Commensalism.-A new case of commensalism has been observed by Dr. Haast, in New Zealand. It appears that the celebrated tua

So dear to man as home, wife, children. All tara lizard (Sphenodon), of New Zealand,

Hartz Mountains, seldom visits this country, | plentiful in some districts that whole crops are sometimes destroyed by them. One firm during the last season, which lasted twenty-five weeks, canned 675,000 of the animals.

LUMBER is now manufactured from straw.

One ton of straw yields 1,000 feet of boards, the standard size being twelve feet in length, thirty-two inches in width, and the average thickness of surface boards. This can be used like ordinary lumber and sold in competition with wide walnut at about half the cost of the latter.

A DISCOVERY of a deposit of cryolite has been made near Pike's Peak. The present supply of this mineral comes from Greenland, and is landed in Philadelphia by the shipload. Not enough is known, however, of the quantity existing in Colorado to determine its commercial standing, but if the supply is satisfactory, it will become an article of commercial importance. It is used in the manufacture of

but it was seen not long ago from the Toujabe range in Nevada by Mr. R. A. Marr, of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, who gives this account of the atmospheric phenomenon: 'Suddenly, as I stood looking over the vast expanse beneath me, i saw myself confronted by a monster figure of a man standing in midair before me, upon the top of a clearly defined mountain peak, which had but the thin air of the valley below for a resting place. The figure was only a short distance from me. Around it were two circles of rainbow light and color, the outer one faintly defined as compared with the inner one, which was bright and clear and distinctly iridescent. Around the head of the figure was a beautiful halo of light, and from the figure itself shot rays of colors normal to the body. The sight startled me more than I can now tell. I threw up my hands in astonishment, and, AT nine o'clock on the night of the 15th perhaps, some little fear, and at this moment inst. a terrific explosion occurred in the local the spectre seemed to move toward me. In government board offices in Westminster, dea few minutes I got over my fright, and then, in the House of Commons, and caused alarm. stroying much property. The report was heard after the figure had faded away, I recognized The concussion was so great that it shook the the fact that I had enjoyed one of the most side galleries and the reporters' gallery. It wonderful phenomena of nature. Since then being the dinner hour, few members were we have seen it once or twice from Jeff Davis present in the hall. It is believed that the Peak, but it has never created such an im- deliberate attempt was made to blow up the explosion was caused by dynamite, and that a pression upon me as it did that evening when government offices. The explosion was heard I was doing service as a heliotroper, all alone, at a distance of two or three miles. on the top of Arc Dome."

ITEMS.

THE latest reports from the lower Mississippi districts show that the water is receding at all points, and the planters are preparing to put in their crops.

SHEEP men in Texas report heavy losses by the cold rain of last week. Some of the largest owners say they will lose a third of their flocks and all their lambs.

A DISPATCH from Marseilles states: M. De Lesseps has embarked from Tunis to direct the surveys in connection with the project to convert the Desert of Sahara into an inland sea.

THE Philadelphia Board of Public Education has elected James MacAlister, at present Superintendent of Schools in the city of Milwaukee, to the office of Superintendent of Public Schools in this city, and fixed his salary at $5,000.

A SPECIAL Correspondent of the New York Tribune, writes from San Francisco: The African ostriches have finally found a home in the southern country, to which they will soon be removed. A square mile of land has been bought near Anaheim, Los Angelos county, which will be fitted up for the birds. One of the female ostriches is now laying eggs at the rate of one every other day.

ONE of the industries of Australia is the cooking and canning of rabbits, which are so

carbonate of soda.

MUCH interest has lately been aroused in Denver, Col., and its vicinity, by the accidental production of an artesian well at North Denver, a region greatly in need of an abundant supply of pure water. In order to decide whether or not a bed of coal underlies the city a boring was made, and a depth of 375 feet was reached when, to the great surprise of everybody concerned, a great flow of water stopped the work. A two-inch pipe was inserted, and now for nearly three weeks a steadily increasing volume of water has been discharged. Further experiments will be made in the neighborhood, and sanguine persons already behold, in imagination, the surface of the country transformed by irrigation.

IOWA has only 2.4 per cent. of illiterates— that is, people unable to read. Next comes Nebraska with 2.5 per cent., then Wyoming Territory with 2.6 per cent. The greatest proportion of illiterates is in South Carolina, where 48.2 per cent. cannot read, nearly half the population. Louisiana has 45.8 per cent. Alabama 43.5 per cent., and Georgia 42.8 per cent. Taking only the white population of the Southern States, North Carolina and Tennessee have the largest proportion of illiterates. California stands at 7.1, and Nevada at 7.3 per cent. The North-Eastern States, including New England, fall behind the percentage of accounted for by the increase of the foreign the Northern Central States, which is to be workers in manufacturing and other industries, and the removal of rural New Englanders to the Northern Central Section of the country.

FRIENDS' INTELLIGENCER.

"TAKE FAST HOLD OF INSTRUCTION; LET HER NOT GO; KEEP HER; FOR SHE IS THY LIFE.'

It is desirable that all subscriptions should commence at the English Schools and Schoolmasters, beginning of the volume.

REMITTANCES by mail should be in CHECKS, DRAFTS, or P. O. MONEY-ORDERS; the latter preferred. MONEY sent by mail will be at the risk of the person so sending.

AGENTS:-Edwin Blackburn, Baltimore, Md.

Joseph S Cohu, New York.

Benj Strattan, Richmond, Ind.

advancement, but we do great injustice to the patriarchs and sages of Bible days when we arraign them before the tribunal of this age. We must put ourselves where they were, and measure them by their own standard, and the Bible student need not fear that the odds will be against him. Take, for instance, the unhappy Cain, in the presence of a Power, invisible, indeed, to his outward eyes, but felt and acknowledged by his inner consciousness. As he wanders with his countenance cast down, solitary, amid the fresh beauty of the new creation, his soul a prey to passions and jealousies that he had not the courage to resist, he hears the declaration, "If thou dost | well shalt thou not be accepted?" and "If thou dost not well, sin lieth at the door." What language that we use to-day is stronger, clearer, or more in accordance with the highest conception that the mind can have of a just and righteous Deity?

See Abraham, oppressed with the idolatrous worship of the people among whom he lives, leaving his home and his friends, taking his wife and his nephew, Lot, with his servants, and all the substance he had gotten, and departing to an unknown country, that he might, unmolested, worship the God whom his soul acknowledged to be the one ruler of the universe. Well may he stand forth as the father of the faithful. The history of the race furnishes no similar example. Yet the caviler passes over this grand epoch in the life of the patriarch, and points to the domestic drama in which the woman whom he loves, with a devotion that for a time clouds his perceptions of duty, instigates him to follow the corrupt practices of the Chaldeans, and when her jealousy and vindictiveness are aroused, forces him to send forth into the desert the wronged woman and the child she had borne him.

That the heart of Abraham yearned over the boy and his slave mother, and that the course pursued was one from which his best nature revolted, is evidenced by the record. Nor should we judge him harshly, since in our own time the scene of the Egyptian maid and her child has been over and over again enacted by men professing the faith of the New Testament, which declares that even the thought of wrong to another, if indulged in, becomes a sin.

value the lessons of faith and confidence which they teach. No such utterances of trust and hope, and of triumphant conquests over the enemies of the soul's peace are found outside the Scriptures. Nowhere else but in their pages do we learn what self-sacrifice means. It is the prophet or the patriarch who, in our moments of supremest self-dedication, puts the words into our mouths, answering as wave answereth to wave, the heartthrobs that struggle for utterance. What a victory over all the sordid ambitions, the selfish longings, and the unrest of life is breathed forth in the soul-cry of the suffering Job, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him!" and what a power it has had, and is still having, over the hearts of multitudes who have been encouraged by his example, to "Cast all their care upon him who careth for us."

And later, in the New Testament times, when the Divine love in its fullness dwelt among men, we hear the beloved Son, in the depths of his agony on the cross, praying for his murderers, "Father forgive them, they know not what they do." A little further on, and the first martyr to the faith of the crucified One, amid the pain and suffering of his cruel death, cries out, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." So through the whole history there runs a current of infinite faith, love, and charity, that exalts man into companionship with Deity, and gives blessed assurance to the faithful of peace and rest with God.

Yet

We need not be anxious about the inspiration of the Scriptures. If we are intelligent, thoughtful readers of its pages-reading for the comfort and the instruction in divine things, which we hope to find in them, we will have no difficulty in settling for ourselves what is inspired and what is not. we must bear in mind, that unless we have gained an intelligent knowledge of the manners and customs as well as the forms of expression that prevailed during the period covered by Bible history, we may lose very much of the store of good that they contain. This is an age of inquiry, and it is acknowledged that the more the Scriptures are studied, in connection with the contemporaneous history, brought to light through patient research, the stronger becomes their It is the same with all the prominent claim upon the intelligence and the undercharacters of the Bible; there is the side of standing. The false position that the docweakness, and there is the better side, and trine of plenary inspiration gave to them, these lives touch and influence our lives just which continued until the protest of enso far as we accept them as portraitures of lightened scholarship made it no longer human life, contending with the same tempta- tenable, has led to much bitter controversy. tions and struggling against the same passions It behooves all who value the Bible as a and impulses that beset the pathway along divinely appointed means of instruction and which we are travelling. Let us not under-reproof, to be consistent in their advocacy of

its claims, and allow to others the same right | and was buried in the Friends' burying of private judgment that they insist upon for themselves. L. J. R.

ground on the island of Tortola, where Thomas Chalkley was buried the previous year. His companion, John Estaugh, also a prominent minister in our Society, took cold during a thunder storm at the time of his funeral and was buried by his side two weeks later. In 1841 the graveyard in which were deposited The name Horsham is supposed to be de- the remains of these valued friends, was visrived from Horsham, the county town of Sus-ited by John Jackson, George Truman, and sex county, England, and is the only place of that name in the United States.