The devotee of science seems to his fellows as engaged in but trifling pursuits, yet we owe most of the great progress of the age to the silent labors of these investigating minds. To discover an entirely new truth is, however, among the greatest benefactions to mankind, though no one knows at the discov ery what use to make of it. Thousands must have seen a piece of iron ore. But the iron horse never would have been developed had not some one discovered how to get the iron from the ore. Possibly the first man to find that that dirty brown block would yield the pure iron, merely thought of it as a trifling curiosity. Certainly the first discoverer, whoever he may have been, never imagined a hot water boiler or a steam boiler would ever result from his discovery.

With the aid of science even the Desert of Sahara is becoming inhabitable, and colonization is encouraged. The Lower Sahara is an immense basin of artesian waters, and the French are forming fresh oases with skill and success, so that the number of cultivated tracts is increasing rapidly. After a period of thirty years forty-three oases have 13,000 inhabitants, 120,000 trees between one and seven years old, and 100,000 fruit trees.