MISCELLANY. 



123 



tremely common, hundreds of houses in this 

 city being yearly rejuvenated in this way, 

 to the serious injury, no doubt, of their sub- 

 sequent inmates. 



Trees and Rain. A correspondent writes 

 thus to the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical 

 Club : " The influence of trees upon rain and 

 the general moisture of the atmosphere, which 

 has been much discussed of late, receives a 

 strong illustration from the island of Santa 

 Cruz, West Indies. A friend who spent the 

 months of February, March, and April last, 

 upon this island, informs me that, when he 

 was there twenty years ago, the island was a 

 garden of freshness, beauty, and fertility. 

 Woods covered the hills, trees were every- 

 where abundant, and rains were profuse and 

 frequent. The memory of its loveliness 

 called him there at the beginning of the 

 present year, when, to his astonishment, he 

 found about one-third of the island, which 

 is about twenty-five miles long, an utter 

 desert. The forests and trees generally had 

 been cut away, rainfalls had ceased, and a 

 process of desiccation, beginning at one end 

 of the land, had advanced gradually and ir- 

 resistibly upon the island, until for seven 

 miles it is dried and desolate as the sea- 

 shore. Houses and beautiful plantations 

 have been abondoned, and the people watch 

 the advance of desolation, unable to arrest 

 it, but knowing almost to a certainty the 

 time when their own habitations, their 

 gardens, and fresh fields, will become a part 

 of the waste. The whole island seems 

 doomed to become a desert. The inhabi- 

 tants believe, and my friend confirms their 

 opinion, that this sad result is due to the 

 destruction of the trees upon the island some 

 years ago." 



Poisonous Paper-Hangings. In his val- 

 uable paper " On the Evil Effects of the Use 

 of Arsenic in Certain Green Colors," pub- 

 lished in the third annual report of the Mas- 

 sachusetts State Board of Health, Dr. Frank 

 W. Draper gives the following, among other 

 startling cases of arsenical poisoning from 

 green-colored paper-hangings : 



In 1862, a case of fatal poisoning under 

 the conditions in question occurred in the 

 suburbs of London, the victim being a child. 

 The cause of death was made the subject of 



an investigation before a coroner's jury. In 

 the course of the evidence, it transpired that 

 the deceased was the last of four children 

 who had died within a period of two 

 months, under exposure to the poison con- 

 tained in the paper-hangings of the room 

 they habitually occupied. They had all been 

 attacked in the same manner, the prominent 

 symptoms being referred to the throat. The 

 color was loosely applied, having no glazing. 

 It was very deliquescent ; at 50 it was 

 quite damp, and the stain came off on the 

 hand like paint. Three grains of arsenic 

 were found in a square foot of the paper. 

 The symptoms were attributed by the sur- 

 geon in attendance, Mr. Orton, and by Dr. 

 Letheby, who made the post-mortem chemi- 

 cal examination, to arsenical poisoning. 



But greens are not the only colors which 

 contain arsenic, nor wall-paper the only 

 fabric colored with arsenical pigments. A 

 correspondent of the Chemical News, who 

 is in a position to know, states that the 

 French use the following-named pigments, 

 containing arsenic, in calico-printing, and 

 that they are equally suitable, and doubtless 

 used, in the color of paper-hangings : LigM 

 scarlet pigment contained alumina, arseni- 

 ous oxide, and aurine ; scarlet ponceau 

 contained carbonate cf lime in addition to 

 above ingredients ; dark green, a prepara- 

 tion of aniline green and arsenious oxide ; 

 steam chocolate, and catechu pigment, both 

 contained arsenious oxide. Halhvachs ha3 

 demonstrated the presence of arsenic in red, 

 as well as in green-colored wall paper. 



Volcanic Dnst. The dust discharged at 

 the last eruption of Vesuvius, though very 

 heavy, was carried in one direction to a dis- 

 tance of twenty-five miles, where it fell in 

 quantities sufficient to cause great annoy- 

 ance to the inhabitants. It consisted of 

 aggregations of crystallized quartz, dotted 

 over with the magnetic oxide of iron. The 

 grains were very uniform in size, and would 

 pass through a wire gauze the apertures of 

 which measured the sixteen thousandth of 

 a square inch. By boiling in hydrochloric 

 acid, the whole of the iron can be removed, 

 and nothing but crystals of fine white quartz 

 remain. Its composition is the same as that 

 of the iron-sand which is found in the soil 

 in some parts of the country round Yesu- 



