426 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tempted their scientific classification in his 

 fourteenth year. At the same time he was 

 interested in other branches of science and 

 collections. In 187- he spent three months 

 in the mountains of Colorado with Dr. C. 

 C. Parry ; in 1873, five months as meteor- 

 ologist to Captain Jones's Yellowstone ex- 

 pedition. The next year he spent chiefly 

 in Colorado, completing a series of expedi- 

 tions in which he collected altogether 25,000 

 specimens of insects, many of them very 

 rare. From 1869 he was one of the most 

 active and useful members of the Daven- 

 port Academy, and was in succession its 

 recording secretary, corresponding secre- 

 tary, and president ; and he sustained a 

 large share of the burden of the editorial 

 supervision and publication of its "Pro- 

 ceedings." Mr. Putnam's scientific publica- 

 tions were not voluminous. With one or 

 two exceptions his most important inves- 

 tigations were never fully elaborated, and 

 were embodied only in notes, letters, and 

 incomplete manuscripts. A list of twenty- 

 one is given, of which the most valuable 

 are papers on bark-lice, and on his investi- 

 gations of the Salpugidce, a group interme- 

 diate between the scorpions and the spiders. 

 A paper by him on " Insects and Flowers 

 of Colorado" was published in the tenth 

 volume of " The Topular Science Monthly." 



Getting Water in the Desert. The sup- 

 ply of water always formed a principal ques- 

 tion, and often a preponderant one, during 

 the marches of the French troops in Algeria 

 and Tunis. Rivers having a permanent sup- 

 ply of water are very rare in those countries, 

 but wadies beds of torrents, generally dry, 

 but full after a shower are numerous. The 

 most ordinary supplies of water were sedirs, 

 or puddles of rain-water held in natural 

 basins of clay or stone, near which the 

 camps were pitched whenever they were ac- 

 cessible. They are to be found in the beds 

 of wadies, and sometimes in slight depres- 

 sions of the plain, where they are frequently 

 of considerable extent. When full they 

 contain, notwithstanding they are so shal- 

 low, prodigious quantities of water, which 

 is, however, exposed to an enormous evap- 

 oration, so that it does not last long. These 

 natural reservoirs have been covered with 

 sand in many places, where a permeable bed 



several feet high has been formed, with a 

 dry surface corresponding with the general 

 level of the surrounding land. It is only 

 necessary to dig a hole, and wait a little 

 while, for the water to rise to a certain 

 level, forming a kind of extemporaneous 

 well, which the Arabs call an oglat. These 

 wells contain but little water, and are soon 

 dried up when drawn from, but will become 

 filled again in the course of a few hours. 

 These resources, precarious at the best, are 

 often wanting ; but the country is full of 

 ruins, attesting the former existence of a 

 large population, and among them are many 

 useful structures, including well-made cis- 

 terns still almost entire, and very deep. 

 Water is got from them by going down 

 steps to the surface, or by means of a de- 

 vice called the guerber, which is in general 

 use. This is a leathern bottle, adjusted at 

 the curb of the well by means of pulleys 

 and ropes, which are worked in such a man- 

 ner by a man and an ox that the vessel goes 

 up and down, fills itself with water and 

 empties itself, without any one having to 

 handle it directly. 



Symptomatic Anthrax and Disinfectants. 



The Lyons " Medicale " publishes the re- 

 sults of some valuable experiments which 

 have been made by MM. Arloing, Cornevin, 

 and Thomas, on the influence of various 

 disinfecting agents on the virus of symp- 

 tomatic anthrax. If the contents of a tumor 

 in this disease be allowed to dry slowlv at 

 a temperature of 35 Cent, (or 95 Fahr.), a 

 residue is obtained in which the organisms of 

 anthrax retain their full activity. Water, 

 through which a little of the residue is dif- 

 fused, has a virulence not infciior to that 

 possessed by the fresh virus, and which con- 

 tinues for at least two years. It was found, 

 in carrying on the experiments, that the re- 

 sisting power of the dried virus is much 

 greater than that of the fresh. Whatever 

 destroys the dried is capable of destroying 

 also the fresh virus, while the converse is not 

 true. The following substances were found 

 to have no effect even upon the fresh virus : 

 alcohol saturated with camphor or carbolic 

 acid, glycerine, ammonia, acetate and sul- 

 phate of ammonia and sulphate of ammo- 

 nium, benzine, a saturated solution of chlo- 

 ride of sodium, quicklime and lime-water, 



