want to become so pay for the drinks. You will observe that all political meetings, may their principles be as divergent as possible, agree in one point: after having saved their country they adjourn into adjacent barrooms, where they mix their public spirit with kindred spirits. You will say our Academy of Sciences acts differently, but you forget, firstly, that our Academy is a scientific, not a political body, and, secondly, that there is no decent barroom in the vicinity.

Now, this intimate relation between patriotism and alcohol has even entered our English language in the expression, "A man of public spirit," by which expression we infer that this worthy man takes his spirits publicly with boon companions whom he treats, but not in the solitude of his domesticity.

This is all very clear and intelligible even to the unsophisticated mind of a San Francisco city father, but now comes in the question how to account for this phenomenon.

We have stated before that we have expe99 rienced and investigated and have come rather near the solution of the problem, which is a chemical one. Here is our explanation: Political questions have no affinity to water. This is a conclusion a priori, for we have not tried the water. Neither are they soluble in fixed oils; we have tried castor oil. Now, it requires very little chemical knowledge to see that alcohol, cold or heated up to a reasonable degree, is the only menstruum in which political questions are soluble.

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I AM certain you are astonished to hear me lecture on a subject so unfamiliar to me as Ethnology. It is the fault of our most gracious Sire, who ordered me to do so. He probably meant Entomology, but I understood Ethnology, and as this happened after six o'clock P. M., I am not quite certain on whose door I have to lay the cause of the misunderstanding. In such cases I always lay it at the door of the other fellow, who in this instance is our most gracious Sire.

I at first intended to follow the custom of my fellow-scientists-that is, to compile an ethnological or entomological paper of plagiarisms, in which only the errors are my own; but, on more mature reflection, I thought, as Alexander von Humboldt is

dead and Frank Pixley alive, I would not run the slightest risk to be discovered in drawing from my own bold and lively imagination.

The first stage in the existence of all nations and humanity in general is that of Midsummer High Jinks, differing from our present ones only by a large supply of nothing to eat and to drink, but agreeing with it by a total absence of houses. I am not prepared to state the exact time to which this state of affairs has lasted, but I am convinced that at the time of Julius Cæsarthe author of several Latin text-books still in use in our colleges a change must already have taken place, because this J. Cæsar wrote a book, "De bello Gallico," which, as a member of our Board of Education has informed me, means "On the beautiful Calico." Now, these words would infer that the state of society had changed into that of a picnic, if it were not for the frequent occurrence of the word "castra," which word I distinctly recollect means