POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



281 



the amount of beer produced in those coun- 

 tries has about tripled within the last forty 

 years. The production of Great Britain in- 

 creased from 7,670,100 barrels in 1830 to 

 25,336,811 barrels in 1870. It consists 

 chiefly of the ancient amber-colored ale and 

 the modern dark-brown porter. The Bel- 

 gian beers are the mars, a thin beer; the 

 Iambic, a strong and light-colored drink ; 

 and the faro, which the retailer himself 

 prepares by mixing the other two kinds. 

 The production of France has more than 

 doubled since 1842. A strong lager-beer 

 and a weaker small-beer are most in favor, 

 and the foreign beers are in common use. 

 The principal consumption is in the north, 

 the people of southern France inclining 

 more to wines. The same is the case in 

 Italy, where a light, highly-fermented beer 

 is produced, and a considerable quantity is 

 imported from Austria ; but no beer is used 

 south of Naples. The manufacture and con- 

 sumption of beer are increasing very rapidly 

 in Russia, and a great deal is imported into 

 that country from Austria and England. In 

 Sweden and Norway nearly every man brews 

 his own beer at home. No lager-beer was 

 made in the United States forty years ago. 

 In 1876 the President of the Brewers' and 

 Maltsters' Association asserted that it was 

 the great national drink which was to drive 

 out whisky, and that there were 2,783 brew- 

 eries, employing 35,400 hands, and producing 

 330,600,000 gallons. In all Europe and 

 America 63,631 breweries produce yearly 

 more than 3,480,000,000 gallons of beer. 



Dampness and Diphtheria. The opinion 

 that a close connection exists between diph- 

 theria and dampness of site is confirmed in 

 some English reports recorded by Dr. Wood- 

 forde. In an outbreak of diphtheria at 

 Purley in 1878, the cottage in which the 

 earliest cases occurred was much shut in by 

 trees, and, although it was very clean, it 

 was damp and insufficiently ventilated, es- 

 pecially in the sleepiog-room3, it was ex- 

 posed to the emanations of the cess-pit, and 

 the water was not pure. At Ramsbury, 

 where diphtheria was unusually fatal in 

 1877 and 1878, the ordinary sanitary de- 

 fects were not much worse than in other 

 villages, but the sites of many of the cot- 

 tages were almost level with the river, and 



damp, with the subsoil water very near the 

 surface. At Clifton-Hampden, where diph- 

 theria had occurred for several years in 

 succession, the ordinary defects of porous 

 cess-pits and polluted water were noted, 

 though not to so great an extent as at other 

 places where there had been no diphtheria, 

 but the village also appeared damp, and a 

 stagnation of air was evidently occasioned 

 by the number of trees adjoining the cot- 

 tages. Sanitary improvements were insti- 

 tuted, the trees were thinned out, and a 

 gale took away some that had been left, 

 and the disease has not appeared in the 

 place since. 



Features of the Central Arabian Desert. 



Mr. W. S. Blunt read a paper, last Decem- 

 ber, before the Royal Geographical Society, 

 on a journey he had undertaken during the 

 preceding winter from Damascus to the 

 Jebel-Shammar, in the region of Nejo in 

 Central Arabia, in which he passed through 

 a country that no European had visited 

 since the journeys of Mr. Palgrave and 

 Colonel Pelley in 1863 and 1864. On his 

 way he traversed the red, sandy desert of 

 the Nefud. Here he observed a strange 

 phenomenon, which he describes as the only 

 feature of the tract. The whole surface of 

 the plain is pitted with deep horseshoe hol- 

 lows, called by the Arabs fulj, which are 

 shown to be permanent in site and conform- 

 ation by the shrubs and bushes which line 

 their sides, and by the tracks which cross 

 and recross each other in such of them as 

 are frequented by sheep. They are absolute- 

 ly uniform in shape, differing only in size, 

 and are all set with great regularity toward 

 the same point of the compass. In form 

 they exactly reproduce the print of an unshod 

 horse's hoof, the toe pointing westward and 

 being marked by a steep declivity, while the 

 bottom of the hollow slopes gradually up- 

 ward to the heel, until it reaches the general 

 level of the plain. The frog of the hoof is 

 roughly represented by a number of shal- 

 low watercourses converging to the lowest 

 point, the toe. Solid ground sometimes oc- 

 curs at the bottom of the deepest of the 

 pits. They vary in depth from twenty to 

 two hundred and twenty feet, and in width 

 from fifty yards to half a mile ; the ap- 

 pearance of depth is often enhanced by a 



