zations; three thousand voluntary observers are furnishing monthly reports of daily observations of temperature and rainfall; and over eleven thousand persons assist in the work of distributing the weather forecasts of the National Weather Service. This latter work has been more rapidly pushed during the past year than any other feature of State Weather Service work. With the continuation of the present liberal policy toward these services there will be in a comparatively short time no important agricultural community in the United States, with the proper mail facilities, that will not receive the benefits of the forecasts.
The Nature of Scientific Truth.—The evidence, and the only evidence, to which science appeals or which it admits, said Dr. Brinton in his presidential address before the American Association, is that which it is in the power of every one to judge, that which is furnished directly by the senses. It deals with the actual world about us, its objective realities and present activities, and does not relegate the inquirer to dusty precedents or the moldy maxims of commentators. The only conditions that it enjoins are that the imperfections of the senses shall be corrected as far as possible, and that their observations shall be interpreted by the laws of logical induction. Its aims are distinctly beneficent. Its spirit is that of charity and human kindness. From its peaceful victories it returns laden with richer spoils than ever did warrior of old. Through its discoveries the hungry are fed and the naked are clothed by an improved agriculture and an increased food supply; the dark hours are deprived of their gloom through methods of ampler illumination; man is brought into friendly contact with man through means of rapid transportation; sickness is diminished and pain relieved by the conquests of chemistry and biology; the winter wind is shorn of its sharpness by the geologist's discovery of a mineral fuel; and so on, in a thousand ways, the comfort of our daily lives and the pleasurable employment of our faculties are increased by the administrations of science. Scientific truth has likewise this trait of its own—it is absolutely open to the world; it is as free as air, as visible as light. There is no such thing about it as an inner secret, a mysterious gnosis, shared by the favored few, the select illuminati, concealed from the vulgar horde, or masked to them under ambiguous terms. Wherever you find mystery, concealment, occultism, you may be sure that the spirit of science does not dwell, and, what is more, that it would be an unwelcome intruder. Such pretensions belong to pseudo-science, to science falsely so called, shutting itself out of the light because it is afraid of the light.
A Lesson concerning Epidemics.—An epidemic of typhoid fever which prevailed in Buffalo, N. Y., in March, 1894, is the subject of a contribution by Prof. S. A. Lattimore to the Rochester Academy of Science. A noteworthy feature of the pestilence is that it prevailed in those parts of the city that draw from the water supply, while those parts to which the supply system had not extended and depended on wells were exempt from it. The source of the disease was therefore looked for in the water supply. This is pumped from the Niagara River at such a distance from the shore as is supposed to make sure against contamination by sewage. There is, however, a secondary inlet which sewage may reach, but which is usually closed. During the latter part of February the winds blew in such a way as to force the water of the river back, making it so low at the pumping station that the quantity entering the tunnel was not sufficient for the maintenance of an adequate pressure. The secondary inlet was opened, and the fever began. Upon analysis of the water the typhoid bacillus was found in it. The exclusive supply from the crib in the middle of the river was resumed, the reservoir and pipes were washed out and disinfected, and the epidemic ceased. Prof. Lattimore draws from the incident a forcible lesson on the necessity of avoiding the pollution of lakes and rivers on which cities and districts may be dependent for supplies. "Has a city," he asks, "any more right than a private citizen to render itself a nuisance by discharging its waste upon their [its neighbors'] property, and rendering odious, if not dangerous, the air they must breathe and the water they must drink? Is it a premature question to ask if the time has not almost come when
