It is as a chemist that Cavendish stands preeminent. Without instructors, without companionship, in the solitary rooms of his dwelling, he meditated and experimented. The result of his researches he communicated in papers read to the Royal Society, and these are quite numerous. He was the first to demonstrate the nature of atmospheric air and also of water. He was the discoverer of nitrogen and several gaseous bodies. He did much to overthrow the phlogiston theory, which was universally accepted in his time; and his researches upon arsenic were of the highest importance. There is scarcely any department of chemistry which he did not enrich by his discoveries. He was a close student of electrical phenomena, and made many discoveries in this department of research. He was also an astronomer and observed the heavens with his telescopes with the deepest interest. Some of his most important discoveries were unknown until after his death, as they were hidden in papers, which, for some reason, he would not publish. The life of this singular man was morally a blank, and can only be described by negations. He did not love; he did not hate; he did not hope; he did not worship. He separated himself from his fellow-men and from his God. There was nothing earnest, enthusiastic, heroic, in his nature, and as little that was mean, groveling, or ignoble. He was passionless, wholly destitute of emotion. Everything that required the exercise of fancy, imagination, faith, or affection, was distasteful to Cavendish. He had a clear head for thinking, a pair of eyes for observing, hands for experimenting and recording, and these were all. His brain was a calculating engine; his eyes, inlets of vision, not fountains of tears; his heart, an anatomical organ necessary for the circulation of the blood. If such a man can not be loved, he can not be abhorred or despised. He was as the Almighty made him, and he served an important end in the world. Such a man manifestly would never sit for his portrait. And he never did. It was taken by Borrow the painter, unobserved by Cavendish, while at a dinner-party given for the express purpose of securing the likeness. It is now in the British Museum. Cuts of this painting are rare.--_Popular Science News._ * * * * * THE PRAIRIE FARMER AND YOUTH'S COMPANION ONE YEAR, $3 FOR THE TWO. It is not required that both papers be sent to one address, nor to the same post-office. Address PRAIRIE FARMER PUB. CO., 150 Monroe Street, Chicago. * * * * * SEEDS, Etc. BUIST'S SEEDS ARE THE BEST. WARRANTED TO GIVE SATISFACTION OR MONEY RETURNED, SPECIAL-INDUCEMENTS FOR MARKET GARDENERS. OUR VALUABLE CATALOGUE OF 192 PAGES FREE TO ALL. SEED GROWER ROBERT BUIST, JR. PHILADELPHIA, PA. * * * * * [Illustration: FERRY'S SEED ANNUAL FOR 1884]