LITERARY NOTICES. 



6zg 



mg a faulty English residence, illustrates 

 the author'3 appreciation of the practical 

 detail of his subject : 



A residence in which unhealthiness 

 reaches about its maximum may be said to 

 be one which is built on a damp site, with 

 higher ground behind, pouring down its 

 waters against walls without areas walls 

 innocent of a damp-proof course to arrest 

 the rising wet and walls, likely enough, 

 also exposed, by insufficient thickness, to 

 driving rains. It may be in the neighbor- 

 hood of low-lying fields, undug, unditched, 

 undrained, or with the tiles long since 

 choked up. The rooms throughout are 

 low, with a haphazard ventilation, insuffi- 

 ciently furnished with windows, and with 

 perhaps too many doors. The main stair- 

 case is without a lantern-vent, or the wall 

 there is pierced by a window not sufficiently 

 high to empty the gasometer overhead. As 

 for the back-stairs, the basement-smells 

 climb them en route for the dormitories. 

 The chimney-flues are also badly construct- 

 ed, and a smoky atmosphere is all but con- 

 stant. Overcrowding lends its quota of 

 evils as press-beds in every available cor- 

 ner testify. The drain-pipes are injudi- 

 ciously laid inside instead of outside the 

 basement, with leaky joints, owing to in- 

 different luting, and with pipes broken 

 where they pass through the walls, owing 

 to continuous settlement. A foul soakage 

 of the soil around the unpuddled pipes 

 speedily follows. The lead-work is also de- 

 fective, dishonestly executed with thinnest 

 material, badly junctioned to the drains ; 

 or, if once properly performed, the mainte- 

 nance of that state of things is neglected 

 from ignorance or parsimony. The water- 

 pipes, too, are all built in the brick-work, 

 or buried deep in plaster, a burst pipe soon 

 causing the walls to resemble a huge sheet 

 of wet blotting-paper. As for the sinks, 

 they are far too numerous, and made to 

 perform improper services. The scullery- 

 traps have long ago lost their gratings, and 

 are filled up with grease or other refuse. 

 Up-stairs the waste-pipe of the lavatory 

 and of the bath are connected direct with 

 the sewer. There is, moreover, only one 

 cistern for the multitudinous necessities of 

 a family. The closets, supplied from this 

 same cistern, stand directly in the passage, 

 and have only one door ; the apparatus is 

 faulty, and the hidden soil-pipe is some- 

 where imperfect. Ventilation of the drains 

 there was originally none, and none 'is con- 

 templated ; the accumulated gases, there- 

 fore, take the water-trap by storm, and in- 

 vade the atmosphere of the house. Even 

 the flushing of the too flatly laid house- 

 drains is unattended to, or left to the peri- 

 odical downfall of rain through the rain- 



water pipes, which only serves to stir up 

 the nuisances, not carry them resistlessly 

 away. # 



The Lens : A Quarterly Journal of 

 Microscopy and the Allied Natural 

 Sciences. Edited by S. A. Briggs, 

 Chicago. 



This elegant periodical, a creiit alike to 

 science and to Chicago, has now reached its 

 third number, which comes filled with in- 

 teresting and valuable articles. It is pub- 

 lished by the State Microscopical Society 

 of Illinois a significant fact, as indicating 

 an extending taste for nice and critical ob- 

 servation. The use of the microscope com- 

 bines elegant and refined recreation with 

 serious and solid scientific work, and we are 

 glad to see these evidences of its increasing 

 appreciation. For a long time the micro- 

 scope was but a plaything, and the share 

 it was to take in the development of knowl- 

 edge was little suspected. Even so late as 

 1839, according to Mr. Lewes, Magendie 

 denied that it could be of any use in physi- 

 ology. But, since then, it may almost be 

 said that it has given us a new physiology, 

 while it has become perfectly indispensable 

 in intelligent medical practice, and is in 

 constant requisition in nearly every depart- 

 ment of science. It is important, therefore, 

 that we should have a periodical especially 

 devoted to the interests of the instrument, 

 its results, and the numerous subjects which 

 are dependent upon its application. The 

 Lens promises to supply this need. Its 

 papers are varied and able, and the illustra- 

 tions excellent. We cordially wish it the 

 success it deserves. 



Dr. H. Charlton Bastian's long-expected 

 work, " The Beginnings of Life," is now com- 

 pleted, and will be speedily published in two 

 volumes. Dr. Bastian is the leading " repre- 

 sentative of the doctrine " popularly known 

 as spontaneous generation, and this work will 

 contain the results of his extensive experi- 

 mental investigations concerning it. His 

 treatise, however, goes much further than 

 this, and is, in fact, a broad discussion of 

 philosophical biology a cyclopaedia of facts, 

 theories, processes, and conclusions respect- 

 ing the origin of the simpler forms of life. 

 He works the subject from the a priori and 

 rational point of view, as well as from that 



