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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The vitality of the hydrogen flame in foul air, 

 Prof. Clowes points out, makes it useful for 

 maintaining the flame of a miner's safety 

 lamp in an impure atmosphere. The author's 

 testing lamp, which burns either oil or hydro- 

 gen, or both together, can be carried into foul 

 air with both substances burning. The oil 

 flame is extinguished as soon as the propor- 

 tion of carbonic acid reaches a certain limit, 

 while the hydrogen continues to bum. As 

 soon as the miner goes back into a somewhat 

 purer atmosphere, the still burning hydrogen 

 relights the oil flame, and the miner is not 

 left in complete darkness, as he otherwise 

 would be. 



The Earth's School of Enterprise. In 



his study of the Relation of the Earth to the 

 Industries of Mankind, Prof. 0. T. Mason 

 infers that the earth was in the beginning 

 and is now the teacher of the activities 

 through which commodities are conducted 

 through the progress of industries. " There 

 were quarriers, miners, lumberers, gleaners, 

 and some say planters ; there were fishermen, 

 fowlers, trappers, and hunters before there 

 was a genus lvomo. There were also manu- 

 facturers in clay, in textiles, and in animal 

 substances before there were potters, weavers, 

 and furriers ; there were all sorts of moving 

 material and carrying passengers and en- 

 gineering of the simplest sort. It might be 

 presumption to hint that there existed a sort 

 of barter, but the exchange of care and food 

 for the honeyed secretions of the body going 

 on between the ants and the Aphidce looks 

 very much like it. The world is so full of 

 technological processes brought about among 

 her lower kingdoms that I should weary you 

 in enumerating them. Stone-breaking, flak- 

 ing, clipping, boring, and abrading have been 

 going on always, by sand-blast, by water, by 

 fire, by frost, by gravitation. Archaeologists 

 tell us that savages are very shrewd in select- 

 ing bowlders and other pieces of stone that 

 have been blocked out and nearly finished by 

 Nature for their axes, hammers, and other 

 tools. In tropical regions of both hemispheres 

 where scanty clothing is needed, certain spe- 

 cies of trees weave their inner bark into an 

 excellent cloth, the climax of which is the 

 celebrated tapa of Polynesia. Furthermore, 

 the fruits of vines and trees offer their hard 

 outer shells for vessels and for other domes- 



tic purposes, and as motives in art and hand- 

 icraft. Among the animals there is hardly 

 one that has not obtruded itself into the im- 

 aginations of men and stimulated the invent- 

 ive faculty. The bears were the first cave 

 dwellers ; the beavers are old-time lum- 

 berers ; the foxes excavated earth before 

 there were men ; the squirrels hid away food 

 for the future, and so did many birds ; and 

 these were also excellent architects and nest- 

 builders ; the hawks taught men to catch 

 fish ; the spiders and caterpillars to spin ! 

 the hornet to make paper, and the crayfish 

 to work in clay." 



A Generation of French Science. The 



Revue Scientifique, of Paris, last November 

 entered upon its thirty-third year. Noticing 

 the event, it recalled the fact that when it 

 was begun, in 1863, the Darwinian theory 

 was only timidly sustained by a few, while it 

 was contested by most men of science in 

 France at least. The Revue fought actively 

 for it from the first, and for ten years gave 

 it the most prominent place among subjects 

 discussed. After that it gave other ques- 

 tions, including the new ones as they sprang 

 up, a larger share of attention. The purpose 

 which the Revue has constantly pursued has 

 been to keep scientific readers acquainted 

 with the work accomplished by other stu- 

 dents in related or neighboring fields, and 

 thereby serve as a kind of bond of connec- 

 tion between the scattered members of the 

 scientific body. The collected volumes, ac- 

 cording to the Revue's own expression, con- 

 stitute a kind of gigantic scientific encyclo- 

 paedia, in which may be found the traces of 

 great scientific contests mingled with dog- 

 matic expositions of the most glorious con- 

 temporary discoveries. 



Sewer-fed Oysters. Concerning the pos- 

 sible contamination of oysters by sewage, 

 which seems to be demonstrated by experi- 

 ences at Middletown, Conn., Nature says : " It 

 has been alleged, on the evidence of certain 

 recent bacteriological investigations as re- 

 gards the contents of London sewers, that 

 the organism producing typhoid fever can 

 not live and multiply in sewers. But the or- 

 ganism has been found in sewers ; it also 

 lives in sea-water ; and the fact remains that 

 sewage bathes our oysters during cultivation 



