648 ANNUAL KECOKD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



hours, and those in the first and second jars after the lapse 

 of three days. Moreover, in the first iar mould soon formed 

 between the j^aper and the glass. The air in the interior of 

 these jars was subsequently tested for arsenic. That in jar 

 3 showed a trace in eight days, that in jars 1 and 2 gave the 

 reaction distinctly in three weeks, while none could be de- 

 tected in that of the fourth jar. Upon investigation, the ar- 

 senic in jars 1, 2, and 3 was found to exist there as hydrogen ar- 

 senide, or arseniureted hydrogen, mixed in the third jar w^ith 

 acetic acid. The reddening of the litmus in the fourth jar was 

 due to sulphurous oxide contained in the arsenic employed. 

 As a confirmatory experiment, white arsenic was mixed with 

 flour paste and placed under a glass bell-jar. Four weeks 

 afterward the mixture was covered with a thick mould, and 

 a dark band of crystalline metallic arsenic, reduced by the 

 process of vegetation, surrounded the jar near the upper edge 

 of the mould. The air of the jar contained hydrogen arsenide. 

 A mixture of starch paste and white arsenic gave the same 

 results. It appears certain, therefore, that the air of a room 

 whose walls are papered with arsenic green may contain arsen- 

 ic proceeding not from mechanical abrasion, but in the form 

 of hydrogen arsenide, produced by the action of the moist or- 

 ganic matter, particularly the paste, upon the Schweinfiirth 

 green. To this exceedingly poisonous gas, therefore, chronic 

 arsenical poisoning is doubtless due in many cases. 14 C, 

 1873, CCVIL, 146. 



STRICKER OX SEPTIC-^MIA. 



Professor Strieker, of Vienna, has lately been renewing the 

 experiments of Davaine, of Paris, in reference to the injection 

 of septicaemic or putrid blood. This latter author has ascer- 

 tained that if a drop of putrid blood be injected under the 

 skin of the neck of a rabbit, it induces an extensive infiltra- 

 tion and septicaemia, and that the poisonous properties of the 

 injected blood are communicated to the whole of the blood 

 of the dead animal ; also that each successive transfer of 

 blood from one animal to another causes a greater and great- 

 er degree of virulence in the poisonous proj^erties, until, on 

 the twenty-fourth, a very minute part of a drop produced 

 fatal symptoms. 



Strieker, however, was unable to find any of the microscoj)- 



