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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



definite time, even wlien exposed to the ac- 

 cess of air or with ordinary water added to 

 it. He even found that if very putrid blood 

 was largely diluted with sterilized water, so 

 as to diffuse its microbes widely and wash 

 them clean of their acrid products, a drop of 

 such dilution added to pure blood might leave 

 it unchanged for days at the temperature of 

 the body, although a trace of the septic liquid 

 undiluted caused intense putrefaction within 

 twenty-four hours. Hence he was led to 

 conclude that it was the grosser forms of 

 septic mischief, rather than microbes in the 

 attenuated condition in which they exist in 

 the atmosphere, that were to be dreaded in 

 surgical practice. He hinted to the London 

 Medical Congress in 1881 that it might turn 

 out possible to disregard the atmospheric 

 dust altogether, but did not venture to prac- 

 tice upon the hint till 1890, when he brought 

 forward, at the Berlin Congress, what he 

 believed to be absolute demonstration of the 

 harmlessness of atmospheric dust in surgical 

 operations. " This conclusion has been justi- 

 fied by subsequent experience. The irritation 

 of the wound by antiseptic irrigation and 

 washing may therefore now be avoided, and 

 Nature left quite undisturbed to carry out 

 her best methods of repair, while the surgeon 

 may conduct his operations as simply as in 

 former days, provided always that, deeply 

 impressed with the tremendous importance 

 of his object, and inspiring the same convic- 

 tion in all his assistants, he vigilantly main- 

 tains from first to last, with a care that, once 

 learned, becomes instinctive, but for the want 

 of which nothing else can compensate, the 

 use of the simple means which will suffice to 

 exclude from the wound the coarser forms 

 of septio impurity." 



The Iron Age in Aboriginal Art. Prof. 

 0. T. Mason has been led, from his studies of 

 aboriginal art, to attach great importance to 

 the influence on the native American mind 

 of the iron age, which he defines in the 

 American Anthropologist as " the conserva- 

 tive folk age, the middle age as distin- 

 guished from the Renaissance, which re- 

 placed the old in progressive Europe." It is 

 almost impossible. Prof. Mason says, for one 

 looking over a collection of Americana, " to 

 decide positively whether he is regarding the 

 unadulterated Western hemisphere, or me- 



diaeval Europe, or native Africa, or some 

 happy combination of these. In the New 

 World during four centuries, as in the Old 

 World, the activities, the whole life, of the 

 native people were partly such as belong to 

 a common humanity, such as arise through 

 a partnership and co-operation between any 

 group of human beings and their environ- 

 ment, and such as came to them from for- 

 eign lands living in the iron age of Europe. 

 . . . There is hardly a tribe on this conti- 

 nent that has never heard of iron ; there are 

 tribes of Americans that preserve only a 

 vestige of native life. Even the archaeolo- 

 gist is often in doubt regarding buried speci- 

 mens. Shell heaps, mounds, caves, and 

 cemeteries often hide iron-made products 

 among the goodly stuff, exciting a reason- 

 able doubt concerning the probable author- 

 ship of the works themselves." 



Value of Horseless Vehicles. In a paper 

 in the British Association, Mr. A. R. Sennett 

 traced the history of mechanical locomotion 

 from the sixteenth century, when horseless 

 vehicles were run by means of springs, 

 touched upon the automotors of succeeding 

 centuries, cited the instance of a light wind- 

 propelled vehicle which made the journey 

 between Bristol and London in the early 

 part of this century, and led up to the self- 

 propelled vehicles of the present day. He 

 pointed out that horseless locomotion on the 

 European continent was looked upon more 

 from the point of view of sport than of 

 adaptation to transport in commercial and 

 industrial operations. The author predicated, 

 however, that we should enter upon the sub- 

 ject in a far more serious manner. Notwith- 

 standing the immense mileage of railroads 

 in England (and in the United States, too, 

 we may add), a considerable proportion of 

 the mileage of good common roads is repre- 

 sented by roads connecting towns situated 

 at a considerable distance from railway sta- 

 tions. Such towns and outlying stations 

 could be far more efficiently served by judi- 

 ciously organized systems of horseless road 

 locomotives than ever could be done by the 

 most elaborate system of light railways. 

 Whether we took the case of the heavy and 

 slow haulage of the farmer and the team 

 owner, or the light and rapid deUvery re- 

 quired by the tradesman, we should find that 



