140 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The laborers in the refinery, who have to 

 work half naked, and whose skin is soiled 

 with molasses, suffer greatly from them, so 

 much that operations have to be suspended 

 at times. Children in the schools near the 

 bee-stands are frequently stung, and horses 

 passing in the neighborhood are in constant 

 danger. M. Delpech maintains that bees 

 are in reality much more dangerous than is 

 generally believed. He makes a triple classi- 

 fication of the accidents that may arise from 

 the wounds they inflict: 1. Trifling acci- 

 dents, with heat and swelling, followed by 

 a feeling of oppression and itching; 2. 

 More serious accidents, which are cured, 

 beginning with the same symptoms as the 

 former, followed by great weakness, pre- 

 cordial anxiety, cold in the extremities, nau- 

 sea, insupportable headache, often by net- 

 tle-rash, and sometimes by convulsive and 

 tetanic symptoms; 3. Accidents resulting 

 in death, which often speedily follows stings 

 in the face, head, neck, etc. The fatal ter- 

 mination is preceded by two kinds of symp- 

 toms those resulting from local lesions, 

 the exceptional gravity of which is due to 

 the seat of the injury, as where a swelling 

 in the throat is produced resulting in as- 

 phyxia ; and those in which the toxic action 

 of the poison introduced into the circula- 

 tion seems to be the immediate cause of 

 death. In this case we have a condition of 

 syncope and asphyxia, with signs of con- 

 vulsion and tetanus. A considerable num- 

 ber of cases of death resulting from bee- 

 stings are cited in the report. 



Ancient Honse Sanitation. Dr. *W. H. 



Corfield reviewed the " History of House 

 Sanitation " in an address which he recently 

 delivered, as president, before the English 

 Society of Medical Officers of Health. The 

 necessity of removing surplus rain-water for 

 preventing dampness in the soil of resi- 

 dences has been recognized from the most 

 ancient times, and found emphatic expres- 

 sion in Rome twenty -five hundred years 

 ago, when a grand drainage system for the 

 city, a part of which is still in operation, 

 was constructed by Tarquin the Elder ; and 

 the main drain of his work, " The Cloaca 

 Maxima," is styled by Dr. Corfield "the 

 great pattern of all drains." The device 

 for deodorizing excrement by mixing it with 



dry earth is at least as old as the time 

 of Moses. According to Livy, the Cloaca 

 Maxima was used also to carry away the 

 filth of the city ; and, according to Mr. Bald- 

 win Latham, the water-closet is a very an- 

 cient device, the use of which "has been 

 traced to all nations that had arrived at a 

 certain degree of refinement." They were 

 probably of Asiatic origin. They wei'e in- 

 troduced into Rome during the republic; 

 and remains of them have been found in the 

 Palace of the Cassars at Rome, and in the 

 ruins of Pompeii. 



A IVew Prospective Source of Heat. Mr. 



J. Starkie Gardner has published a paper on 

 the utilization of the underground heat of the 

 earth. He holds that the crust of the earth 

 is thin, and that its movements are more 

 compatible with a thickness of ten than of 

 fifty miles. The deepest artesian well in 

 the world is being bored at Pesth, Hungary, 

 with the object of securing an unlimited 

 supply of warm water for the city baths, 

 and has already reached a depth of more 

 than three thousand feet. The present tem- 

 perature of the water is 161 Fahr., and the 

 borings will be prosecuted till water of 178 

 is obtained. " It needs no seer," says Mr. 

 Gardner, " to pierce the not distant future 

 when we shall be driven to every expedient 

 to discover modes of obtaining heat without 

 the consumption of fuel, and the perhaps 

 far more remote future when we shall bore 

 shafts down to the liquid layer, and conduct 

 our smelting operations at the pit's mouth." 



Bacteria nnder nigh Pressure. M. A. 



Certes has reported on experiments which he 

 has made on the decomposition of organic 

 matter under high pressure, with the pur- 

 pose of ascertaining whether the process 

 takes place in the depths of the sea in the 

 same manner as in the open air. He found 

 that bacteria thrive and increase under 

 pressures of from three hundred to six hun- 

 dred atmospheres, almost as in a normal 

 temperature, except that the microbes are 

 different and the results of their action have 

 only a feeble instead of a strong odor, and 

 are acid instead of alkaline in their reaction. 

 M. Certes will continue his experiments in 

 the winter at the normal temperature of the 

 sea depths, or 39. 



