Folk Observation Foreruns Science. Often a conviction widely held by the plain people of a countryside is based on many and sound observations, long before a scientific theory accounts for the facts. For many generations there was a saying among German peasants that when a storm is approaching a fire should be made in the stove, with as much smoke as possible. Professor Schuster has shown that this saying and the custom founded upon it are rational, as the products of combustion and the smoke act as an effective conductor to discharge the atmosphere slowly but surely. He quotes statistics showing that out of each 1000 cases of lightning stroke, 6.3 churches and 8.5 mills were struck, and but 0.3 factory chimneys. Only the factories had fires burning. A mighty work has been wrought by glaciers on the surface of our globe. Long before this fact was discovered by professional geologists it was clear to many of the plainer people. Jean de Charpentier, one of the first propounders of the theory of glacial action now fundamental in geological science, relates:--“When in the year 1815, I returned from the magnificent glaciers of the valley of the Rhone, I spent the night in the hamlet of Lourtier, in the cottage of Perraudin, a chamois-hunter. Our conversation turned on the peculiarities of the country, and especially of the glaciers which he had repeatedly explored and knew most intimately. ‘Our glaciers,’ said Perraudin, ‘had formerly a much larger extent than now. Our whole valley was occupied by a glacier extending as far as Martigny, as is proved by the boulders in the vicinity of this town, and which are far too large for the water to have carried them thither.’” Charpentier adds that he afterward met with similar explanations on the part of mountaineers in other sections of Switzerland.