Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/497

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THE SEWING-MACHINE IN POLITICAL ECONOMY.
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lies in which he is chiefly interested. He has been an active explorer in Spain, and the collections made there by himself are the chief attractions of his cabinet. Henry E. Dresser, Esq., a London merchant, and author of a magnificent work on the birds of Europe, now in course of publication, possesses, at his residence on South Norwood Hill, the most complete collection of the eggs of the birds of Europe probably in existence. It is admirably arranged, containing many fine suites of the least common kinds, and very many species not in any other collection.

The collections in oölogy, made by the late Mr. John Wolley, the indefatigable explorer of the ornithology of the arctic regions of Europe, were bequeathed to Prof. Alfred Newton, of Cambridge, who has illustrated them in a publication of great elegance. This collection is of great scientific as well as pecuniary value. Its series of specimens of some of the rarest arctic eggs are immense. The market money-value of one of these series—that of the waxwing—at its lowest computation, is not less than £100.

Within the close of the venerable Cathedral of Durham, the writer was privileged to examine, in the cabinet of Rev. Canon Tristram, the largest collection of eggs it was his good fortune to see in Europe. This gentleman is an excellent ornithologist, has been a great traveler and explorer in America, North Africa, Palestine, Syria, and elsewhere, and his collections, which number over 1,700 species, have been largely taken by his own hand.

And here our space compels us to close our narrative, leaving much that was to us exceedingly attractive unsaid and undescribed. Though disappointing in certain instances, our study of European collections, as a whole, incomplete as it too often was, and all too hurried as to the time allotted, was ever full of instruction, interest, and enjoyment.

THE SEWING-MACHINE IN POLITICAL ECONOMY.

IT is very probable that as we obtain a fuller and more accurate command of facts relating to the production of wealth under perfectly free conditions in countries like our own, where intelligence is widely diffused, it will be found that the methods of most efficient production are those which necessarily contain within themselves the methods of most effectual distribution. It has been customary to assume, or infer, that the laws regulating the production of wealth were one thing, and the laws regulating its distribution were another; so much so, indeed, that while legislation could not interfere with production without doing harm, it might and ought, on grounds of justice and duty, to regulate distribution. There is strong reason to believe