face would be twice as far from the center as one on the surface and so it would weigh one-fourth as much.

Men of all ages have endeavored to construct a wheel in such a way that the earth-pull would be greater on one side than on the other. Imagine a huge metal wheel like the water wheels of the old mills, only all iron, and a gravity-insulator placed under one half of it while the other half is exposed to the earth-pull. How the wheel would go round! What an inexhaustible source of power we would have! Then water power, steam, and wind would be worthless as power, and the world's methods would be revolutionized. Why can this not be done? If any of our readers will

Insulator

answer this question, the scientific world has nothing too good for him, for it has taxed the ingenuity of many able men in the past, and some theories have been offered, but it remains to-day a problem without even a plausible theory.

A serious effort has been made to explain the cause of weight

Space is

somewhat in this way: filled with very small particles which are moving rapidly in all directions. If an object could be alone it would be bombarded on all sides equally by these particles and so would be in equilibrium, i. e. it would not weigh anything. When, however, two masses come near each other they will shield one the other from the impulses of the corpuscles on the sides which are facing, but their outer sides will be fully exposed to the impact. Consequently they will be pushed together. So that when we speak of the earth's pulling an object toward it, we probably should say that the object is pushed down from above. Then, a mass of iron tends to fall to the ground because a stream of an infinite number of these corpuscles is striking it from above and a fewer number are striking it from below because that side is shielded by the earth. We may approximately illustrate this principle by use of the apparatus represented in this cut. Let A represent a cylinder and P a piston which fits it air-tight. If the piston be pulled up the air pressure

down, but we know from our knowledge of gases that the movement of the piston is caused by the fact that a greater number of molecules of air are striking down from above where the air is denser than up from below where the air is rarer. What we call gravity is a

similar lack of equilibrium resulting from an inequality in the number of impacts, above and below, of these small particles of something which we assume to fill all space and to be moving at a great velocity.

RANDOM NOTES ON CASE.

Case is the accident of a noun or pronoun that shows its relation to other words in the sentence. In highly inflected languages like the Latin, German, and French, this relation is determined by the form of the word, but in English, we have but two forms to represent the different cases of the noun, and three for those of the pronoun. We have a possessive form as "boy's," "men's," that represents the possessive relation, but a single form as "man," "men" to represent all other cases of the noun. Thus,

How complicate, how wonderful is man!

This box contains a man of wit:

Offer man his price;

Fond man! the vision of a moment made.

There are distinct nominative and objective forms for the pronouns. Thus we have,

I, we, they, he, she, who, to represent nominative relations, and

me, us, them, him, her, whom, for objective relations.

And so, in English, the case of a word, especially of a noun, is determined largely by its use in the sentence. And so:netimes its use is so vague that we are at a loss to know what its case is. For example, the oft quoted sentence from Gray's Elegy,

"And all the air a solemn stillness holds."

The word case is from the Latin verb cado (cadere, ce-cidi, casus) to fall, the old grammarians repre

the purpose of reinforcing the statement just made, that the verb in each of the following sentences tells what the subject does:

The boys were playing;
John reads well;

They caught us.

The predicate adjectives in:
Flowers are beautiful;
He became rich;

The fruit tasted sour;
They are considered rich,

tell some quality belonging to the subject. Attention is called to the following statements:

First.

From what has been said, it is evident that a predicate noun or pronoun must mean the same thing as the subject. Second.

A noun or pronoun the predicate of a finite verb, is always in the same case that the subject is in.

Third.

The predicate need not agree with the subject in anything but

case.

In the third example 'owners' does not agree with the subject in person; boys' in the fourth and 'guard' in the tenth do not agree in number or gender with the subjects. Direct Address and Exclamation. A noun in the nominative case by direct address, is always in the second person; one nominative by exclamation is always in the third

person.

Consider man; weigh well thy frame.

O Blest Retirement! Friend to life's decline. Nominative by Pleonasm. Many find it difficult to distinguish between a noun appositive and a noun used pleonastically. A noun and its appositive help to define each other; a noun used pleonastically neither explains another noun, nor is explained by it. In the sentence,

John, he went to town, 'John' does not explain 'he;' if it did, it would follow 'he,' taking the natural position for an appositive. 'He' does not define 'John' in any way, as personal pronouns, aside from the compound personals, can not, from their nature, add in any way to a noun. Such forms of expression are most common among the uneducated classes. 'John' is the pleonastic word not 'he.' In all cases of pleonasm we have two nouns, a noun and a pronoun, or two pronouns, and only a grammatical relation for one of them. the sentence given there is a noun and a pronoun, and a grammatical relation for only one of them, as but one of them can be the subject of 'went.' As seen neither can be in apposition with the other. One of them is not necessary to the grammatical construction of the sentence and so is used pleonastically. The pleonastic word is always the former of the two.

In

Examples: Whatever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do. (If 'whatever' is separated into 'that which' or 'anything which,' 'that' or 'anything' becomes the pleonastic word instead of the whole clause as indicated.)

That very law that molds a

tear

And bids it trickle from its

source,

That law preserves the earth a sphere.

He that hath ears to hear, let

him hear.

Our fathers, where are they?

POSSESSIVE CASE.

The greatest difficulty met with in the possessive case is to know

(a) what the sign of possession is for certain nouns, and

(b) to what words to add the sign in many cases.

The general rule for the formation of the possessive is as follows:

(a) The possessive of nouns spelled in the plural and ending in 's' is formed by adding the apostrophe (') only. Examples:

The Smiths, the Smiths'; Kings, Kings'; heroes, heroes'; collectors, collectors'. (b) The possessive of all other nouns is formed by adding 's.' Examples:

God, God's; men, men's;
Burns, Burns's; Mrs. He-

mans, Hemans's; Webster, Webster's.

Euphony seems to favor the use of only the apostrophe in such cases as 'for conscience' sake.' A few even omit the 's' from the sign in forming the possessive of certain proper nouns ending in 's,' and write "Demosthenes'," and "Moses'," but good usage is upon the other side.

The possessive of nouns representing things was once used much more than at present. Modern writers avoid it by using the preposition of.' The tendency is to restrict the possessive case to the names of objects with life, and among them, as a general rule, to confine it to cases of possession. And so modern usage commends the expressions:

The President of Harvard;
The hinges of the gate;

The depth of water;

The summit of the mountain.