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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 1, 1894)
8 THE BATTALION. stone, and to the rural pursuits among which they have been reared.” It has also been said that the “hope of Amer ica is in the homes of America.” What soever adorns ones home, be that in town or county, and enobles his domestic life, “strengthens his love for country and nurtures the better elements of the nature in those who are thrown in tontact with such improvements.” To promote a love for trees, shrubs, vines and flowers by cultivating and studying them, develops in children a love for the beautiful in nature, in art, and still more in character. “Nothing is truer than that the love of nature sharpens the senses and quickens all the intellectual faculties.” Were parents to provide to the fullest practical degree, the simple means for encouraging the love of ornamental gardening, and of the study of botany, and other closely allied sciences, at home, “they would early se cure for the young a source of high en joyment, that is unknown elsewhere, one which elevates the mind and tills it with high aspirations. Besides these things, “the mere spending' of time on the part of all, and especially, children and women, in the exercise and enjoyment ment that comes from associating with and caring for plants, is highly condu cive to health.” These things make whole communities happier, healthier, better and nobler. Those who establish flower gardens and parks, their work will stand as endur ing monuments, “keeping fresh for all time the name of each benefactor,” for they establish a place where the tired and sick of a crowded city may come for recreation, comfort, beauty and health fulness at twilight when approaching nightfall softens the outlines and casts a mellowness and quietness over the land scape scene, where they can breathe a purer air, heavily ladened with the scent of roses and the perfume of mag nolias. B. H. Price. EDITORIAL EEE^RTMENT. Kn Oblate Sphenoid. We are taught that the earth is not spherical, but an oblate spheroid. In other words it is flattened at the poles, but not so greatly flattened that it does not resemble a sphere. It is compared in shape to an orange that has been slightly flattened at both the stem and flower ends. Now the fact is that no orange can be found that is so near a jierfect sphere as this earth. Now the flattening at each pole is but 11 miles; which is about one seven-hundredth of its diameter. In an orange of ordi nary size the flattening would be less than the thickness of tissue paper, and actually insensible to the eye, and could only be detected by the most delicate in struments, and the surface of the earth with its towering Alps and deep canyons is actually smoother than any orange that ever grew, and to an eye capable of grasping an entire hemisphere at one view, would appear as round and smooth as a billiard ball. The tallest peak of the Himilayas is but one-fourteenth hundreth of the earth’s diameter. The smallest speck of dust on a billiard ball would represent, in comparason to the size of the globe, the tallest mountain.