POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



381 



ficial veins. Tight lacing, too, predisposes 

 to varicose veins, in consequence of the ab- 

 dominal viscera being pushed downward into 

 the pelvis, causing undue pressure on the 

 veins of the lower extremities. The hygi- 

 enic use of clothes, the author said, is not 

 so much to keep cold out as to keep heat 

 in. In robust persons it is not at all neces- 

 sary to put on extra clothing when prepar- 

 ing for out-door exercise : sufficient heat to 

 prevent all risk of chill is generated in the 

 body by exercise. But care should be taken 

 to retain sufficient clothing after exercise, 

 and, when at rest, to prevent the heat pass- 

 ing out of the body. The wearing of false 

 hair prevents evaporation of the perspira- 

 tion from the scalp, and so predisposes to 

 baldness and other scalp-diseases. 



Mr. Bond calls Urquhart, who intro- 

 duced into England the Turkish bath, one 

 of the benefactors of the age : this bath is, 

 he says, stimulating and strengthening a 

 preventive as well as a curative in disease. 

 Nor is this all : it promotes purity of mind 

 and morals. He then suggests certain ne- 

 cessary precautions to be observed in the 

 use of the Turkish and other baths. Com- 

 ing to the subject of ventilation, he remarks 

 on the feeling of lassitude felt by many per- 

 sons in getting up in the morning. This is 

 very often due to defective ventilation of 

 the bedroom, or to the use of an undue 

 amount of bedclothes. It is an error to 

 suppose that a room can be ventilated by 

 simply opening a window a little at the top : 

 there must be an outlet as well as an inlet 

 for the air. The best outlet is an ordinary 

 fireplace, especially if there is a fire burn- 

 ing. Mr. Bond recommends for ventilation 

 purposes the use of vertical pipes, commu- 

 nicating at the level of the floor with the 

 outer air, and rising vertically to the height 

 of four or five feet. 



Marbleized Iron Utensils. Sundry cook- 

 ing-utensils of so-called " marbleized iron " 

 have been subjected to chemical tests by 

 Mr. William H. Dougherty, with the results 

 given below, as stated in the "Proceedings " 

 of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Phil- 

 adelphia. The author, having heard re- 

 ports that the enamel contained lead and 

 arsenic, poured into a new dish of this ware 

 a pint of good ordinary " white-wine " 



vinegar. This was then slowly evaporated 

 nearly to dryness ; then distilled water was 

 added, and the whole treated with hydro- 

 sulphuric acid. The resulting precipitate of 

 sulphide of lead was now dissolved in nitric 

 acid and reprecipitated with sulphuric acid 

 in presence of alcohol as sulphate of lead, 

 and weighed over 1\ grains. This result was 

 further confirmed by reducing the sulphate 

 to metallic lead with the blowpipe. From 

 this it appears that the vinegar had dis- 

 solved out of the enamel enough lead to 

 make about three grains of acetate of lead. 

 Similar results were obtained from another 

 experiment, in which citric acid took the 

 place of the vinegar. A can of tomatoes in 

 an acid condition was, digested in another 

 dish of this ware and filtered, the filtrate 

 being treated as in the foregoing experi- 

 ments. In this instance slight but positive 

 evidence was found of the presence of lead. 

 The author could detect no arsenic. He 

 states the composition of the enamel to be 

 as follows: oxide of lead, 12 per cent.; 

 silica, 47 ; alumina, iron, lime, potash, and 

 soda, 41 per cent. 



Was Man preglarial? The Anthropo- 

 logical Institute of London lately held a 

 conference on " the present state of the 

 question of the antiquity of man," in the 

 course of which the evidences of man's an- 

 tiquity in England were very fully consid- 

 ered. The papers read at the conference 

 by Prof. Boyd Dawkins, Prof. McKendrick 

 Hughes, and Mr. R. H. Tiddeman, as also 

 the highly-interesting discussion which fol- 

 lowed, are reported in Nature. Our con- 

 temporary devotes several pages to the pro- 

 ceedings of the conference, but we have 

 only space to indicate one or two of the 

 more important lines of argument. First, 

 as regards the validity of the arguments of 

 Croll, Geikie, and others, that because in 

 river-deposits and caves the bones of ani- 

 mals which now live only in hot climates 

 are associated with the bones and other 

 memorials of man, and as after the glacial 

 period there is no evidence of such hot cli- 

 mate in England, therefore all these remains 

 are preglacial or interglacial. To this it 

 was objected that these animals of hot cli- 

 mates had preyed on such boreal animals as 

 the reindeer ; that the hippopotamus and 



