But the sturdily struggling little factory at Alvarado is a living and irrefutable answer to this assertion, even if the people of Louisiana had no cause of complaint. A better case in favor of home industry against unlimited free trade could hardly be imagined. Abolish the Hawaiian treaty, and the beet sugar industry will under the genial skies of California take a development such as, for lack of similar natural advantages, it has not taken and cannot take anywhere else. Thus one more important and lucrative industry will be added to those which already show so bright a future, and have diversified so advantageously the dull routine of grain-growing, which is fast dwindling into unprofitableness alongside of the vineyards. and orchards that have taken its place. It is now feared by many that fruit-growing and wine-making will be overdone. is any danger of such a thing, it will be averted by the introduction and fostering of other branches of agriculture, among which the beet sugar industry is certainly one of the most promising now in view, for the employment of capital in large factories supplied with the most improved modern appliances; it being well known that this manufacture is most profitable on the largest scale compatible with the capital at command.

If there

But it is also said that sugar production is already overdone: witness the present low price of its product. While it must be doubted that sugar will again rise to the high prices that have ruled in the past, it is also true that the present low prices will greatly stimulate and increase consumption when their effect shall have had time to make itself felt. Within the easy recollection of the present generation, sugar was a luxury, too costly to be used otherwise than sparingly, and diligently proclaimed to be particularly injurious to children in general, whose natural appetite craved a more liberal allowance of what is now justly considered an alimentary article; of which the use, like that of any other created thing, may be

Dur

Two prominent facts are shown by the above tables. The first is that in the United States and in England, the consumption of sugar increases in a much more rapid ratio than the population; and similar tables show the same to be true of all European countries at least. Regarding the showing here made, Prof. Wiley says: "From 1876 to 1885 the consumption of sugar in England rose from 59 to 67 pounds per head. ing the same period in the United States the increase was from 37.1 to 50.4 pounds per head. At this rate of increase, in another decade the quantity of sugar required for each inhabitant will be as great in this country as in England, viz. about 75 pounds. But our population is increasing much more rapidly than that of England, and in ten years from this time it will be nearly seventy millions, and the amount of sugar used in this country will be five thousand millions of pounds! this country will be the great sugar market of the world." The only possible flaw in this reasoning might be that there is probably a natural limit to the possibility of sugar consumption even by the American boy and his elders; but it is not likely that that limit will be reached within this century.

The other point, shown in the third table, is that if sugar consumption is not, like that of soap, to be considered the criterion of the most civilized nations, it seems certainly to follow closely the ratio of their progressiveness and commercial relations with the world at large. Thus England stands at the head and Russia at the foot of the scale. But if this is true it inevitably follows that as social progress and intercommunication of all nations advance (and that this will be the case no sane person will . question) an increase of sugar consumption will be sure to follow. The time between

the present and that when the sugar consumption of all nations shall have reached its natural maximum, would seem to offer an ample margin of safety against a glutting of the market for some generations to come. In connection with the above figures of prospective consumption of sugar, it is of interest to consider the possible production of beet-sugar in this State. Taking as an example only the region within which the sugar-beet is known to attain its highest degree of excellence, viz., the Alameda plains and Santa Clara valley within the limits of the two counties of the same names, lying within immediate reach of the bay and city of San Francisco, we have an area of about 380,000 acres, of which (excluding the heavy adobe, saline, and very gravelly lands) at least one-half, or 190,000 acres, is well adapted to sugar-beet culture, and each acre of which can readily produce 4,000 pounds of refined sugar. This gives for the possible production of these two counties alone, the enormous sum of 760,000,000 pounds. The Coast Range valleys alone could quadruple this production; and if, as is probable, at least the middle and northern portion of the Sacramento valley can also be counted on for beet-sugar culture, California alone could readily supply the entire present and prospective sugar consumption of the United States, and still leave ample room for orchards and vineyards, and the production of the home supply of breadstuffs. It is perhaps not probable or desirable that this one branch of production should be pushed to this extent; but it would be strange indeed if, with such extraordinary climatic advantages, it failed to attain a very prominent and lucrative position among the agricultural industries of California.

E. W. Hilgard.

The interest which centered about Laura Bridgman in her early life was twofoldhumanitarian and philosophical. The former has in large measure accomplished its mission and declined. The latter also has in part declined, because Laura's case has not furnished the evidence expected from it, upon certain philosophic questions. Her condition was supposed to be essentially that of a person blind and deaf from birth, and consequently, because she was thus cut off from receiving ideas from others, fitted to furnish a practical test of the doctrine of innate ideas. But subsequent study has thrown grave doubts upon the trustworthiness of her case in this regard.' The contents of her mind and its mode of action, if they could be come at, ought to furnish further evidence, pro and con, and it is for what her writings may furnish toward this end, that they are worthy of further consideration.

But too much must not be expected from this source. Language, certainly, is the chief index of mind, and in the main we are justified in arguing peculiarity of thought from peculiarity of expression; but such inferences must be made with the utmost care, for the possibilities of error are manifold. This is especially true when the quantity of language to be studied is small and the meaning of the words themselves somewhat uncer

When we reflect on the rapidity with which relations of time, space, and the properties of matter are learned during the first few months of infancy, we must believe that some trace, though it be vague as Platonic reminiscences, of these experiences must remain. The right eye distinguished the light of a candle, the window, and possibly some shades of color, up to the seventh year. The facility with which Laura learned to run about, to knit, sew, braid, etc., before she left her home; the suddenness and completeness with which, after a few lessons with objects and labels at the asylum, the idea of thus communicating with others came to her mind; her freedom at all times from what instructors of the blind designate as blindmindedness, or want of capacity to comprehend space-relations, all indicate that possibly her condition, when she came to the asylum, was not so identical with that of a child blind from birth as even Dr. Howe supposed, and that thus her marvelous curiosity, as well as her quickness of comprehension may be in part accounted for.-Professor G. Stanley Hall, Nation, Vol. 27, 259.

VOL. VIII.-37,

tain. Both these causes operate in Laura's case, and we must content ourselves with broad and sketchy outlines of her mind and its furniture instead of the minutely accurate pictures that could be desired.

In considering her use of language, some of her simpler mistakes will first be noticed, and later such usages as bear more directly upon her mental state.

It should be observed by way of preface that in her girlhood at least, Laura was more liable to errors in writing than in conversation. Mrs. Lamson quotes from her journal as teacher, an entry made in December, 1843, as follows: "Her written abstracts do not compare favorably with the oral ones, for she cannot be made to feel that it is necessary to take time and paper to write fully as she talks, and in attempting abbreviations she makes mistakes." How far her later writings were affected by this carelessness, it is difficult to determine.

Three kinds of errors, as was said in the previous paper, may be expected in the form of her writings as opposed to their substance : first, mere graphical errors, such as every one makes, which are not surprising in the manuscript of one that could not revise; second, errors of misinformation arising from her misunderstanding of her teachers or from a too general application of the rules of language; and third, errors resulting from mental peculiarity, if any such exist. These will be briefly taken up in their order.

Graphical errors are not on the whole very numerous. One as frequently found as any is the dropping of a letter; as "huner" and huger" for "hunger," "hal" for "hall," and "boo" for "book." Sometimes a final letter is dropped by anticipation, as "bes things" for "best things," or the process is reversed, and by recollection

as

of the final letter of the preceding word one or more are omitted from the following one, "have en" for "have been" and "dearents" for "dear parents." She makes a few careless mistakes like those of hasty writers generally; for example, "smope for "smoke" "foyful" and "fourney" for "joyful" and "journey" and "cottabe" for " cottage.' In one respect, however, her lapsus pennae seem to differ from those found in ordinary manuscript. The substitution of letters there seems at times influenced by the sound of the letters; in Laura's manuscript this is seldom or never the case.'

With syllabication, if any attempt was made to teach it to her, she clearly had difficulty, for, though sometimes dividing a word correctly, she gives us such examples as "mola-sses" and "misch-ief” in her autobiography, and such as "ble-st," "shou-ld" and "contain-s” in her letters.

The causes that produced literal errors in her manuscript produced similar verbal ones. Occasionally in the journal a sentence is quite unintelligible, and at times, though not often, her inability to see betrays her into anacolutha in quite simple sentences. She proposes to write of her "very pleasant and thriving feelings which I am very eager to have you read some of my ideas," and again, "he [the whale] eats very many little fishes and other animals that he likes them very much to eat himself." In the same way it happens several times that she inserts a negative when the sense of her sentence obviously requires its omission, or omits one where it should be retained; for example: "he wished that he would [had] give[n] his fishe(s) to the boys, he did not think it would not be good to carry fishes home in his hands," and "I hope that she will hurt my tiny, tender and fragile heart, when she feels vexed in her heart." For the same

1There are instances in her manuscript where a letter is influenced by an adjacent one, as "ggain" and "ggo,' and some which suggest that the graphical form of the letter led to the confusion, and others where the interchanged letters are made in the mute alphabet with somewhat similar positions of the fingers; but the data are insufficient in all cases to show anything conclusive.

The errors of misinformation are of two kinds errors of vocabulary-that is in the meaning and use of single words—and errors of syntax.

The first words of a child's vocabulary are learned by associating the verbal sign with the thing which it signifies. The baby sees a dog, and his mother repeats the word till a connection is established in his mind between the impressions made on his eyes and ears. A large number of words is learned in this way by the senses, and, as it were, unconsciously. Later, words that stand for supersensual things are learned, through their metaphorical connection with words already learned, by analogy and derivation, by observation and introspection, or by a combination of processes; very many of them, in spite of their signification, depend for their complete understanding upon the action of the senses. But there are still others, words like the technical terms of mathematics and logic, the meaning of which must be learned laboriously and consciously by definition. This method is well enough suited to the exact nomenclature of science, but not to the more picturesque language of conversation and literature. It may not be difficult to frame a botanical definition of a tree, but to make a definition that should convey any real notion of a tree to one totally ignorant of such a thing, would be difficult if not impossible. In attempting such a thing we begin at once to prop our verbal effort with pictures or examples, thus confessing the insufficiency of pure definitions, and calling the senses to the aid of the intellect.

The number of words that Laum could learn, either directly or indirectly, hrough her senses, was, on account of her loss of sight and hearing, greatly diminished, and the number that she was obliged to learn by