left vacant are gradually filled by the more progressive
Anglo-Saxons, so that it looks as if the study of ethnology in
the future would be very simple.

"The people with cultivation and leisure, whose number is
increasing relatively to the population at each generation, spend
much more of their year in the country than formerly, where they
have large and well-cultivated country seats, parts of which are
also preserved for game. This growing custom on the part of
society, in addition to being of great advantage to the
out-of-town districts, has done much to save the forests and
preserve some forms of game that would otherwise, like the
buffalo, have become extinct.

"In astronomy we have also made tremendous strides. The
old-fashioned double-convex lens used in telescopes became so
heavy as its size grew, that it bent perceptibly from its own
weight, when pointed at the zenith, distorting the vision; while
when it was used upon a star near the horizon, though the glass
on edge kept its shape, there was too much atmosphere between it
and the observed object for successful study. Our recent
telescopes have, therefore, concave plate-glass mirrors, twenty
metres in diameter, like those used for converging the sun's rays
in solar engines, but with curves more mathematically exact,
which collect an immense amount of light and focus it on a
sensitive plate or on the eye of the observer, whose back is
turned to the object he is studying. An electrical field also
plays an important part, the electricity being as great an aid to
light as in the telephone it is to sound. With these placed
generally on high mountain peaks, beyond the reach of clouds, we