POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



379 



something is taken from the preeminent 

 dignity of man. The objection is well met 

 by Mr. J. A. Allen, who writes as follows in 

 the Canadian Monthly : " I should be sat- 

 isfied to resign my free-will to do wrong for 

 a nature so constituted that I must always 

 love and do the right. What, by instinct ? 

 Yes, by instinct, or by anything else. I 

 should like to be always instinctively inclined 

 to good, as the bee to make honey. But 

 if I am denied this if our nature is not yet 

 adjusted to the requirements of the golden 

 age it is something to possess an un- 

 changeable instinct of right at the very 

 core of our being, which can neither be 

 plucked out nor enslaved by the will, nor 

 silenced by terror or bribes or flattery. 

 But instinct ! How undignified to be forced 

 to do right by compulsion ! What ? By the 

 compulsion of our own nature, by the im- 

 perious and imperial sense of our obliga- 

 tions to our fellow-men ? On the contrary, 

 I think that we should be ennobled by the 

 possession of such a moral force." Of the 

 mode in which the principles of morality 

 are propagated Mr. Allen writes : " The 

 maxims of morality, more or less true, come 

 down to us by tradition, and root them- 

 selves in our youthful minds ; but the 

 solidified moral sense is transmitted by 

 heredity, and forms an integral part of our 

 very selves. It is, so to speak, our experi- 

 ences, not from but in our grandfathers ; the 

 result stereotyped in our constitutions of all 

 the ictuses of the various forces in this 

 direction which had affected the whole line 

 of our ancestry from the very first trans- 

 mitted feelings in transmitted structures." 



The Waste of Wire-Works. We are in- 

 debted to the Polytechnic Review for an ac- 

 count of a process in use at Worcester, Mas- 

 sachusetts, for utilizing the waste of a great 

 wire-working establishment. Formerly the 

 dilute sulphuric acid used for cleaning the 

 wire was allowed to run into the sewer 

 when it had become so charged with iron 

 scale as to cease to " bite," and large quan- 

 tities of refuse wire were employed only to 

 fill up hollows in grading, or thrown into 

 a heap. All of this waste material is, how- 

 ever, now converted into articles of com- 

 mercial value by simple and comparatively 

 inexpensive processes. The diluted acid, 



charged with iron, is heated in lead-lined 

 tanks by means of steam passing through 

 coils of copper pipe, the waste wire being 

 thrown in. In about five days the acid, un- 

 der the influence of heat, has taken up a 

 large proportion of iron and become liquid 

 sulphate of iron, which is then evaporated 

 until it deposits the crystals known in com- 

 merce as copperas. Three tons of this solid 

 sulphate are made per day from about twelve 

 tons of the waste acid. The remaining 

 liquid is returned to the receiving-tank, to 

 be mixed with more of the waste acid and 

 refuse wire ; and so the work goes on in a 

 continuous round. Even the waste of this 

 product from waste is utilized. The set- 

 tlings of the boiling-tank oxide of iron 

 together with the waste copperas, an alka- 

 li, and an inexpensive substance to give 

 "body," are roasted, ground, and trans- 

 formed into a pigment equal to imported 

 Venetian red. Of this the company makes 

 about 500 barrels per month. 



Spongy Iron Filters. Dr. Gustav Bi- 

 schof, inventor of the method of purifying 

 water by filtration through spongy iron, re- 

 cently detailed to the London Royal Society 

 the results of sundry experiments on this 

 and other filtering media. In the experi- 

 ments fresh meat was placed on the perfo- 

 rated bottom of a stone-ware vessel, which 

 was then filled to about two-thirds with the 

 materials to be experimented upon, and 

 lastly with water, care being taken to pre- 

 vent the access of bacteria to the meat 

 from any source save the filtered water. 

 In Experiment I., spongy iron was used as 

 the filter : after a fortnight's steady perco- 

 lation of the water, the meat was fresh. 

 Experiment II. was with animal charcoal: 

 after a fortnight the meat gave signs of in- 

 cipient putrefaction. Experiment III. was 

 with spongy iron again, the water being al- 

 lowed to flow for four weeks : the meat was 

 perfectly fresh. In Experiment IV., which 

 reproduced Experiment II., with the excep- 

 tion that the length of time was doubled, 

 the meat was found to be soft and putrid. In 

 the foregoing two experiments with spongy 

 iron, the fine dust of that material had not 

 been separated : in Experiment V. this was 

 done: after four weeks the meat, again, was 

 fresh. To prove that iron in solution was 



