parliamentary committee in 1871, constitutes the principal supply for the United Kingdom. As the results of using this lymph have been severely criticised on all sides, and the public confidence in its efficacy begins to wane, it has been seen by the advocates of the Compulsory Vaccination Acts, that unless some substitute could be found in which the public could still believe, the entire repeal of those acts with all their emoluments would follow.

HOW TO AVOID VACCINATION.

The correspondence in the press from medical men and from parents, whose children have been severely and fatally injured by vaccination, compels the confession that vaccination is a hazardous operation, and unfortunately it does not prevent or mitigate smallpox. It produces fever and ill health at the most delicate period of life, and is the cause of much suffering and many infantile deaths. Bearing these facts in mind, I have thought it advisable to instruct parents how to avoid the dreaded operation. A bad law must be resisted, or it will never be got rid of. Those who can afford, should fight the law step by step. When vaccination notices are sent in they should be disregarded, if a summons follows, put every obstacle in the way of the officers, and if fined, refuse to pay the fine, make your goods over to your wife, and let them take you to prison. Those who have leisure can in this way serve the truth and the cause of public health. When you come out of gaol, an indignation meeting should be convened, and the fallacies of the repulsive rite exposed. Others may safeguard their offspring by paying the judi cial penalties, for the law does not compel forcible vaccination. Those who are unable to pay fines, may act thus. Before the child is born, let the mother go to the house of some friend or relation for her confinement, register the child from her temporary abode, and then return home. The vaccination officer will be put off the track of the parent, and the child escapes. The plan of not registering the child (resorted to by many) cannot be recommended. The poorer classes may adopt a different course. When the vaccination notice comes, give your landlord notice to quit, and quietly remove into other lodgings. By these means you may save your offspring from lasting injury. Vaccination officers are sometimes "squared," and giving the officer half a crown on the quiet may save you a much larger sum in doctor's bills. Many towns have anti-vaccination societies and "defense funds," you pay a subscription of about five shillings a year, and for this ruin or imprisonment is often averted. If summoned, some one may appear for you, and if you are fined, the society pays your fines. If all these means

fail, go to a respectable doctor and ask him to vaccinate your baby in one place, and make as small a scar as he can. If he refuses, take the baby to another doctor, as many are cognizant of the perils of vaccination who will gladly carry out your instructions. The doctor is not bound to vadcinate with calf or human lymph, but may vaccinate with water, glycerine or tartar emetic. If you feel obliged to go to the vaccination station, refuse to have your child done in more than one place. If the doctor tries to do more you must resist, and tell him you will have as little mischief done as possible. If he is resolved to make more marks make a disturbance, a doctor dislikes nothing so much as this, as your determination to protect your baby, will excite sympathy for you and indignation against him. Lastly, take with you a bit of linen rag that has been soaked in a little borax and water, and as soon as you leave the vaccinating surgeon, with this wash off the virus. This neutralizes the poison and prevents injury, or the lymph may be soaked out. When baby has been operated on two or three times, the doctor will fill in your paper, as not susceptible.

At all hazards, save your defenceless children and show your neighbors these instructions, so they may save theirs.

VACCINATION UNPHILOSOPHICAL-A MEDICAL WITNESS.

I hold it unphilosophical either to ignore or attempt to sneer down the invincible facts so conclusively adduced against the practice of com. pulsory vaccination. Assuredly they have as much valuable scientific evidence in them as any facts that can be found in practical medicine. Enough of itself to condemn enforced vaccination is the certainty of the introduction of other and worse diseases sooner or later whatever care be exercised. Vaccination was at first proclaimed an absolute preventive of smallpox. No vaccinator now ventures on this absurd falsehood. At the present time vaccination, it is asserted, mitigates smallpox and prevents its mortality. Universal facts afford world-wide evidence that vaccine virus neither prevents smallpox nor its fatality.

According to half a century's medical experience in hospital and private practice, I can testify, as a public vACCINATOR, that incalculable benefit to humanity would at once result if enforced "cowpox" were abandoned.

WILLIAM HITCHMAN, M. R. C. P. (England).

THE IVORY PLANT.

So different are the products of the animal from those of the vegetable kingdom, that even the most careless observer may be expected at once to distinguish them. Yet multitudes are in the daily use of ivory buttons, boxes and small ornaments, who never doubt that they are made from the tusks of the elephant, while they are really the product of a plant. The ivory plant is a native of the northern regions

of South America, extending northward just across the Isthmus of Panama, large groves of it have been recently discovered in the province of that name.

It is found in extensive groves-in which it banishes all other vegetation from the soil it has taken possession of-or scattered among the large trees of the virgin forests. It has the appearance of a stemless palm, and consists of a graceful crown of leaves, twenty feet long, of a delicate pale green color, and divided like the plume of a feather into from thirty to fifty pairs of long narrow leaflets. It is not, however, really stemless, but the weight of the foliage and the fruit is too

much for the comparatively slender trunk, and consequently pulls it down to the ground, where it is seen like a large exposed root, stretching for a length of nearly twenty feet in the old plants. The long leaves are employed by the Indians to cover the roofs of their cottages.

Each flower of the ivory plant does not contain stamens and pistils, as in most of the British plants, but like our willows, one tree produces only staminal flowers, while another has only pistillate ones. Such plants are said by botanists to be diœcious. Both kinds of the plants of the vegetable ivory have the same general appearance, and differ only in the form and arrangement of the flowers. In the one kind an innumerable quantity of staminal flowers is born on a cylindrical fleshy axis, four feet long, while in the other a few pistillate flowers spring from the end of the flower-stalk. Each plant bears several heads of flowers. Purdie, who visited the plants in their native locality in 1846, says:

The fragrance of the flowers is most powerful, and delicious beyond that of any other plant, and so diffuse, that the air for many yards around was alive with myriads of annoying insects, which first attracted my notice. I had afterwards to carry the flowers in my hands for twelve miles, and though I killed a number of insects that followed me, the next day a great many still hovered about them, which had come along with us from the wood where the plant grew. The group of pistillate flowers produce a large roundish fruit, from eight to twelve inches in diameter, and weighing when ripe about twenty-five pounds. It is covered by a hard woody coat, everywhere embossed with conical angular tubercles, and is composed of six or seven portions, each containing from six to nine seeds. These seeds, when ripe, are pure white, free from veins, dots, or vessels of any kind, presenting a perfect. uniformity of texture surpassing the finest animal ivory; and its substance is throughout so hard that the slightest streaks from the turning-lathe are observable. Indeed, it looks much more like an animal than a vegetable product; but a close comparison will enable one to distinguish it from the ivory of the elephant by its brightness and its fatty appearance, but chiefly by its minute cellular structure. This curious hard material is the store of food laid up by the plant for the nourishment of the embryo, or young plant contained in the seed. It corresponds to the white of an egg of the hen, and has been consequently called the albumen of the seed. In its early condition this ivory exists as a clear insipid fluid, with which travelers allay their thirst; afterwards the liquor becomes sweet and milky, and in this

state it is greedily devoured by bears, hogs and turkeys; it then gradually becomes hard. It is very curious that this hard mass again returns to its former soft state in the process of germination. The young plant for some time is dependent upon it for its food, and if the seed be taken out of the ground after the plant has appeared, it will be found to be filled with a substance half pulp and half milk, on which the plant lives until it is old enough to obtain its food on its own account.

From the small size of the seed, the largest not being more than two inches across its greatest diameter, the vegetable ivory can be employed in the manufacture of only small articles, such as beads, buttons, toys, etc. What is wanting in size is, however, often made up by the skill and ingenuity of the workmen, who join together several pieces so as to make a long object, when it is easy to hide the joints from view, or make a lid from one seed, and the box from another.

NIRVANA.

The Ancients taught that the whole universe was permeated and sustained by the Creative Power, that each world and atom received its impulse from that divine source, and that everything in existence was subject to the purifying process of the Divine Element. They also believed that each world and atom contained the Aetheric essences of the four elements Earth, Air, Fire and Water, in a state of more or less activity, and that as the vibratory presence of these different elements was more or less defined, was each atom compelled to conform to the laws of atomic association pertaining to the mineral, vegetable, and animal and human kingdoms. The mineral, vegetable and, animal were subject to and controlled by those impulses pertaining to the forces ruling that relatively distinct portion of the universe. Each atom had a vibratory condition which defined its growth and operative power while evolving through each of the several departments, and could not reach beyond its present sphere of action until it became conscious or equal to all manifestations connected with the realm to which it had so far attained. This evolving, purifying process attached new vibratory conditions adapting the atom to a new realm, and so on until it became fully active.

They believed that the bodies of animals consisted of atoms that had become sublimated by contact with the lower orders of existence, and had therefore attained elements actively operating in harmony with the animal. Human life, they considered to exist in harmony with a rela