The encouraging word of science that "heredity is overwhelmingly a force for the improvement of the race;" that "the child at birth has, not a few months, but 10,000,000 years of unbroken life to back him in his fight with environment," and that "even in the slums four-fifths of all the children are born normal and healthy," was proclaimed by Dr. Woods Hutchinson.

"One excitable gentleman," he said, "figured out that the rate at which insanity was increasing we would all be mad ina century and a quarter.

"He forgot that the increase was due largely to the fact that more cases of insanity are cared for today than formerly. And, at the worst, only from 1 to 2 1/2 per cent. of humanity is defective mentally. A careful use of negative eugenics, preventing the breeding of real defectives, can reduce that proportion almost to nothing.

"The great man comes up from the masses, 40 per cent. of the time in one bound from an unknown father; even oftener from unknown grandparents. nearly 30 per cent. of great men were delicate in childhood, though they are distinctly long-lived and robust in manhood. The reason why more great men do not come from really poor is that the stress of early environment does not let them live."

Women everywhere would do well to follow the example of the good housekeepers of my town in a matter of vital concern to every family.

What they did there was to form a protective association for the purpose of securing honest weights and measures. Each member of the association pledges herself that she will weigh and measure the commodities she buys in stores or the marked place, and if any article is found short of the standard it is to be reported and formal complaint made.

The dealers, finding out that the women folk meant business, resolved that honesty was the best policy, and in one town at least a pound is now actually recognized in retail commerce as the equivalent of 16 ounces, whereas 14 or 15 ounces used to be thought a sufficient approximation.

It is a day of high prices and it is an outrage for the consumer to not only pay these, but to get victimized in addition by fraudulent scales and measures.

But, as in the Indianapolis case, it is a matter that the women of any community can rectify if they will exert the proper effort.

Washington, Jan. 12.—Convinced that the public has been "the innocent purchaser" of great quantities of rock and said in the guise of poultry, the department of agriculture has ordered an investigation into shipping conditions. It is charged poultry is "fattened" with adulterated food mixtures containing minerals. The people of New York city alone, the department estimates, buy every week from 150,000 to 300,000 pounds of sand and rock substances, paying prevailing poultry prices.

Mike, a pet dog formerly owned by Mrs. Madalen Hendrickson of Creedmoor, N. Y. has been left a legacy of $100 for his maintenance, and the fund has been entrusted with Mike, to Edward Martin of Flushing. Philip Frank, deputy tax appraiser for the borough of Queens, doesn't know whether to levy an inheritance tax against Mike or against Mr. Martin.

Mike is said to have the benefit of the $100 fund during his lifetime, and Frank doesn't think it quite right that Mike should beat the tax. The entire estate is valued at about $5,000. Friends of Mike say that as his bequest is less than $1,000 it ought to be exempted from taxation.

Taking of the finger print system for the identification of criminals, a Scotland Yard detective remarked the other day that, although no system is infallible, the police given a finger print of a man who has been through their hands, will tell you who he is in nine hundred and ninety-nine case out of a thousand. Furthermore, it is a matter of indifference to the English police by which finger or thumb the prints is made; it can be easily traced. It was pointed out that in France the police depend to a great extent on physical measurement for identification, but while measurements are always taken by Scotland Yard, they are only regareded as of secondary importance.

Elysian.—While attempting to move a two-story frame house across Lake Elysian last week, the building broke through the ice and sank to the bottom. The water has since frozen, so that hopes of dislodging it from the ice this winter have had to be abandoned. The house was on T. H. Savage's farm, on the south side of the lake, but when the land was sold to Martin Sexton, the house was not sold, and was afterwards bought by Charles Born who attempted to move it across the lake.

Minneapolis.—Flames destroyed $280 in bills that Abraham Mason, a street car motorman, had hid under a carpet in his home.