IT LETTERS OF MATTHEW ARNOLD. T does not seem to be generally believed that the "Letters of Matthew Arnold," recently collected and arranged by Mr. George W. E. Russell (Macmillan & Co.), will take rank in the higher performance of epistolary art. The Nineteenth Century for December contains a critical essay by Mr. John Morley on these letters, in which he sets out by recalling the excellence of such letter-writers as Cicero, Mme. de Sévigné, Cowper, Horace Walpole, Scott, Byron, Carlyle, Macaulay, Edward Fitzgerald, and others. He says: "What place in this catalog will ultimately be taken by the two new volumes of the 'Letters of Matthew Arnold,' nobody can now decide. Those who looked for a grand literary correspondence, rich in new instruction, fresh inspiration, profound social observation, will be disappointed; and they deserve to be, for Arnold was one of the most occupied men of his time. Those, on the other hand, who had the happiness to count him among faithful and affectionate friends, and to whom his disappearance leaves a truly painful void in familiar haunts and meditative hours-and those others who know his books only, and would wish to know something of his personality-will not be disappointed at all, but will be grateful to the relatives who have consented to give to the world these memorials of a finer genius and a high and most attractive character." Arnold's letters relate principally to political and social matters, tho literary judgments on contemporaries are not wanting. Thackeray was not, to his thinking, a great writer. The author of "The Angel of the House" is "worthy but mildish." The elevation of Tennyson above Wordsworth is "ridiculous." He does not think Tennyson a great and powerful spirit in any line—“as Goethe was in the line of modern thought, Wordsworth in that of contemplation, Byron even in that of passion." "Enoch Arden" is declared to be "very good indeed" and "perhaps the best thing Tennyson has done." In summing up his estimate of Arnold as he appears in these volumes, Mr. Morley says: "It is true to say that Arnold talked, wrote, and thought much about himself, but not really much more than most other men and women who take their particular work and purpose in life seriously to heart. He was not the least of an egotist, in the common ugly and odious sense of that terrible word. He was incapable of sacrificing the smallest interest of anybody else to his own; he had not a spark of envy or jealousy; he stood well aloof from all the hustlings and jostlings by which selfish men push on; he bore life's disappointments, and he was disappointed in some reasonable hopes and anticipations, with good nature and fortitude; he cast no burden upon others, and never shrank from bearing his own share of the daily load to the last ounce of it; he took the deepest, sincerest, and most active interest in the well-being of his country and his countrymen. Is it not absurd to think of such a man as an egotist, simply because he took a child's pleasure in his own performance, and liked to know that somebody thought well of his poetry, or praised his lecture, or laughed at his wit? As if a certain sheep-faced and insipid modesty, and spurious reserve in speaking of self, does not constantly conceal an egotism of the most intense and poisonous species. Somebody attacked hin and somebody else defended him. 'I had rather it was not done,' he told his mother, 'as these bitter answers increase and perpetuate hatreds, which I detest.' 'Fiery hatred and malice are what I detest, and would always allay or avoid, if I could.' This is the great thing, after all, as nobody knows better than some of those who have by fortune of eager and great issues been drawn into too sharp contention. "To refuse vindication on these terms, or almost on any terms, is not the temper of the egotist. 'To the last day I ljve, I shall never get over a sense of gratitude and surprise at finding my productions acceptable when I see so many people all round me so hard put to it to find a market. This comes from a deep sense of the native similarity of people's spirits, and that if one spirit seems richer than another, it is rather that it has been given to him to find more things, which it might have been equally given to others to find, than that he has seized or invented them by superior power and merit' (i. 228): There does not seem to be much difference, and it is little more than a question of words, but such language in the intimacy of a letter to his mother illustrates Arnold's real modesty. What does it matter that he would often in honest gaiety of heart cry out, 'Did I say that? How good that was!'" A Reading Age.-"Such surely may be pronounced the last thirty years of this closing century. Curious proofs abound. The very ash-barrels along the streets show it. So immense is the amount of printed literature thrown aside each day and week that men who dispose of city refuse insist that special receptacles must be given to the 'rejected manuscripts' of the household. Railway trains declare it. The brakemen and car-sweepers pick up each day scores and hundreds of books and newspapers cast away after perusal on the seats along the aisles of the cars. Growing lists of periodical literature overwhelm the seeker. A news-stand well furnished by some organization in the book trade offers a dozen attractions for any special intellectual desire. The presses groan with the mass of writing to be thrown into printed form, and publishers groan behind the press. The reading public seems, however, to devour everything. Some take even the trash, but an increasing circle is learning that in our brief life some careful selection must be made or the best reading will escape attention."— The Christian Intelligencer. NOTES. IN the course of a talk with Home Chat, Mr. W. T. Stead recently repeated his opinion that "the majority of people don't read," and added: "I was talking to Mr. John Morley the other day, and during the conversation I asked him how many out of the forty millions of inhabitants of these islands he supposed did any reading. He said, 'About a million'; and I quite agreed with him." All these penny papers, added Mr. Stead, which some superior people grumble at so much, have done a vast amount of good, in that they have made certain persons read who, except for their existence, would never have read at all. In the course of the same conversation Mr. Stead, in discussing some of the qualities of present-day novelists, said he did not object to "blugginess." "It's only human to be attracted by blood. Putting together Homer and Rider Haggard, what acts from each on the reader but the 'blugginess'? But, putting aside Homer and Rider Haggard, I may tell you that when I was a little boy I was always very fond of seeing pigs killed!" IF the relative popularity of books may be proven by the order of their sales at a given place, the following list will be of interest. The Book-News, Philadelphia, says that according to a record kept for one month in the Wanamaker book-store, the fifteen most popular books have been the following, in the order named: "Titus," by Florence M. Kingsley; "In the Days of Auld Lang Syne," by Ian Maclaren; "Beside the Bonnie Briar Bush," by Ian Maclaren; "Bachelor's Christmas," by Robert Grant; "Sorrows of Satan," by Marie Corelli; "Memoirs of a Minister of France,' by Stanley Weyman; "Men of the Moss-Hags," by S. R. Crockett; "Casa Braccio," by Marion Crawford; "A Gentleman Vagabond," by F. Hopkinson Smith; "About Paris," by Richard Harding Davis; "The Second Jungle Book," by Rudyard Kipling; "Two Little Pilgrims' Progress," by Mrs. Burnett; "Knight of the White Cross," by G. A. Herity: "Tiger of Mysore," by the same; "Through Russian Snows," by the same. REFERRING to Miss Rhoda Broughton's recent celebration of her birthday, The Westminster Gazette says: "She has had a fairly long and successful literary career, and is still hard at work. Her earlier efforts, 'Cometh Up as a Flower' (1867), 'Not Wisely but Too Well' (1867), 'Red as a Rose is She' (1870), 'Good-bye, Sweetheart, Good-bye' (1872), are perhaps her most successful. In connection with her first work, there used to be a story told, which is probably as true as many stories of the kind. Miss Broughton's father was a clergyman in North Wales, and 'Cometh Up as a Flower' was written without parental knowledge. When a copy of the book arrived at the rectory, her mother, it is said, would not allow her daughter to read it!" MRS. LYNN LINTON has in her time expressed her mind pretty freely about many persons and things. Now the interviewers have been catching it. The editor of The Idler has been asking some of the interviewed their opinions of interviewers, and Mrs. Linton, as was to be expected, comes out strong on the point. "Interviews and interviewers," she answers, "may stand as about the biggest nuisances, and the most futile failures of all at present patronized by this crazy age." And again, "The whole thing is the purest humbug from beginning to end.” THE right hand of the Russian painter, Verestchagin, is thumbless. His right thumb was bitten by a leopard some years ago, and had to be amputated. The middle finger also of his right hand is lamed and useless, as the result of a shot-wound which the artist received on the battle-field. More than this, the small bones of the center of his right hand were also partially shattered by a fall on the Russian steppes, and his right arm was broken in the same accident. Nevertheless, it is with this damaged right hand that Verestchagin paints his wonderful pictures. "H. T. P." says, in a letter to The Bookman: "Altogether, if the office of Laureate be something more than a petty insular distinction, if it is to become one of the innumerable symbols of Anglo-Saxon unity, a possession of Greater Britain, and if our whole race could choose its occupant, it is unthinkable that the choice should be a matter of any doubt, or should single out another name than that of Rudyard Kipling.' SCIENCE. WHAT HOLDS THE OCEAN IN PLACE? THIS HIS question, like many others that appear silly at first sight, is really a serious one. We are apt to think that since a liquid will always “find its own level" when left to itself, it will do so under all possible conditions. But this is not so. Prof. T. J. See tells us (Popular Astronomy, December) that on a gravitating sphere such as our earth, the surrounding liquid will be in equilibrium only when it is less dense than the sphere itself. Were it otherwise-were our ocean a mass of quicksilver, for instance-it might gather itself up into a great ball and go rolling about regardless of consequences. Says the Professor: “As the profound researches of Lord Kelvin and G. H. Darwin on the long period oceanic tides show that the earth's mass as a whole is 'more rigid than steel but not quite so rigid as glass,' we may in the present discussion consider the earth as a solid spheroid surrounded by a mass of fluid kept in equilibrium by the pressure and attraction of its parts. Among the many important problems illuminated by the sublime genius of Laplace, not the least interesting is that which treats of the equilibrium of the sea, and the conditions which render this equilibrium stable. Laplace has treated this question with a very profound analysis in the Mécanique Céleste;' and has shown that the stability of the equilibrium of the sea depends upon the circumstance that the waters of the ocean have a smaller density than that of the solid spheroid around which they are wrapped in thin, irregular layers of variable form and depth.” By means of a diagram, which we have not space to reproduce here, Professor See now shows that when a solid sphere is surrounded by a lighter liquid one the result of their mutual attraction is to cause the latter to arrange itself evenly about the former. He expresses the conclusion thus: "If we suppose an earthquake or some other catastrophe to disturb this equilibrium, it is clear that whatever temporary disaster might result from the supposed derangement, the accustomed order would soon be restored by the law above indicated, and the figure of the sea would again become stable. Such is the marvelous provision of universal gravitation for the stability of the world, as made known by the genius of Laplace. It is clear that without this investigation we could not have the least assurance of the stability of the oceans which covers three fourths of the solid terrestrial spheroid; and we might be led by mere fancy to suppose that a disturbance of the figure of the earth would result in a destruction of all the conditions which perpetuate life upon the planet." Repeating now his geometrical reasoning for the case where the surrounding shell is heavier than its included sphere, Professor See shows that if it is once thrown a little out of center, gravitation will tend to increase the irregularity: "The action of the whole mass will tend to carry the particles toward the side where the fluid is already heaped up; accordingly the arrangement of the fluid will become still more unequal than it is at present. Therefore we conclude that if the density of the fluid surpasses that of the solid nucleus the equilibrium will be unstable, and even if the two masses be concentrically adjusted the slightest disturbance will cause the fluid to pile up on one side of the nucleus, which will protrude its opposite face above the surface of the receding liquid. From this we see that if the oceans were converted into quicksilver and the terrestrial spheroid were to retain its present density, the fluid surrounding the earth would be in an unstable equilibrium, and the slightest disturbance, such as an earthquake or the tides arising from the disturbing action of the sun and moon, would cause this liquid sheet to pile up in one great mass, which might roll about over the earth whenever new conditions of equilibrium were brought about by the action of extraneous forces. The present oceans would thus be largely exhausted by the superior attraction of the fluid for itself, and the earth would protrude from the mass of mercury; or, what is the same thing, the dense and unstable fluid would not spread around the entire earth, as do the present waters of the sea in their admirable adjustment to conditions of permanent stable equilibrium." Fol STILTED SCIENTIFIC PHRASEOLOGY. THE HE "big words" of science are often necessary and useful, expressing what can not be made clear to the student in any other way, but they are sometimes mere verbiage and mean no more than their common equivalents. It goes without saying that in this latter case the true scholar uses the short, plain word. He who writes in six-syllabled words for the mere pleasure of astounding the multitude is not apt to have very much solid thought to express. Some very good advice on this subject, which is worthy the serious attention of other scientific men than students of medicine, was recently given to the students of the Chicago Medical College by Dr. Edmund Andrews, in an introductory address, afterward printed in The Journal of the Amer ican Medical Association (Chicago, November 3), from which we quote a few paragraphs: "It is amusing and yet vexatious to see a worthy medical gentleman, whose ordinary conversation is in a simple and good style, suddenly swell up when he writes a medical article. He changes his whole dialect and fills his pages with a jangle of harsh technical terms, not one third of which are necessary to express his meaning. He tries to be solemn and imposing. For instance, a physician recently devised a new instrument, and wrote it up for a medical journal under this title, 'A New Apparatus for the Armamentarium of the Clinician,' by which heading he doubtless hopes to make the fame of his invention ‘go thundering down the ages,' as Guiteau said. "Another writer wanted to say that cancer is an unnatural growth of epithelium. He took a big breath and spouted the following: Carcinoma arises from any subepithelial proliferations by which epithelial cells are isolated and made to grow abnor-, mally.' Now, then, you know all about cancer. “A writer on insanity illuminates the subject as follows: 'The prodromic delirium is a quasi-paranoiac psychosis in a degenerate subject. A psychosis of exhaustion, being practically a condition of syncope.' "The following is an effort to say that certain microbes produce the poison of erysipelas: "The streptococcus erysipalatosus proliferating in the interspaces of the connective tissue is the etiologic factor in the secretion of the erysipelatous toxins.' "A large cancer of the liver was found at a post-mortem examination and reported about as follows: 'A colossal carcinomatous degeneration of the hepatic mechanism.lupil edi shanmɔɔ affi "Still, the man of big swelling words is not always up in the clouds. If called to a case of accident, he examines the injury, and may inform the family in quite a simple and dignified man ner that their father was thrown sidewise from his carriage breaking his leg and putting his ankle out of joint, but if he writes out the case for his medical journal, he gets up straightway on his stilts and says: "The patient was projected transversely from his vehicle, fracturing the tibia and fibula and luxating the tibio-tarsal articulation.' "Your man of solemn speech is peculiar. He does not keep a set of instruments-not he-he has an armamentarium. His catheters never have a hole or an eye in them, but always a fenestrum. In gunshot injuries, a bullet never makes a hole in his patient, but only a perforation. He does not disinfect his armamentarium by boiling, but by submerging it in water elevated to the temperature of ebullition. He never distinguishes one disease from another, but always differentiates or diagnosticates it. His patient's mouth is an oral cavity. His jaw is a maxilla. His brain is a cerebrum, his hip-joint is a coxo-femoral articulation. If his eyelids are adherent, it is a case of ankylo symblepharon. If he discovers wrinkles on the skin, they are corrugations or else rugosities. He never sees any bleeding, but only hemorrhage or sanguineous effusion. He does not examine' a limb by touch or by handling-he palpates or manipulates it. If he finds it hopelessly diseased he does not cut it off-that is undignified. He gets out his armamentarium and amputates it.” The Journal of Inebriety estimates the total number of drunkards in America at 1,600,000. There being about twenty-five millions of adults in this country, this means that one person out of every fifteen drinks to excess, and is consequently more or less of a drunkard. The journal thinks that this estimate is a very modest one and rather under the mark than above it. IN BACTERIA IN THE DAIRY. Na recent article on the Pasteurization of milk (THE LITERARY DIGEST, December 21) the writer showed how important it is to remove the injurious germs without killing also those that are beneficial. Some further information on this and kindred subjects is contained in the following from The Lancet, December 7: "That we may count upon microbes sometimes as our friends and sometimes as our enemies is well illustrated in the bacteriology of milk and milk products. Tho milk may leave the udder perfectly sterile, yet a few moments of contact with the air, and especially the air of insanitary surroundings, are sufficiently long to be the starting-point of the development of a whole microbial menagerie. By fission alone-that is, by splitting in two, and by the resulting two dividing again in the same way-one bacterium may become the parent of over sixteen million bacteria in twenty-four hours. The composition of milk is such as to be most favorable to the growth and development of organisms, pathogenic and nonpathogenic. Some are detrimental to the healthy condition of the milk itself, or, in other words, milk has its own diseases to contend with. Experience is ever teaching how imperative it is that the strictest care should be taken to protect milk against the sibility of microbial invasion. The risks of pollution are great, and may arise from an unhealthy or dirty condition of the cow, or of the stall, or of the milker's hands and clothes. The air of the cow-house is frequently made insanitary by cleaning it out and dislodging dirt just previously to milking, and another source of contamination is the diluting of the milk with unwholesome water which may be infected with typhoid fever or cholera poison, or by placing the milk in dirty vessels, or by exposing it to the atmosphere of warm and unhealthy places, as cupboards. With these possibilities of pollution in mind the advantages gained by sterilizing or Pasteurizing milk by boiling are evident. Particularly is this so in the case of bottle-fed infants, the lives of many of whom would be saved from fatal diarrhea, so frequent in arti. ficial rearing, were these precautions taken. The same lesson is taught by the fact that mother's milk is sterile. Altho boiling will destroy the disease-producing germs in milk, it may still leave spore-bearing bacteria, which in course of time would produce undesirable changes in the milk itself and render it unwhole some." pos So much for our bacterial enemies. But they are not the only germs contained in the liquid. The article goes on to tell us: "There are friendly germs to be found in milk whose functions can be cultivated and turned to account in the production of an acceptable flavor in cream and in butter. After clearing the milk or the cream of competing organisms by Pasteurism it is sown with a pure culture of lactic-acid-producing organisms. The flavor of the butter and, moreover, its keeping qualities being dependent upon the character of the souring process undergone by the cream preparatory to churning, a uniform product acceptable in both these respects may be obtained by proceeding carefully on these lines. The inculcation of these methods among dairy-farmers would add an impetus to the milk products industry and probably bring it into a greater state of prosperity." Telephoning with Bare Conductors Laid Along the Ground. "For many years," says The Railway Review, "bronze wire has been used by the German Postal Telegraph Administration as a conductor for telephone lines, on account of its conductivity being superior to that of the usual iron or steel wires. Besides bronze wires covered with copper, a number of German makers have also brought out numerous double-metal wires, under the names of compound wire, bimetallic wire, double-metal wire, double-bronze wire, and patent bronze wire, etc. These wires have a core of steel or aluminum-bronze, with a high tensile strength, and are covered with copper or bronze of a high conductivity. Experiments with these wires were made in order to see if they could compare with bronze wire for telephonic purposes, both in respect to their mechanical and electrical properties.... The results obtained do not go to show that the doublemetal wires are any more valuable than the pure copper wire, but that the distance to which telephonic transmission by bare wires laid upon the earth is possible depends mainly upon the size and weight of the wires, presuming all the conditions are similar." baked potato at the moment when it begins to brown. The natural orifices are very much dilated by the stretching due to the drying, and it is probably to the same cause that we must attribute the drawing apart of the lips, which gives to the wide-open mouth a horrible expression of pain. In the inside may be seen through the ori fices masses of dried membranes, like the roots of a dead plant.. What is most astonishing in this mummy is the complete disappearance of the hair. Perhaps this is due to the attacks of insects. "The animal weighs only 150 gram's [ pound]. A live cat of this size weighs 21⁄2 to 3 kilograms1 [51⁄2 to 61⁄2 pounds], that is to say, sixteen to twenty times as much. The photograph is pretty good, but it shows but imperfectly the emaciation and flattening of the organs."-Translated for THE LITERARY DIGEST. WE REDISCOVERY OF THE SUN-GAS. E chronicled not many months ago in these columns how helium, the sun-gas-so-called because it had been found by the spectroscope in the sun and had never been found elsewhere had been discovered on earth as a constituent of certain minerals. Thus one more link has been forged between our faroff center of attraction and ourselves, and a writer in The Edinburgh Review (October) thinks that the discovery is a happy omen for celestial chemistry, that is, the science that investigates, by means of the spectroscope, the materials of which the sun and stars are made up; for in this science "unknown elements" were becoming alarmingly numerous. Of the present outlook The Review speaks as follows: "It [celestial chemistry] had unquestionably, during the last decade, become somewhat overcast. Important instrumental improvements were turned to the utmost account in the precise determination of countless dark and bright lines in the spectra of sun, stars, and nebula; but chemical recognitions were comparatively infrequent. Mistaken identities, it is true, were corrected; and this was in itself a gain of the most essential kind. But the substitution of avowed ignorance for merely ostensible knowledge, tho laudable, and to the lovers of truth eminently welcome, is not inspiriting. 'Unknown lines' were becoming ominously abundant. Appeals to the laboratory anent their interpretation met no response; it almost seemed as if science had, in that direction, reached the end of its tether. Comparisons of terrestrial with celestial spectra had lost much of their interest. nificant coincidences between them grew scarce; nor was it unSigreasonable to suppose that incandescent globes contained forms of matter non-existent on a cool planet. Theories of 'dissociation' through excessive heat, as well as of the gradual formation of our 'elements' out of some ultra-material substance-probably the universal ether-were besides rife; and, if true, opened a chasm between the chemistry of the earth and the chemistry of the stars. "The detection of helium has dissipated most of these appre hensions. Everything now once more seems possible; and hope ANCIENT ENGINEERING IN NORTHERN THIS GREECE. HIS is the age of great engineering works, and we are so thoroughly cognizant of that fact that we are apt to forget that there were great engineers in antiquity. They built neither suspension bridges nor transatlantic liners, but in masonry constructions and drainage-works they were in many respects our equals. Those who doubt should read an article on the recently discovered remains of some great Greek engineering works, contributed to Appleton's Popular Science Monthly by John D. Champlin. We quote a few paragraphs below: "Strabo says: "The spot which the present Lake Copaic [northern Greece] occupies was formerly it is said, dry ground, and was cultivated in various ways by the Orchomenians, who lived near it.' This traditional account, about the only record of the prehistoric condition of the Copaic basin we possess, would seem to imply that it was kept dry artificially, and we find a partial explanation in other passages in which he describes certain subterraneous caverns and fissures through which the waters were carried off. 'If the subterranean passages are stopped up, the waters of the lake increase so as to inundate and cover cities and whole districts, which become uncovered if the same or other passages are again opened.' The memory of such a catastrophe, caused by the stoppage of the natural conduits, the result of seismic disturbances, as Strabo intimates, or from want of care in consequence of political disturbances, is embalmed doubtless in the tradition of the Ogygean Deluge, Ogygea being the original name of Boeotia. A similar trouble must have occurred about the time of Alexander the Great, who appears to have contemplated the reclaiming of the basin. Strabo says: 'When the outlets were again obstructed, Crates, the miner, a man of Chalcis, began to clear away the obstructions, but desisted in consequence of the Boeotians being in a state of insurrection, altho, as he himself says in the letter to Alexander, many places had been already drained.' "These statements of Strabo would lead to the inference that the drainage of the basin by the ancients consisted only in keeping free from obstruction certain subterraneous passages through which the waters flowed to the sea; and this would probably have been the conclusion to-day but for the recent efforts of the Greek Government to reclaim the submerged lands. These efforts, under the supervision of experienced engineers, have resulted in nearly draining the basin, and have led to the discovery of a complete ancient system of hydraulic works dating from so remote a period that all record or tradition of their construction has been lost. This system, so vast and comprehensive as to excite the wonder of modern engineers, taking into consideration the primitive appliances of the ancients, served to convert this now miasmatic basin into a fruitful plain, the home, a thousand years before our era, of a thriving and numerous population." TH EDISON ON THE TRIALS OF INVENTORS. HOMAS A. EDISON, in an interview reported in The Monthly Illustrator by R. R. Wilson, condemns our patent system in unmeasured terms. He says that he has lost money on every one of his inventions, considering them purely as inventions, and has made his fortune by manufacturing. Mr. Edison advises the young inventor not to attempt to get a patent, but to keep his invention secret and manufacture it himself. After enumerating some of the celebrated processes of manufacture that have never been patented, but are kept secret, often being transmitted from father to son, as has been done in the great Dupont powder works, Mr. Edison spoke as follows: "No sooner does an inventor make known some important mechanical discovery by applying for a patent than a pirate comes along and steals it. Years pass before the case comes to trial, and in the mean time the practise of the courts gives the pirate the benefit of the doubt. Many patents are decided in the inventor's favor only when the patent is about to expire, and has therefore become almost worthless. This is all wrong. The courts should give the man who first secures a patent or first makes application for it the benefit of the doubt until the question of priority has been finally passed upon and settled. As it is now the pirate staves off the trial from year to year and the poor inventor is robbed of his due, but if the change I mention was made, patent cases would be speedily brought to trial and in most instances justice done to all. When it is made, as it is sure to be sooner or later, there will be a rush of invention and discovery in this country such as we have never seen. Under the present conditions, however, not the big but the small inventions, a new toy for children, an improved lamp-burner, and the like, are the ones that are making the most money. Their insignificance protects them against the pirate, who fails to discover that there is money to be made by stealing them. Still, my advice to a young inventor would be to study the expensive operations of all large factories-every operation, you know, is expensive in proportion to the number of men required-and try to devise a machine with which fewer men could do the work. The wealth of the modern world has been made by labor-saving machinery. "The end has not yet been reached in this field, and it is still possible for a young inventor to devise a machine for some operation essential to the manufacture of steel which would save the labor of a number of men. Then if he went into the manufacture of that one product on his own account, he could hold his own with all the other manufacturers and undersell them as long as he kept his machine a secret. There is no better method by which the inventor in these days can get the full benefit of his invention." Recent Flashlight Photography.-"Naturalists have been doing some clever things by the aid of photography," says The American Journal of Photography, November. "A Western sportsman has been for years making a collection of photographs of all kinds of wild animals in their native haunts, and many of these pictures, especially of animals about to spring at their intended prey, have been taken under conditions that made the skilful handling of the rifle highly necessary the instant after the camera was snapped. Another enthusiast has devoted himself to photographing the animals of the forest in their nightly wanderings. He would set a wire in the path of the animal he wished to photograph, and adjust the camera so that as the animal came along and made contact with the wire blitz-pulver was ignited, and in the flash the picture was taken. In this way some beautiful specimens of deer in all sorts of attitudes, of mountain lion, badgers, opossums, etc., have been secured, and many new features have been developed of great interest to the naturalist. M. Bontan, the European naturalist, who studies the wild life of the Mediterranean in the garb of a diver, has succeeded in taking some photographs of the sea bottom. He uses a flashlight obtained from a spirit-lamp and magnesium powder, which is covered by a water-tight bell-jar. The lamp stands on a barrel containing oxygen gas, which he employs to work the lamp and the pneumatic shutter of the camera. He breathes through the sup. ply-pipe of the diving-dress. The camera is water-tight and stands on a tripod near the barrel, so that the shutter and the flashlight can be worked together." THE HOW A WATER-DROP SPLASHES. HE splash made by a drop of water as it falls on a hard surface seems a common and simple thing. Common it is, no doubt, but simple it certainly is not. It is so complex, and withal so interesting, that Prof. A. M. Worthington has written a book in which this subject alone is treated. What he has found to write about in it may be understood from the following paragraph from a review in Knowledge, December 2: "Professor Worthington has been studying the curious phenomena for twenty years. The splash of a drop occurs in the twinkling of an eye; yet it is an exquisitely regulated phenomenon, and 'one which very happily illustrates some of the fundamental properties of fluids. The problem which Professor Worthington has succeeded in solving is to let a drop of definite size fall from a fixed height in comparative darkness on to a surface, and to illuminate it by a flash of exceedingly short duration at any desired stage, so as to exclude all the stages previous and subsequent to those thus selected. The numerous illustrations in the volume testify to the accuracy and beauty of his work. The curious results of the splash of a drop of mercury from a height of three inches upon a smooth glass plate are particularly interesting. Very soon after the first moment of impact, minute rays are shot out in all directions on the surface with marvelous regularity. From the ends of these, minute droplets of liquid split off. The liquid subsides in the middle, and afterward flows into a ring. The ring then divides in such a manner as to join up the rays in pairs. Thereafter the whole contracts, till the liquid rises in the center, so as to form the beginning of the rebound of the drop from the plate. Immediately the drops at the ends of the arms now break off, while the central mass rises in a column which just fails itself to break up into drops. He photographed no fewer than thirty suc cessive stages of the splash within the twentieth of a second, so that the average interval between them was about the six hundredth of a second. Remarkable are the splashes of water-drops falling about sixteen inches into milk, but more beautiful are the dome-forms when the height is fifty-two inches." Eye Diseases of Coal-Miners.-According to an article in Gluckauf, translated and condensed in The Engineering and Mining Journal, December 14, the disease known as nystagmus appears to have been first known about 1860, and it has been noticed that it has increased since then in all coal-mining countries. "The principal symptom of the disease is that the miner, after a long shift, finds his sight unsteady, and his light appears to be in continual movement. A short interval of rest is sufficient to remove this unpleasant sensation. When the disease is more acute, the miner is attacked at his work, and finds that he can not see to hold his tools; he has headaches; and, finally, can not walk straight. Any attempt to see things by ordinary light above the horizontal level brings on the nystagmus. In one district, Dr. Nieden examined 11,145 men, and found that 3.6 per cent. suffered from nystagmus. The proportion between those coming from work and those going to work was as 4.1 to 3.1 per cent. All those who have studied the subject agree that the disease is confined to those men who mine the coal, and who lie cramped up in a lying position, very often having to look upward. The muscles of the eye can not bear the excessive strain, which is aggravated by the poor quality of the light. It has been noticed that nystagmus is much more frequent in mines where safety-lamps are used than it is in mines where there are naked lights. As evidence of the important part that the quality of the light plays in connection with the disease, it is said that at the Rhein Elbe collieries in 1877, when naked lights were used, 0.7 per cent. of the men suffered from nystagmus; three years later, after safety-lamps had been introduced, the percentage rose to 3.05. The author has no doubt that the introduction of a better light in mines would re duce the disease." AN AUTOMATIC TICKET-SELLER.-Herapash's, London, describes an automatic appliance for the delivery of railway tickets, which, it says, bids fair to hold a respectable place among similar devices. The machine works with absolute correctness, and dates as well as issues the tickets. "It is particularly useful where a number of tickets has to be issued at fixed fares, such as for local passenger traffic. Some time ago a machine was fixed in the Homerton Station of the North London line for the issue of workmen's tickets, and, as the directors have asked for further machines, the presumption is that the experiment has proved satisfactory. Strength of Metals Shown by Their Melting Point.-"M. Pictet remarks," says The Railway Review, “that pure metals with high melting-points, such as platinum, iron, copper, and gold, are all comparatively strong, and that, conversely, metals having low melting-points-zinc, lead, bismuth, and tin— are relatively weak; that metals with high melting-points must necessarily be coherent and teĥacious, because much heat is required to drive their molecules apart in reducing them to the liquid mobile state in which the molecules have very small coherence, and therefore at ordinary temperatures much force must be applied to overcome the cohesion of the molecules and break the On the other hand, in metals with low melting-points a slight elevation of temperature will overcome the molecular cohesion and render them liquid, that is, will melt them. Such metals will be weak, because if little heat is required to melt the metal, less force will be needed to tear it apart; hence melting-point and tenacity are clearly connected. It is also shown that the tenacity of pure metals and alloys is greatly increased by extreme cold, that is, by the closer approximation of their molecules, proving that metals become stronger at temperatures farthest removed from their melting-point." mass. A Simple Test for Impurity in Water.-"Decaying organic matter is never found in appreciable quantity in pure water," says Floyd Davis, in The Engineering Magazine, December. "If to a glassful of such water a few drops of sulfuric acid and a few drops of a dilute solution of potassium permanganate be added a permanent pink color is produced; but, if the water contains decaying organic matter then the pink color becomes fainter and finally disappears. In the hands of an expert this is an important test, but it can not be relied on with a novice, since ferrous sulfate, hydrogen sulphid, and other reducing agents, sometimes present in water, produce similar results. But, when a water shows an excess of chlorin and bleaches potassium permanganate, it is certainly suspicious, and should be analyzed by an expert. My advice in all cases where persons seek counsel is to make the experiments given above, and, if the results are not satisfactory, to send the water to an experienced chemist, with necessary information regarding its source, and have a thorough analysis made." SCIENCE BREVITIES. "SMOKE is not gaseous, as it is often unscientifically considered, but a cloud of solid particles suspended like dust in the air," says The Engineering Magazine, in reviewing an article on smokeless gunpowder. "Anything that burns completely into a gas generates no smoke. Efforts have long been made to produce powder that will not produce smoke in burning. Not only in the military art, but in mining and quarrying, is such an explosive desirable, provided that, for the latter purpose, the gases produced shall not possess materially deleterious properties. For military purposes it is also necessary that the powder should have good ballistic power, and that the chemical action of the gases upon the material of which gun-barrels are made shall not be injurious. A number of smokeless powders exist, but they do not all meet these necessary requirements." A FORM of magnet whose poles adapt themselves to the irregular surfaces of a piece of iron to be lifted, is described and illustrated in the Electrische Anzeiger. According to an abstract in The Electrical World it "consists of a bar of iron, around which are a number of iron rings or collars fitting it closely, between which are placed the coils encircling the iron bar, the current being such as to make alternate poles of the successive rings. The bar is lifted horizontally, and in the lower part of each of the rings there is a short, thick, iron cylinder which has a limited vertical movement; these iron cylinders will project more or less beyond the lower edge of the rings, so as to adapt themselves to an irregular surface of an iron piece to be lifted." "THE aluminum vessels now in use in the French army are found to wear very little," says Knowledge. "They can be heated over gas and coal, and are not attacked by the food and wine, etc., as the food does not remain long in the vessels. Flasks in which ordinary water is kept for months show whitish spots near specks of impurities-iron, carbon, etc., and on the soldered portions if other metals have been admixed. The vessels are made simply by stamping, without soldering, except at the handles. In salt water, corrosion of the metal proceeds more quickly than in fresh water; it becomes black, but sulfuric acid restores the original brightness." ELECTRIC-LIGHTING has made numerous contributions to sanitation. Dr. Saunders, medical officer of the London Board of Health, says that it has done much toward making the employees of commercial and manufacturing establishments healthier. "Faces that were pale and wan from work in gas-lighted basements, stores, and shops are much improved since the introduction of electricity. The heat from the gas-jets and poor ventilation are responsible for much sickness. It is also shown that in the same city the electric light has lessened crime. Darkness breeds wickedness and light dispels it." |