From these few experiments kainit seems preferable to the muriate, as acting more effectively on insects and not injuriously on plants.  For general use on plants it is not to be recommended.  It is otherwise on underground species, where the soil will be penetrated by the salts and where the moisture evaporates 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.

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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.

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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 insurance company, and it is only by separating the two in our minds as far as possible that we can obtain a clear conception of the laws that should govern the apportionment of the expenses among the great variety of policies.