or 1/20 at most.  It follows that the slight inferiority found in the digestive powers of vegetable albumin appears unimportant.  It is sufficient to add 2 or 3 more grammes of albumin to a ration already superabundant of from 40 to 50 grammes of vegetable proteins to bring back a complete equilibrium in the use of vegetable and animal varieties.  The theoretical inferiority of vegetable albumin thus almost completely disappears.

 H. LABBE.

 (To be continued.)

* * * * *

 If your system has become clogged, go slow—­and fast.

 ODE TO THE WEST WIND.

     O Wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
       Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
     Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
       Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
     Pestilence-stricken multitudes!  O thou
       Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
     The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
       Each like a corpse within its grave, until
     Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
       Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill
     (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
       With living hues and odours plain and hill
     Wild Spirit which art moving everywhere;
     Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!

     Thou on whose stream, ’mid the steep sky’s commotion,
       Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed,
     Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean,
       Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread
     On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
       Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
     Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
       Of the horizon to the zenith’s height,
     The locks of the approaching storm.  Thou dirge
       Of the dying year, to which this closing night
     Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
       Vaulted with all thy congregated might
     Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
     Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst:  Oh hear!

     Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
       The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
     Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,
       Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay,
     And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
       Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,
     All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers
       So sweet the sense faints picturing them!  Thou
     For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers
       Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
     The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
       The sapless foliage of the ocean know
     Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,
     And tremble and despoil themselves:  Oh, hear!