THE POISONS OF THE MANUFACTORY. 663 



The third age of the Mexicans, that of air, in which the Mayas con- 

 quered the giants of the former age, lasted 4,010 years, and ended in 

 a hurricane by which all men except one pair were turned into apes. 

 In the four ages of the Mexicans, which were called the ages of earth, 

 fire, air, and water, we have to deal with a backward development, 

 from giants to men, then to apes. This shows a curious agreement 

 with the story of the Talmud, already referred to, that a part of the 

 race at the confusion of tongues were turned into apes. It also curi- 

 ously corresponds with the ancient Indian myth that made the ape a 

 child of the wind and the air. 



While the folk lore on one side degrades the ape to a degenerate 

 species of man, it on another side in compensation, as in Indian and 

 among many negro tribes, derives the pedigree of distinguished fami- 

 lies from apes, and consigns the souls of the honorable and pious to 

 their bodily integuments. According to Brehm, the hair-tuft of the 

 baboon serves the negroes of West Africa as the model for their coif- 

 fures. That lowly race also tries to exalt its similarity with the ape 

 which the satirists of every zone make striking enough, and a humorous 

 writer was not so far wrong when he described an ugly man as " a 

 baboon, with hairs projecting from around his eyes." Not only bodily 

 deformities and imperfections have been ascribed to apes, but moral 

 transgressions also have been regarded and spoken of in the same 

 view. 



That the faculty of articulate speech is dependent on an upright 

 position is suggested in the Hebrew book " Sohar Chadash," which 

 says : " The animals can not look straight up to heaven, and therefore 

 can not speak ; and we learn of King Nebuchadnezzar that, when he 

 was reduced to the condition of an animal, he could not help himself 

 until he was able to rise and look up. Therefore he said to Daniel 

 (Daniel iv, 34), 'I raised my eyes to heaven, and then my understand- 

 ing returned to me.' If the animals, walking erect, could look up to 

 the sky, they would be able to speak." 



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THE POISONS OF THE MANUFACTOEY. 



Br HECTOE GEOEGE. 



THE cases of contamination of the air by means of insalubrious in- 

 dustrial operations may be divided into two groups : 1. Emana- 

 tions (dusts or vapors) that act as poisons, and which, carried by the 

 blood to all parts of the body, produce general and various disorders. 

 2. Dusts, of a simply irritating character, which act locally on the 

 lungs, and produce^n them disorders the intensity of which generally 

 depends on the hardness of the particles. 



