we but 1tle better than the aboriginal savage. Agitation differentiates the true from the false prophet. If we are blundering in the Orient, agitation will reveal our error. If we be right, agitation will justify us. No righteous cause has ever been hindered by agitation. Every wickedness and tyranny and vice has trembled and fallen before it.-Washington Post.

Marriage by capture has left its traces on our wedding custom of the present day. The "best man" of to-day is the successor of the strong armed warrior who formerly assisted the would be bridegroom to carry off the lady of his choice from her family. The wedding ring symbolizes the fetter by which she was bound, and the throwing of slippers after the departing couple is a survival of the time when angry missiles were hurled by the baffled pursuers of the captor and his prize. Even the modern honeymoon recalls the time when the bridegroom had to hide away his bride until the consent of her relatives had been gained to the marriage.

At the present day in remote districts. in Ireland marriage is considered a tame affair unless the bridegroom runs away with his bride, and in some parts of Wales a mock resistance to the entrance of the bridegroom at the house of the bride's parents forms a part of the recognized ceremonies.

A curious case was tried before the Civil Courts in Vienna the other day regarding a claim arising out of a railway accident. The plaintiff stated that he had received internal injuries as the result of the accident. The medical experts maintained that the shock of the smash had caused the heart of the plaintiff to change from its normal position, to one lower down in his body. This theory was received with incredulity by the jury, but their scepticism was satisfied when they applied their hands to the man's ribs and could feel the organ beating in the usual manner. The medical men stated that the sufferer might live for several years notwithstanding the extraordinary displacement of his heart, but that he was more liable to heart failure and would experience great difficulty in doing his work. Under these circumstances the jury awarded the plaintiff heavy compensation.

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CHINA'S EGOTISM.

The Chinese claim superiority over every other nation, power, and race. From childhood they are told that they are the greatest and most powerful people on earth, and every fact likely to produce a different impression is carefully explained away. Thus when the Empress was forced to receive the ladies of the foreign embassies in audience a thing unheard of formerly in China the administration gave out the following. The foreign devils lately have become very bothersome, and it was necessary to give them a severe lesson. Their women have therefore been ordered to the palace to ko-towi. e., throw themselves in the dust-before the Empress. Another glaring instance of the manner in which Chinese vanity is satisfied to keep the people in good humor with the "best of governments" is the explanation given to the interference of Russia, France, and Germany at the end of the war against Japan. These barbarous vassal states

were simply ordered by the "Son of Heaven" to drive the hated little wojen, the Japanese, into the sea!

Every soldier in the British Army carries in his haversack what is known as the "Emergency Ration." This consists of a small tin cylinder, similar to a pocket spirit flask, divided into two compartments. One of these is filled with 4 ounces of cocoa paste; and the other contains a similar quantity of concentrated beef (pemmican.) As its title implies the ration is not to be used except in the cases of direct necessity, and if consumed in small quantities it will maintain strength for 36 hours. The tin has to be produced at parades and daily inspections, and the soldier who does not display his ration is severely dealt with. The tin must not be opened on any account, except by order of an officer. The ingredients may be either spread upon a biscuit like butter, or boiled up as cocoa or soup. Each tin contains sufficient quantities of the foodstuffs to make four pints of each.

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LOCUSTS AS FOOD.

In Morocco wagon loads of locusts are brought to the market in Fez, because they form a regular article of 1ood for the Moors who inhabit this part of north Africa. Here, also, the locusts are eaten in every style, pickled, salted, simply dried, smoked or in any other possible way, except raw. The negroes on the northern coast of Africa prefer locusts to pigeons, and they eat from 200 to 300 at a sitting. They remove head, wings and legs, boil them for half an hour in water, then add salt and pepper and fry them in vinegar. In a similar way locusts are prepared at other points in Africa and Asia. Preserved in salt pickle they form a staple article of commerce. Locusts in Africa are also compressed, when fresh, in barrels, and are then dished out like butter at meal times.-Chicago Tribune.

A SIMPLE WATER TEST.

All drinking water should be tested in town or country frequently, as there are other impurities besides sewage which are quite as deadly, and every cistern of water is liable to be a source of blood poisoning. Mice, rats and other pests must have water, and many a case of typhoid is set up by such as these falling into the cistern and remaining there for months in a decomposed state.

To detect this impure condition is very simple and unfailing. Draw a tumbler of water at night, put a piece of white lump sugar into it, and place it on the kitchen mantleshelf or anywhere that the temperature will not be under 60 degrees F. In the morning the water, if pure, will be perfectly clear; if contaminated by sewage or other impurities, the water will be milky. This is a simple and safe test, well known in chemistry.

he destroys his ancestral tablets and only worships an image of a naked child which points one finger toward heaven and another toward the earth. They say this is the Prince Jesus. Families having daughters, on entering their religion, restrain one of them from marriage. These are the guardians of the locks and keys of the chest containing magical spells and incantations. They are called "the old women who open the chest." *** In case of funerals, the religious teachers eject all the relatives and friends from the house, and the corpse is put into the coffin with closed doors. Both eyes are secretly taken out, and the orifice sealed up with a plaster. The reason for extracting the eyes is this: From one hundred pounds of Chinese lead can be extracted eight pounds of silver, and the remaining ninety-two pounds of lead can be sold at the original cost. But the only way to obtain this silver is by compounding the lead with the eyes of Chinamen. The eyes of foreigners are of no use for this purpose.

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SCHOOLS IN CHINA.

There is no "public school system" in China. Only the well-to-do or wealthy have the advantages of an education, unless the missionaries or generous Chinese open schools in behalf of the masses. There are a few native charity schools, but only a few. The Chinese boy starts to school when about six years of age. A fortune-teller is called, and after ascertaining the boy's age, date of birth, etc., he fixes the day upon which the boy is to start on his educational career. On the lucky day appointed by the wise man, the boy, dressed in his best, with hair neatly combed and head smoothly shaven, presents himself to the teacher, gives him a small present, bows his head to the floor three times, thereby signifying that he is willing to obey his commands.