ates but slowly, and the salt has a
longer and better chance to act. The best method of application would
be a broadcasting in fertilizing quantity before or during a rain, so
as to carry the material into the soil at once. In cornfields infested
with grubs or wire worms, the application should be made before
planting. Where it is to be used to reach root lice, it should be used
when the injury is beginning. When strawberry beds are infested by the
white grub, the application should be made when cultivating or before
setting out.

The potash salts have a high value as fertilizers, and any application
made will act as a stimulant as well as insecticide, thus enabling the
plants to overcome the insect injury as well as destroying the insect.

In speaking on this subject in Salem county, I learned from farmers
present that those using potash were not troubled with the corn root
louse to any extent, and also that young peach trees have been
successfully grown in old lice-infested orchards, where previously all
died, by first treating the soil with kainit of potash.

* * * * *

A meteorological station has been built on Mont Blanc, at an elevation
of 13,300 feet, under the direction of M. Vallot. It required six
weeks to deliver the materials. The instruments are self-registering
and are to be visited in summer every fifteen days if possible, the
instruments being left to register between the visits. In the winter
the observatory will be entirely inaccessible. This is the highest
scientific station in Europe, but is 847 feet lower than the Pike's
Peak station in Colorado.

* * * * *

THE EXPENSE MARGIN IN LIFE INSURANCE.

The principle of mutuality requires that the burden of expense in life
insurance should be borne by all the members equally; but, even with
the most careful adjustment, the allowance usually made is
considerably in excess of what is needed in the regular companies
doing business on the "level premium" plan.

It is customary in these companies to add to the net premium a
percentage thereof to cover the expense account. This practice, though
in harmony with the "commission system," is so clearly defective and
so far removed from the spirit of life insurance mathematics, that it
scarcely deserves even this passing notice.

It is generally understood that these corporations combine the
functions of the savings bank and life insur