FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



715 



blueness returned if the window was shut 

 for any time. It was directed to be kept 

 open night and day, and I could see from 

 my house that this order was carried out. 

 Although on one night the thermometer 

 showed 14° F. of frost the chest was clear 

 of noises and she was convalescent in eight 

 days. If fresh air needs warming she ought 

 to have died. Why do most men feel so 

 tired after an afternoon's work in a crowded 

 out-patient room ? Why is a long journey in a 

 full railway carriage, even with a comfortable 

 seat, so exhausting to many people ? Per- 

 sonally an hour or two in a full carriage with 

 the windows shut will give me numbness in 

 my feet and legs and knock me up for the 

 day, while a railway journey in an empty 

 carriage with open windows does not affect 

 me at all. But most people will be willing 

 to admit that any kind of crowd is tiring. 

 It is to me difficult to resist the impression 

 than an overdose of waste products, whether 

 of one's own or other people's, must gener- 

 ally interfere with the metabolism of nerve 

 tissue. Women as they grow older are apt 

 to live much indoors. I believe the fat, 

 flabby, paunchy woman, whether purple or 

 pale, with feeble, irritable heart and " inad- 

 equate " kidneys, is usually the victim of re- 

 breathed air. A " close " room will infalli- 

 bly give me an abdominal distention and 

 borborygmi within half an hour, and I am in- 

 clined to think the purity of the air breathed 

 by the dyspeptic quite as important as his 

 regimen or hia teeth. It must, I think, 

 sooner or later be recognized that many of 

 the increasing ills which it has been the 

 fashion to charge on the " hurry and brain 

 fag" incidental to a high state of civilisation 

 and a large population are in reality due to 

 the greater contamination of the air we 

 breathe by the waste products of that popu- 

 lation, and that toxines excreted by the lungs 

 will in time take high rank among these as 

 both potent and insidious. If this should 

 come to pass, the present ideas anent venti- 

 lation must be abandoned as utterly futile, 

 and the need will be felt, not of letting a 

 little air in, but of letting waste products 

 out. 



Tlie Utilization of Wave Power.— The 



utilization of the energy which goes to waste 

 in the movement of water, in waves, tides, 



and waterfalls, has been a much-studied 

 problem during recent years. The only one 

 of these three phenomena which has as yet 

 been at all extensively commercially har- 

 nessed is the waterfall. There have, however, 

 been a number of wave and tide motors con- 

 structed. The most recent and perhaps the 

 most promising of these is the type invented 

 by Mr. Morley Fletcher, of Westminster, Eng- 

 land. He has made a special study of the 

 problem of motion of the sea, and has already 

 successfully constructed a hydraulic pump, 

 an electric motor, and a self contained siren 

 buoy in which the energy is obtained entirely 

 from wave motion. The great possibilities 

 in this direction for cheap and efficient pow r - 

 er plants have not been appreciated by sea- 

 coast tow r ns, but it is stated in Industries and 

 Iron, from which we have taken the above 

 particulars, that Mr. Fletcher is at present 

 devoting his attention to devising schemes 

 and designing apparatus for pumping sea wa- 

 ter for shore purposes, ore washing, driving 

 electric machinery for town lighting and 

 power plants, buoys for marking harbors 

 with beacons and fog horns, and the many 

 other purposes to which such a constant and 

 inexhaustible source of energy is applicable. 



Dispersal of Seeds. — Having described 

 in the Plant World some of the provisions of 

 Nature for the dispersal of seeds, Prof. W. 

 J. Beal adds that these various devices, be- 

 sides serving to extend and multiply the spe- 

 cies and promote its plantation on favorable 

 soil, enable plants to flee from too great 

 crowding of their own kind and from their 

 plant rivals and parasites. " The adventur- 

 ers among plants often meet with the best 

 success, not because the seeds are larger or 

 stronger or better, but because they find for 

 a time more congenial surroundings. Our 

 weeds, for instance, are carried for long dis- 

 tances by man and by him are planted in 

 new ground that has been well prepared. 

 Every horticulturist knows that apples 

 grown in a new country, if suitable for 

 apples, are fair and healthy, but the sea!) 

 and codling moth and bitter rot and bark 

 louse sooner or later arrive, each to begin 

 its peculiar mode of warfare." So with 

 peach trees and plums and their enemies. 

 The surest way to grow a few cabbages, rad- 

 ishes, squashes, cucumbers, and potatoes is 



