animals protected against contagious pleuro-pneumonia without giving the disease strongly by the inoculation of pure non-attenuated virus? Well, it is probably the result of the application of one law which I have spoken of elsewhere in this writing. Certain soils in the body are better suited to the growth of certain germs, just as the same thing is true in the culture of seeds on a farm. The virus of pleuro-pneumonia grows slowly and poorly in the tail, probably because it is a soil which does not contain the elements proper to its rapid development, and consequently it is attenuated and causes a comparatively mild trouble, which insures against a second attack. This seems to be the accepted theory among a number of scientists, but of course it cannot be relied upon as a positive fact. A curious thing exists in regard to the effect of inoculation of certain contagious diseases, in comparison with the effects of the same when they have accidentally taken hold of a subject or subjects. The disease given by inoculation is much milder than that caught accidentally one way or the other.

SMALL-POX

in man and contagious pleuro-pneumonia are types of such maladies.

The responsibility of my position as director of a vaccine and experimental laboratory is very heavy, considering the thousands of human beings who, to save themselves from a horrible disease, are forced to submit to the inoculation into their body of a substance of which they know nothing - not even its source, which is of capital importance. Indeed, this is the point which necessitates the greatest prudence and a certain knowledge of the contagious diseases which may be transmitted by vaccination — I mean the affections which are transmissible from animal to man, or vice versa, those transmissible from man to man only, and from animal to animal.

Since we are more enlightened on the cause of contagious diseases, it frightens one to think that in vaccinating a child, other diseases worse than small-pox might be given, tuberculosis (consumption) for instance, the most mortal enemy of life, to say nothing of other still more loathsome constitutional affections.

But if science has given us that dread by its light, it has, nevertheless, done a wise thing; it has, by that means, forced man to be prudent, and to search deeper into the nature of the preventive treatment adopted universally. It has led to the solution of the long-discussed subject of the origin of vaccine, and thus given us the means of producing a safer article. In fact, the knowledge that vaccine is horse-pox attenuated by its passage through the bovine system (cattle) is very useful in the cultivation of vaccine, which takes the name of cow-pox. As stated elsewhere in this paper, cow-pox vaccine and horse-pox are one and the same affection. This fact has been established by experiments of the most rigid character, and approved by the French Academy of Medicine long ago. What was supposed formerly to be natural outbreaks of cow-pox had probably their origin in horse-pox which existed simultaneously in the same localities. In fact, Jenner had recognized this, or at least he doubted such to be the case, as we can see from old writings.

Before closing I should like to say a few words in regard to the treatment of Mr. Pasteur against hydrophobia (rabies), were it only to answer in a general way the innumerable questions I am asked on the subject. But my report is already long-too long, perhaps, to begin this matter which does not interest us so closely and which would add several pages to these. I will simply say that the treatment in question is a vaccination based on the same solid rock which constitutes the foundation of vaccinations used successfully against other diseases, i. e., micro-organism as the probable cause of rabies; the attenuation of the virus; its mild effects when so inoculated, and the non-recurrence of hydrophobia.

13

CONCENTRATION OF THOUGHT AND

ACTION.

BY GEORGE S. PHILBRICK, OF TILTON, MEMBER OF THE BOARD

FROM BELKNAP COUNTY.

The farmer of to-day, like his prototype of the time of Abraham, is intensely conservative. The world, with him, moves slowly; the changing of ideas, like the changing of the seasons, is gradual and almost imperceptible. Meeting the same objects year by year, surrounded by the same scenes, living in the world of muscle instead of brain, untaught in childhood to habits of thought, untrained in manhood to close, consecutive study, to reason from premise to conclusion, and from conclusion back to premise, till the logical deduction is firmly established in his mind, and thus made to become the basis of an idea from which to work out a practical result, do you wonder the world has far outstripped him in its grand onward march of improvement? Most of the thirty-two thousand farmers of New Hampshire are to-day living in a world of their own, as isolated from and as unsympathetic with the jostling, driving, calculating world around them as the poles of a battery. Isolated because living outside of the great currents of the world's thought, wanting sympathy because failing to comprehend their relations to them.

Our fathers conquered a wilderness and made them homes in the desert. Strong of heart and of hand, with simple habits, and wants bounded by the capacity of the soil, success, aye, a competence for them was certain. The great waves of commerce

and trade had not reached their doors.

Their farms must supply

their every need, and a system (if system it could be called) of mixed husbandry became a necessity. They were the people, each farm a miniature world by itself, each farmer an autocrat, whose opinion was unquestioned and whose rights none invaded. I have said their habits were simple, so their wants were few; and though their families were in the main large, there was seldom pinching want. Freedom with food, clothing, and shelter, — food coarse and plain indeed; clothing in summer from flax raised by their own hands, and in winter from the wool of sheep that grazed the hillside pasture; one pair of cowhide boots a year, the legs of which were carefully preserved after the feet were worn out, and made over into a pair of shoes for the wife or one of the girls in winter, both sexes going barefooted nine months in the year, with an occasional best gown of alpaca or linseywoolsey and a few yards of ribbon brought from abroad, and only worn on rare, very rare occasions. Of books, aside from the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress (not by Mark Twain), and Baxter's Saints' Rest, there were absolutely none. Forty years ago I do not think there was a farmer in our town that had as many books as I could carry on my arm. I doubt very much if they all did. A daily paper, a review, a magazine, a lady's book of fashions, had never been heard of, much less bought and paid for as one of the absolute necessities of life. In those days they made money. They could not help it. The soil was full as productive as to-day, and insect pests much less numerous, while the prices received for "stuff" raised on the farm, when you take into consideration the purchasing power of gold, were fully equal to those of the present.

"There was satisfaction then in knowing

Their grass and bank accounts were growing."

Your grass has grown, but how about the bank account? How many farmers within the sound of my voice can show $1,000 as the product of their labor for the past ten years? Is it not true that there are more farmers who have hard work to pay their taxes and make the year come around so "the ends will meet" than there are who succeed in putting a dollar at interest or make a dollar's worth of improvements on their farms or buildings? And yet you are carrying on the same farm your father did, and

farming just as he did. I was in a village store not long since, and the merchant, after telling me the farmer sseemed to be running behind, said the trouble with them was they did not work. If they would only work as hard as he did, they could lay up something. That man never raised a potato or milked a cow in his life, and yet, in his own mind at least, he had solved the whole problem. I have heard it remarked that Cæsar would have been considered a very good king if he never had attempted to govern.

I am no enthusiast for New England farming, but I am not one of those who believe New Hampshire should be turned out for a sheep pasture. As a farmer to the manor born, and one who has made the business a study through long years of experience, instead of saying you ought to work more, I should say you ought to think more. I believe the art of farming is still in its infancy, and every farmer owes it to himself and to posterity to do something to help rear it up to manhood and develop it into a giant capable of meeting and overcoming all the obstacles in its path, and taking the place which God intended it should take, side by side with the great industries of the world, equal to any and excelled by none. But how are we to accomplish this result? While we have been plodding along "in the good old way," the world has got ahead of us with its steam ships and steam railroads, with its telegraphs and telephones, speaking across a continent or under the ocean; the mighty arms of commerce reaching all lands, penetrating every nook and corner of the world, bringing to our doors the products of every clime, bringing us into competition with every toiler on the globe, often offering us the very products of our farms cheaper than we can raise them. Have you ever considered what a mighty territory is just being opened up by the Northern Pacific Railroad? One hundred states as large as New Hampshire could be carved out of it, and still have room for the great state of New York. Land of the fertility of which no man has any conception if he has never seen it. East and west you could run a plow as far as from here to New York city and never take it out only to cross the streams. North and south you could turn an unbroken furrow as far as from here to Chicago, save where you crossed the