POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



429 



death is caused by a snake, or a crocodile, 

 or a leopard, that the animal has been be- 

 witched to cause it. The person accused of 

 witchcraft is compelled to drink a decoction 

 of a poisonous wood called sassha-wood ; if 

 he vomits up the drink, he is considered not 

 guilty and let go ; otherwise, he is killed if 

 he does not die of the poison. They have 

 a great fear of white people and all that 

 comes from them, and especially regard pa- 

 per that has been written upon as a fetich 

 and the place or the thing on which it falls 

 as taboo. When Dr. Buchholz on one occa- 

 sion dressed the wounds of a sick person, 

 he let a little piece of paper fall out of his 

 pocket without noticing it. When he next 

 went to visit the sick man, he found that 

 his patient had been quarantined because 

 the house was considered bewitched, and 

 the piece of paper was ceremoniously hand- 

 ed back to him. One day, when a woman 

 was to be buried, the negroes sent a mes- 

 senger to him with a special request that he 

 would not leave any pieces of paper any- 

 where that he went, because, if he did, they 

 would have to keep away from those roads 

 and places. A son of old King William, of 

 Bimbia, having died after a long sickness, 

 an innocent man was accused of having 

 caused his death by witchcraft. He was 

 taken out and hung ; immediately the whole 

 population, men, women, and children, ran 

 to the shore, stripped off the little they had 

 on, and went into the water to wash off 

 whatever enchantment might be on them. 

 One of the festivals among the Deialla ne- 

 groes was diversified by an exhibition of 

 Birigle combat. The champion who achieved 

 the most brilliant victory was hailed with 

 great applause, and his mother sung and 

 danced to his honor ; but one of the de- 

 feated ones went up to his mother and re- 

 proached her because she had not given 

 birth to a stronger son. 



A Remarkable Coal-Mine Explosion. 



M. A. Delesse gives in " La Nature " an 

 account of an explosion of carbonic acid 

 which took place in a coal-mine at Roche- 

 belle, France, on the 28th of July, 1879. 

 Two workmen, who were at the bottom of 

 a shaft about three hundred and seventy- 

 five yards deep, heard a sudden detonation, 

 which was followed in about a minute by 



another louder one. Their lamps were in- 

 stantly put out ; they felt a f aintness, and 

 were barely able to escape to the hoist-car 

 and be drawn out. Three other miners, 

 who were working in a gallery ninety yards 

 higher, were suffocated. The scene of the 

 disaster was afterward examined, and it 

 was decided that the explosions could not 

 have proceeded from carburetted hydrogen, 

 for they were not accompanied by flames ; 

 thin partitions in the shaft and upper gal- 

 leries were not broken; the bodies and 

 clothes of the dead men showed no signs 

 of having been burned ; and powder which 

 lay in the gallery and in cartridges had not 

 taken fire. No signs of carburetted hydro- 

 gen had ever been observed about the 

 mine, but carbonic acid had always been 

 present, sometimes in such quantities as to 

 compel the men to cease work, and a ven- 

 tilating apparatus had been put up to dis- 

 charge it. The explosion was found to 

 have taken place in front of the excava- 

 tions in one of the upper galleries (two hun- 

 dred and sixty-six yards below the surface), 

 which was obstructed for a considerable 

 distance by the broken coal. Small parti- 

 cles and dust were thrown out to a much 

 greater distance, and the man who was 

 working in front had been thrown back and 

 buried under the fragments. About seven- 

 ty-six tons of coal appear to have been dis- 

 placed by the explosion. Carbonic acid 

 continued to escape from the coal after the 

 accident, and even the pieces that had been 

 thrown into the gallery gave it out when 

 they were disturbed. No satisfactory ex- 

 planation has been offered of the manner 

 in which the gas could have accumulated, 

 and have gained so high a pressure as to 

 cause a detonating explosion. The gas, it 

 is suggested, may have been formed by the 

 action of the sulphuric acid which escapes 

 from a vein of rapidly oxidizing iron pyrites 

 in the neighborhood upon an adjoining bed 

 of limestone, but this leaves the question 

 of a violent explosion still unsolved. 



A Systematic Investigation of Earth- 

 quakes. The Swiss Natural History Soci- 

 ety has appointed a special commission of 

 seven members for the systematic observa- 

 tion of earthquakes. Recognizing that a 

 large number of observations at as many 



