712 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



said that it was her mistress ; but it was 

 not. Her vision was thus shown to be keen, 

 but her hearing dull. She was wakened 

 with considerable difficulty, and, seeing the 

 cotton-box disturbed, asked why it had been 

 meddled with. Several questions were asked 

 her during the following day, to test her 

 recollection; but she could not recall her 

 sleep-walking, or anything that had taken 

 place during the night. A miner near Red- 

 ruth arose one night, walked to the engine- 

 shaft of the mine, and safely descended to 

 the depth of twenty fathoms, where he was 

 found soon afterward sound asleep. He 

 could not be wakened by calling to him, and 

 had to be shaken. When awake, he could 

 not account for the situation in which he 

 found himself. Morrison, in his " Medicine 

 no Mystery," tells of a clergyman who used 

 to get up in the night, light his candle, write 

 sermons, correct them with interlineations, 

 and go to bed again, while he was all the 

 time fast asleep. A similar story is told of 

 an English dissenting preacher, who had 

 been perplexed during the week about the 

 treatment of the subject of his Sunday's 

 sermon, and mentioned his perplexity to his 

 wife on Saturday night. During the night 

 he got up and preached a good sermon on 

 the subject in the hearing of his wife. In 

 the morning his wife suggested a method of 

 treating the subject, based upon his sleep- 

 work of the night before, with which he 

 was much pleased ; and he preached the 

 sermon with no knowledge of its real origin. 

 The " Lancet " has a story of a butcher's 

 boy who went to the stable in his sleep to 

 saddle his horse and go his rounds. Not 

 finding the saddle in its usual place, he went 

 to the house and asked for it, and, failing 

 to get it, he started off without it. He was 

 taken from the horse and carried into the 

 house. A doctor came, and while he was 

 present the boy, considering himself stopped 

 at the turnpike-gate, offered sixpence for 

 the toll, and this being given back to him 

 he refused it, and demanded his change. A 

 part of the change was given him, and he 

 demanded the proper amount. When awake 

 afterward, he had no recollection of what 

 had passed. To prevent sleep-walking it is 

 necessary to remove whatever is the occa- 

 sion of it, if it arises from any definable 

 disorder. Often, however, it can not be re- 



ferred to any complaint ; then the best that 

 can be done will be to take precautions 

 against the somnambulist running into any 



danger. 



Parasites in Food aud Drink. M. 



Milne-Edwards has recently expressed some 

 interesting views suggested by the discus- 

 sions concerning trichina, respecting the 

 hygienic questions which are connected* 

 with the establishment of colonies of intes- 

 tinal worms, or microbes^ within human 

 bodies. He believes that certain religious 

 precepts and certain established usages, 

 among people whose civilization is very 

 ancient, are based upon acquaintance with 

 the inconveniences that may result from the 

 alimentary use of particular meats or waters. 

 He thus deduces, from the aptitude of the 

 hog to transmit his parasites to man, the 

 reason for the prohibition of pork among 

 the Israelites and Mohammedans, and for 

 the Biblical distinction between pure and im- 

 pure animals. He also attributes to the very 

 ancient recognition of analogous facts the 

 general use of hot drinks, like tea in China 

 and other countries of the extreme East, 

 where the natural waters are often charged 

 with noxious animalcules or polluted by un- 

 clean animals. As bearing on this point, he 

 cites the ravages caused in Cochin-China by a 

 microscopic eel, which produces a persistent 

 endemic diarrhoea. These animals have a 

 faculty of multiplication in the human in- 

 testine, that is illustrated by the fact that 

 a single patient is said to have evacuated 

 more than a hundred thousand of them with- 

 in twenty-four hours ! The simplest pru- 

 dence should suggest the expediency of 

 boiling the drinking-water wherever they 

 abound. 



Tho Great Vienna Telescope. The 



equatorial telescope which has just been 

 constructed by Mr. Grubb, of Dublin, for 

 the observatory at Vienna, Austria, is the 

 largest refracting telescope that has yet 

 been made. It has an aperture of twenty- 

 seven inches, or one inch more than that of 

 the instrument in the Naval Observatory 

 at Washington, and is thirty-three feet six 

 inches long, with a tube of steel three and 

 a half feet in diameter in the middle, and 

 tapering to each end. The moving parts, 



