surrounding cold air. Condensation takes place and soon serves
to start a rain.

"Yet, until the earth's axis is straightened, we must be more or
less dependent on the eccentricities of the weather, with
extremes of heat and cold, droughts and floods, which last are of
course largely the result of several months' moisture held on the
ground in the form of snow, the congestion being relieved
suddenly by the warm spring rains.

"Medicine and surgery have kept pace with other
improvements--inoculation and antiseptics, as already seen,
rendering most of the germ diseases and formerly dreaded
epidemics impotent; while through the potency of electrical
affinity we form wholesome food-products rapidly, instead of
having to wait for their production by Nature's slow processes.

"The metric system, now universal, superseded the old-fashioned
arbitrary standards, so prolific of mistakes and confusion, about
a century ago.

"English, as we have seen, is already the language of 600,000,000
people, and the number is constantly increasing through its
adoption by the numerous races of India, where, even before the
close of the last century, it was about as important as Latin
during the greatness of Rome, and by the fact that the Spanish
and Portuguese elements in Mexico and Central and South America
show a constant tendency to die out, much as the population of
Spain fell from 30,000,000 to 17,000,000 during the nineteenth
century. As this goes on, in the Western hemisphere, the places