856 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



Snllv, James. Studies of Childhood. New 

 York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. bil $2.50. 



Textor, Lucy E. Official Kelations between 

 the United States and the Sioux Indians. (Leland 

 Stanford University Publications. History and 

 Economics, 2.) Pp. 163. 



Tyler, John M. The Whence and the Whither 

 of Man. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Pp. 

 308. $1.75. 



Union College I>ractical Lectures. (Butterfield 

 Course.) Vol.1. New York: F. Tennyson Neely. 

 Pp. 429. 



University of the State of New York. (State 

 Library Bulletin. Legislation, No. 6.) Legisla- 

 tion by States in 1895. 



Wright, G. Frederick Greenland Icefields 

 and Life in the North Atlantic. New York: D. 

 Appleton & Co. Pp. 407. $2. 



^vagittJCttts 0f ^cijcticje. 



Seven Tears of Strikes. Mr. Wright, 

 the Commissioner of Labor, gives some inter- 

 esting information in his last report. During 

 the past seven years and a half the number of 

 persons thrown out of employment by strikes 

 was 2,391,203. His tabulation by States 

 shows that the majority of these disturbances 

 took place in five States Illinois, Massachu- 

 setts, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. 

 These States contained fifty-one per cent of 

 all the manufacturing establishments and em- 

 ployed fifty-six per cent of the capital invest- 

 ed in the mechanical industries of the coun- 

 try. Out of a total of 10,488 strikes for the 

 entire country, more than fifty-six per cent 

 occurred in twenty-six cities. The total wages 

 loss in these twenty- six cities, Mr. Wright 

 estimates, was in round numbers $35,000,- 

 000, and the loss to employers was some- 

 thing less than $29,000,000. Twenty-five 

 per cent of these strikes were for an increase 

 of wages, thirteen per cent were for reduc- 

 tion of hours, eight per cent were against re- 

 duction of wages, seven per cent were sym- 

 pathetic, six per cent were for increase of 

 wages and reduction of hours, four per cent 

 were against the employment of non-union 

 men, and three per cent for a recognition of 

 the union. A study of the great effort and 

 loss which these struggles present, says 

 Architecture and Building, will compel the 

 conclusion that some method of arbitration 

 should be adopted. 



The Nose as a Germ Filter. It would 

 seem, from the researches of St. Clair 

 Thompson and R. T. Hewlett (London Lan- 

 cet, January 11th), that the human nose is 

 a nearly perfect filter for micro-organisms. 

 These experimenters calculated that under 



very favorable conditions the lowest number 

 of organisms contained in the inhaled air of 

 an hour was fifteen hundred, and that often- 

 times in the air of a great city there must 

 be as many as twelve or fourteen thousand 

 drawn into the nose during the same period 

 of time. The fate of the thousands of mi- 

 crobes which thus enter the human body is a 

 question of great pathological interest, and 

 this increases when it is remembered that the 

 expired air is practically free from germs. 

 The fact that inspired organisms do not, as 

 a rule, reach the air cells, was first pointed 

 out by Lister. Later, Tyndall showed by his 

 experiments with a ray of light in a dark 

 chamber that expired air or, more exactly, 

 the last portion of an expiration was optically 

 pure i. e.,that respiration has freed it from 

 the particles of suspended matter with which 

 it was laden. Since then numerous experi- 

 ments have been made by bacteriologists, 

 which show expired air to be free from 

 germs. Grancher has made many experi- 

 ments with the expired air of phthisical pa- 

 tients, and has never found in it the tubercle 

 bacillus or its spores. " Now, as the air is 

 practically freed from all germs by the respir- 

 atory act, we have to consider where and 

 how the thousands of organisms are arrested 

 in the air passages. The experiments of 

 Hildebrandt would tend to prove that the 

 air is entirely freed from all germs before 

 reaching the trachea. In verifying this we 

 have examined the mucus from the trachea 

 of all animals recently killed in the labora- 

 tory, and up to the present have found the 

 mucus to be quite sterile. We therefore 

 commenced with the nasal fossae, and found 

 that the mucous membrane of the healthy 

 nose only exceptionally shows any micro-or- 



