that is shown by chemical analysis to be of almost exactly the same composition as that of the cow, which it resembles to perfection in appearance and quality, tasting like sweet cream. On the elevated barren plains west of the Volga grows a plant closely resembling a lamb, which was said by travellers of old to bend upon its stalk to feed upon the herbage about it.

A MONSTER TO BE AVOIDED.

The monster that Columbus met and befriended in the American forests; that Hernandez introduced into Europe; that Raleigh brought to England; that James the First, and Pope Urban XIII., and the Russian government, and Ammat, the Sultan of Turkey, all warred with, Tobacco-monarch mightier than Alexander or Napoleon-yet robs our ranks. Young men are falling. The strength of the land, the "trustees of posterity," are failing us. Devotees may hug their idol and call us radically puritanic, but competent scientific men have carefully diagnosticated the demon weed. Of itself the fearful plant is deleterious enough, for its very essence-that which produces the soothing, fascinating, and enslaving effect-the nicotine-chemists and authoritative medical authors unanimously pronounce "in its action on the animal system one of the most virulent poisons known." A single drop put on the tongue of a cat produced violent convulsions, and killed her in the space of one minute; while a thread dipped in the same oil, and drawn through a wound made by a needle in an animal, killed it in the space of seven minutes.

More shocking, however, is the revelation concerning the constituents of the bane of boyhood, denominated cigarette. According to Professor Laflin, all of these "coffin nails" contain five distinct poisons. Three are the most deadly oils, one in the wrapper, one in the nicotine, and the third, the worst, in the flavoring. The other two are saltpetre

and opium. When the smoker draws the smoke into his lungs, upon those vital organs and the throat is continually deposited a brown stain, a combined coating of all five poisons, which in time stains the very skin, thus indicating that the whole system is permeated by it.

Now, is it mysterious that the cigarette is so seductive, and obtains such fatal power, when in it is that pseudo-panacea of Turks and Chinese, which racked and ruined DeQuincey and Coleridge?

Again, as to cigarettes: In a single winter 52 young men died in Brooklyn, N. Y. A dozen boys became insane, and are confined in the Napa, Cal., hospital. A young fellow of sixteen dies in Philadelphia, and the post mortem shows death due to congestion of the brain. One, the brightest in his class, begins to smoke; a year later is stricken with heart disease-then dies in Louisville. In Kingston, N. Y., a young man suffers from the hallucination that he is followed by the police, who think him "Jack the Ripper," fled from London. Directly descended from three eminent ministers, and himself dedicated to missionary work, eighteen years old, a young man of fine promise, but now mentally diseased, wanders from home and friends. A girl, employed to fold the poisonous packages, dies as the result. Dr. Seaver, of Yale College, after an eight years' observation of the effects of tobacco smoking upon Yale students, comparing indulgers with abstainers, informs us that the former have less lung power, less chest inflating capacity, less bodily weight, and even less height. Also in an intellectual way, he says, Yale smokers are inferior to the anti-smokers. Of those students, who, within a given time, have received junior honors above "dissertations," only five per cent. were smokers, and very few smokers received appointments of any kind.

Notwithstanding all these frightful facts, the production proceeds, the consumption continues, and a multitude are being dwarfed in body, mind and soul.-C. B. ADAMS, Episcopal Methodist, Balt.

THE AGE OF DECAY.

Birth, growth, maturity, decay, death-such is the normal history of The three periods of life should sustain a certain proportion to each other twenty years of growth, sixty years of maturity, twenty years of decay. This is what might be counted upon as the ordinary course of human life, but for the fact that we labor under a load of ancestral transgressions of physical and moral law, supplemented and intensified by our own personal delinquencies and follies.

How pleasant is the picture! Twenty years of happy childhood and youth, sixty years of intellectual progress and achievement, with domestic and social joys, and then twenty years of slow, almost unconscious decay, characterized by serenity of mind, pleasing memories, and joyous anticipations of a grander life beyond the grave.

Sadly different is human existence as we see it. We look with wonder upon Gladstone, past eighty, still vigorous in body and mind, still strong and wise to lead the great Liberal party of England. We accept threescore and ten as life's natural limit, and expect only labor and sorrow if this limit is passed.

We are doomed, we think, by our inheritance; and to some extent this is true. But we should remember the law of recuperation. The torn flesh heals; the broken bone reunites. Diseases tend toward recovery. The weary toiler rises from sleep strong for new labors. The wise physician bases his hopes upon this law.

And this tendency of nature to heal herself may be greatly assisted by careful and intelligent living, so that it is always possible that the man of unfortunate ancestry may secure for himself a good old age, and start his posterity upon an ascending plane.

Do what we will, however, life must have its end. When the age of decay is reached, hidden changes are going on, the culmination of which is the last great change. The muscles shrink; the brain shrivels; nerves lose their sensibility and active power; the arteries, perhaps, become chalky or fatty; the heart is weakened; the circulation enfeebled; and at last the end comes.

During this final period, then, we must take things calmly; avoid excesses of all kinds; guard against exposures to cold; keep up a degree of mental activity; cultivate cheerfulness, and look forward with hope.-Ex.

UNDER THE EARTH.

The workmen in the deepest mines of Europe swelter in almost intolerable heat, and yet they never penetrate over one 7-1000th part of the distance from the surface to the centre of the earth.

In the lower levels of some of the Comstock mines the men fought scalding water, and could labor only three or four hours at a time until the Sutro tunnel pierced the mines and drew some of the terrible heat, which had stood at 120.

The deepest boring ever made, that at Sperenberg, near Berlin, penetrates only 4,172 feet, about 1,000 feet deeper than the famous artesian well at St. Louis.

While borings and mines reveal to us only a few secrets relating solely to the temperature and constitution of the earth for a few thousand feet below the surface, we are able, by means of volcanoes, to form some notion of what is going on at a greater depth.

There have been many theories about the causes of volcanoes, but it is now generally held that, though they are produced by the intense heat of the interior of the earth, they are not directly connected with the molten mass that lies many miles below the immediate sources of volcanic energy.

Everybody knows that many rocks are formed on the floor of the ocean, and it is found that a twentieth to a seventieth of their weight is made up of imprisoned water. Now, those rocks are buried in time under overlaying strata, which serve as a blanket to keep the enormous heat of the interior.

This heat turns the water into superheated steam, which melts the hardest rock, and when the stream finds a fissure in the strata above it it breaks through to the surface with terrific energy, and we have a volcano.

We find that these outpourings that have lain for countless ages many thousands of feet below the surface are well adapted to serve the purposes of man. Many a vineyard flourishes on the volcanic ashes from Vesuvius, and volcanic mud has clothed the hills of New Zealand with fine forests, and its plains with luxuriant verdure.

The most wonderful display of the results of volcanic energy is seen in the northwestern corner of our own land, a region of lofty forests and of great fertility.-Toronto Truth.

CANCER.

An able medical writer says that cancer is often caused by mental strain and worry resulting from extraordinary reverses of fortune, and that novel theory is well borne out by the circumstances of the death of Frank Leslie and General Grant.

In speaking of the matter, Dr. Hodgman, one of the oldest and most successful physicians of the city, said: The instances mentioned. are, indeed, singularly striking in their similarity. I am well acquainted with the circumstances surrounding Mr. Leslie's sickness and death,

have carefully studied the I would be scarcely willing

having attended him and family, and I cases of General Grant and John Roach. to go to the length of saying that the cancer in each of these cases was the direct result of mental strain and worry, but I have no doubt that the business reverses of these three men accelerated, if they did not superinduce, the fatal malady from which each suffered: When one's mind becomes troubled the body must become more or less debilitated, and when the body becomes debilitated any latent disease will assert itself. Yet I must believe that the germ of the disease must have been present in each case, awaiting only an opportunity for development and growth. The opportunity was offered alike to Leslie, Roach and Grant. Their minds became worried, and their bodies became weakened and the cancers appeared. Had not these reverses come, with the consequent mental trouble, those three men might have lived for years without developing the fatal disease.-Ex.

WHAT IS A CELL?

The word "cell" is now in common use in all physiological and medical discussions. Yet thousands, if called upon to give a definition of it, would find themselves nonplussed or greatly puzzled. Some of the commonest words, as love, religion, truth, are almost indefinable, and the difficulties of definition generally increase with simplicity and frequency of use. Let us see if we can tear this little word to pieces, for the learned word analysis means, in plain speech, only tearing to pieces. First as to its parentage. In the Latin the little word cella means a small cavity, and it is related to celare, to conceal. This is the parent of the word cell. Webster says the biological meaning of the word is "One of the minute elementary structures of which the greater part of the various tissues and organs of animals and plants are composed." It is microscopical in size; seen through a microscope it appears like a little sac, spheroidal (that is, like a sphere, but not quite spherical, roundish), in shape, a chemical compound of six elements, viz., oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, sulphur and phosphorus.

Let us glance for a moment at these six constituents of a cell. All matter exists, as a general rule, as a solid, liquid or gas. Oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen are known to us as gases, and carbon is ever a