the utile cum dulci scientific abstraction with the sweet strains of the hand-organ.

New disciplines of science will crop out of such combinations. We have already now forensic medicine, the compound of medicine and law, but we will soon have surgical music, obstetrical æsthetics, gynæcological astronomy, and other new disciplines which will prove a benefit to the human race and consternation to the schoolma'ams. But the consternation of schoolma'ams is not the sole object of modern science, whose concentrated spirit can be absorbed only by the chosen few; science has to be diluted and sweetened by music in the same fair proportions as other mixed drinks, and is then called "science toddy."

I AM sorry, but I am unprepared. Fortunately, I have in my pocket a paper which I intended to read before our Academy of Sciences. As the evening is rather advanced, perhaps you will be kind enough not to know the difference.

The paper is on the progress that has been made last year in the sciences. The progress of unprofitable science and useless investigation has been unusually rapid, so that it is impossible to enumerate all the benefits which the human race has received by the untiring efforts of devoted scientists.

Let us begin with the heavens-Astronomy. A great astronomer has discovered in the rings of Saturn an inscription which in a careful translation reads: "Commit no nuisance"; from which inscription the

learned professor justly concludes that the population of the remote region has arrived at a state of civilization analogous to our

own.

In zoology the distinguishing characteristics between the green turtle, the mock turtle, and the mocking-bird have been so well established that henceforth the mistake of putting a green turtle in a cage and expecting him to sing will not happen any

more.

In regard to eulogies and necrologies for dead scientists, a marked improvement has been established. These eulogies are nowadays written during the lifetime of the dead scientist and the composition is superintended by himself. This circumstance will serve as another proof of the immortality of the soul, because the most confirmed infidel will say to himself: "If that fellow is made immortal during his lifetime, why shall I not be so after my death?" You all know that moral philosophy is my specialty, but it is only a short time ago

31 that the real utility of lectures on moral philosophy has been established. It is my own discovery that lectures of this kind produce water; of course, not of a superior quality, but good enough for irrigation. Vegetation in its perverted taste and fanatical rejection of fermented liquors does not deserve any better fluid; and so, my dear brethren, let us be thankful that we, according to our principle of strict intemperance, do not depend on irrigation by moral philosophy.