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UNIVERSITY COURIER.
perhaps and fancy oneself his conqueror. It is easy to shoot but not as Pope did. The shafts of his satire rise sublimely." Again he says. "I am forced into similitudes drawn from other courage and greatness, and into comparing him with those we have achieved triumphs in actual war. I think of the works of young Pope as I do of the actions of the young Bonaparte or young Nelson. In their common life you will find frailties, meannesses as great as the vices and follies of the meanest men. But in the presence of the great occasion the great soul flashes out and conquers transcendent. In thinking of the splendor of Pope's young victories, of his merit unequalled as his renown, I hail and salute the achieving genius, and do homage to the pen of a hero."
TOPICS.
ELECTRICITY IN THE FUTURE.
M. Barrel, of the National Agricultural Society of France, anticipates that within thirty years as great a revolution will have been effected by electricity as has been effected by steam in the last thirty. Among uses to which it has already been put for agricultural purposes he mentioned Defoy's curb bit for breaking horses, the electric sieve used in mills, experiments of the use of the electric light on plants, the Felix electric plow and saws—one a circular saw, which cuts up whole trunks of trees into planks; the other a vertical saw, which does the finest kind of work. Electricity is also employed successfully for artificial incubation,and also for "trying" eggs.
ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS.
Hardly a month passes that America is not called upon to mourn some of her great men. Now the news comes that Alexander H. Stephens has passed away. One of the most prominent men of the Confederacy, and its vicepresident, he merits more than passing a notice. His career has been a remarkable one. As a member of Congress before the Rebellion he foresaw that struggle. In the Georgia convention he labored hard to prevent that state from withdrawing from the Union; but when the ordinance of secession was passed, his words "As my state goes, so go I," expressed his position well, for he it was, who in Virginia turned the balance in favor of civil war.
After the Rebellion he was again returned to Congress, where he remained most of the time till his recent election as governor.
For years Mr. Stephens has been of feeble health, "Often fitter for the sick room than the halls of Congress," yet his mind, ever powerful, has greatly influenced the course of his state. It is not for us to judge him. Though in some things he was unmistakably in the wrong, yet history will undoubtedly give him a place on the roll of Great Americans.
GREEN, THE HISTORIAN.
By the death of J. R. Green the world of letters loses one of its best men. Green wrote history in a way almost peculiarly his own. Lacking the fervent glow and the rounded periods of other writers he told his story simply and truly. His History of the English People is enough to immortalize his name and place him among the foremost writers of the time.
THE PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE.
In the choice of President of the Senate the Republicans were singularly fortunate. Mr. Edmunds is not actively identified with either of the factions which have lately divided the party,and is regarded with the greatest respect by men of all political classes, and while he has been before the people for a long time his integrity and honor have never been questioned. He is almost the only prominent Republican who could unite all factions.
IRELAND.
The recent crimes which have been committed in Ireland and England have wrought much damage to the cause of Irish liberty. Especially the Land Leaguers will suffer from their manifest connection with the Invincibles and Fenians, and evident complicity, which they do not care to deny, in the murders and attempted destructions of property which have startled us in the past few weeks.
THE LEGISLATURE.
Outside of railroad legislation the last legislature did almost nothing. The House Bill amending the prohibitory law making it more effective, probably on account of bad management, was never reached. The reapportionment bill was passed and seems to give generalsatisfaction. All other measures except the appropriation bill were purely local.
SCIENTIFIC NOTES.
Additions to cabinets in Natural History department since our last report.
Two hundred species of plants from Florida.
One hundred and twenty-nine species of moths and butterflies, all from South America. Nature seems to have combined nearly every variety and shade of color in the decoration of the wings of these tropical forms. One specimen (Erebus strix) measures ten inches between the tips of its wings.
A VALUABLE DONATION:Dr. W. B. Carpenter who for a number of years has acted as physician in the State Penitentiary has donated a collection of about a thousand pounds of fossils to the University. Mr. Carpenter selected most of the specimens from the many thousand which have been exhumed in the penitentiary coal-shaft. Many of the fossils are very handsome, especially the fern leaves, and all are interesting to naturalists and thinking people.
This collection cannot be put on exhibition until suitable cabinets are provided for it.
MISCELLANEOUS.
Prof. W.J.Beal of Michigan Agricultural College, has shown by a series of four years experiments that the gain in the yield of corn due to cross over close fertilization is about twenty-seven per cent.
The city authorities of Paris have donated a plat of ground for the establishment of a school in "insectology." A series of experiments and observations will be carried on with regard to friendly and noxious insects and the animals which destroy them.