dred's onslaught. At present, there is | are they without their use in keeping plenty of food for them in the fields, down the caterpillars. Still, on the and the ripening plums are succumbing whole, wasps, like mosquitoes and ratto their ravages; but we are assured tlesnakes, are things we could very that later on they will " certainly invade well dispense with. The least trucuthe towns," though why, except to lent of zoophilists kills them without prey on the contents of grocers' and remorse, though, unless the nest is confectioners' shops, it is hard to say. taken, the annihilation of stray insects Meantime, prudent folk will be wise to does little to rid a district of a pest get a supply of carbolic acid laid in, which sends out thirty or forty thouand to keep a cut onion at hand, against sand from every hive. Though the the stings which, unless a spell of seeking out and destruction of nests in cold weather settles the insects for summer are not without effect on the good and all, may at an early date be prevalence of the wasps, this form of their lot. In a warm season, when insecticide does not prove so effectual food is plentiful, a nest may contain as attacking them earlier in the season. many thousands of cells, full of insects For it may happen that the death of a in all stages of development. Each of few wasps in spring will prevent the these cells is occupied several times in formation of a nest later in the year, the course of a summer. Hence, a vast and the production of a family whose swarm may proceed from a single hive, members may before October be to the "inconvenience" of an entire counted by tens of thousands. Cyaneighborhood and the loss of the mar-nide of potassium, we have said, is not ket gardener and fruit grower.

quite the best substance to employ for During summer, the wasps, of which disposing of wasps. A much safer, there are seven species in Great Brit- and quite as effectual, method of comain, live almost exclusively upon the passing their destruction is to blow up sweet juices of ripe fruit, occasionally the nest by a charge of mixed sulphur carrying off small particles of the flesh, and gunpowder, fired by a piece of the traces of one of these insect con- touch-paper, after a turf has been noisseurs having attacked a pear being dropped on the top of the nest. Or if an unfailing proof of its quality. Yet a bottle of spirits of turpentine, with even then the wasps are not without the cork out, is laid in the nest over carnivorous tastes, though the dam- night, the fumes will have suffocated age they do to the meat in butchers' the entire community before morning. shops butchers' "inconvenience "At all events, some means ought at being left out of the reckoning once to be taken to get rid of the pres18 amply compensated by the num-ent swarms. For, if next summer ber of blow-flies which they kill and should be warm, the nuisance will be carry off to feed their grubs. Nor well-nigh unendurable.

FOSSIL FLOUR. · A large deposit of fossil to place the fingers upon its upper part flour of remarkable purity has been discov-without suffering inconvenience from the ered in the State of Maine. The properties heat. Fossil flour is almost as white as of this earth are its wonderful faculty for resisting the action of acids, alkalies, and oils, and its remarkable quality as a nonconductor of heat. As a test of the last named quality an inch cube of the material was placed on a bar of iron, which was then put in a blacksmith's forge and heated until it melted away from the cube of earth. So slightly did the heat penetrate the cube that it is stated that it was found possible

oxide of zinc. It is so light in weight that a flour-barrel of it in its natural condition does not weigh more than fifty pounds. It is absolutely unaffected by any kind of mechanical manipulation. As mined, it is a pure white powder, so fine that it is incapable of further fining. A careful analysis of the substance shows about ninety-five per cent. of pure silica.

Iron.

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From Macmillan's Magazine.

GEORGE FOX.

enriched humanity by many capable and some eminent citizens, remain a respected if a diminishing body.

their loins for the conversion of the world was provocative of nothing ex66 ENGLAND," wrote Voltaire, in cept laughter; just as Pope Leo, sur1731, "is properly the country of sec-rounded by all the art and culture of tarists. An Englishman, as one to the Renascence, could dismiss the whom liberty is natural, may go to theses on the church door at Wittenheaven his own way." The epigram berg as the drunken frolic of a German is a curious commentary upon the friar, so no doubt to the sober Englishfutility of attempting to enforce uni- men of the Protectorate, the rant of formity in religion. Barely fifty years the Independent, the rhodomontade before the great Frenchman took up of the "prophet who damned," and his residence at Wandsworth, Jeffreys rhapsodies of the "man in leather had sent Baxter to prison and set Mug- breeches," represented nothing but gleton in the pillory; and already if a folly varying in degree. Yet, after the man were willing to forego the material lapse of several centuries, while the advantages of State employment, he Ranters have vanished into space, was at liberty to riot in what the while Muggletonianism, after dragging Church termed schism. In no circum-out a sordid and obscure career, is stances is it likely that Nonconformity probably extinct, the Quakers, having could ever have been rendered nugatory; but had the Church shown more wisdom it might have been reduced to a minimum. Men are so constructed The fact of Fox's success is suffiintellectually that so long as they con- ciently plain; the reason of it is by no tinue to think they will continue to means equally superficial. There was differ; and the expression of their dif- nothing in his conception which seemed ferences will not assume its least color- to entail what the devout would have able aspect under the influence of a described as an especial blessing; violent spiritual upheaval. It is then there was, on the contrary, a multitude that sincerity tends to bigotry and of tiresome and perplexing detail. Its formality stiffens itself by a nicer re- fundamental principles were as ancient gard for ceremony, that the sceptic as Christianity itself; its peculiar bulgrows bitterly contemptuous, while for warks an outrage on human intellithe hysterical nothing is too outrageous gence. If it contained nothing so provided it is only sufficiently incom- comically extravagant as the Muggleprehensible. To separate at such a tonian revelation of a transparent deity, moment the permanent from the eva- it contained much that was sufficiently nescent, in other words to be wise wild and incoherent to supply Macaulay before the event, is always a task of with an excuse for a famous and charsupreme difficulty; and probably, in acteristic antithesis. England has now the whole range of religious contro- grown so familiar with the decorous versy in this country, there never was life and gentle courtesy of the modern a time when prescience was less easy member of the Society of Friends, as than during the period known as that to have forgotten that Quakerism in of the Puritan revival. Just as to the its militant epoch was by no means satirist Lucian watching in pagan Rome always either gentle or decorous. The the growth of the manifold illusions fanaticism which sent George Fox fostered by Grecian scepticism and Ara- trudging over hill and moor in the bebian philosophy, Christianity appeared lief that he was at once a prophet and remarkable merely on account of the a miracle-worker, which urged him to simplicity of its delusions; just as to disturb public worship, and drove him the banqueters in Mahomet's house at barefooted through Lichfield crying Mecca the suggestion of an elderly mer- aloud, "Woe to this bloody city!" chant and a boy of sixteen girding up found its inevitable corollary in the

madman who rode into Bristol sur- | expurgatorius, are but proof of how an rounded by disciples shouting, "Holy, overwrought brain may reduce even holy, holy, Lord God of Israel," and consistency to an absurdity. the still madder lady who thrust herself But the real work of Fox, the work stark naked into church before the Pro- for which numberless generations have tector, being moved, she declared, to had reason to honor him, was his effort appear as a sign to the people. In all to remove the bonds which men, not this there was not much calculated to content with wrapping them about secure the support of any but the most their own souls, persisted in endeavorexcitable of religious buffoons. It is ing to twist about those of their neighnecessary to look for the secret of the bors. The sad-visaged men, with yokes man's influence, and it is to be discov- of names, who prowled from village to ered probably in two simple causes: hamlet denouncing everything that the magnetism of his personality and tended to brighten the struggle for exhis almost superhuman truthfulness. istence, who loathed the ChristmasFox was undoubtedly one of those per- tree equally with the Maypole, and sons exercising a strange fascination raged against bear-baiting, not, in Maover all who come in contact with them. caulay's famous phrase, because it gave That, with his neck in the pillory, he pain to the bear, but because it gave should have succeeded in taming the pleasure to the spectators, were as viomobs which came to hurl brickbats at lent as Laud himself in subordinating him, is not particularly surprising. the cause of truth to their own particuMobs are the most uncertain of all un-lar shibboleths. For the moment the known quantities, capable one moment Puritan had mastered the Episcopalian, of the most brutal ferocity, and the and was intent upon proving that it next of mere maudlin sentimentality. was possible to be as intolerant in a That he should have gained and held steeple hat as in a shovel one. Like the respect of such men as Penn and all religious fanatics Fox was imBarclay among his own following, and pressed with the fact that he had should have wrung an unwilling com- secured a monopoly of truth; but he pliment from the great Protector him- held it no part of his revelation to inself, is sufficient proof, if any were dulge in the punishment of error. needed, that he was no mere mounte- was a proselytizer of course, but it was bank. His more questionable antics of the stamp of St. Paul rather than of were probably nothing but the valve Saul of Tarsus. No doubt in accordthrough which a strangely impression-ance with the theological bias of the able nature found relief in a highly age, he was convinced that those who charged atmosphere; and were really rejected his gospel were imperilling insignificant in comparison with the their prospects of salvation; but he strenuous fight which, in the face of owned that truth could not be instilled ruffianism and bigotry, he made for into the weaker brethren either by the liberty of conscience. Out of the mul- physical torture of the boot or by the sotitude of preachers, some supremely cial coaxing of the Test Act. Whether, honest, some simply charlatans, whom if they had ever become the dominant the religious cyclone had cast up to the factor in the State, Fox's successors surface, he alone, despite all his vapor- would have lived up to his theories it ings and grimaces, seems to have fash- is impossible to say. Majorities have ioned his pulpit out of the adamantine an ugly habit of ignoring the profesrock of eternal truthfulness. The very sions of their minority. The whole extravagance of his attack upon the history of the world is one long panopleasant courtesies of life, aud the rama of persecuted turned persecutors. pedantry of his objection to such every-In Rome the primitive Christians were day words and phrases as the shallow-thrown by the pagans to the lions ness of his learning enabled him to when the throne of the Cæsars gave select for incorporation in his index place to the chair of St. Peter, the

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