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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



tubing is all that is required. Dr. Lowell 

 writes: "The injection may be made by 

 either artery or vein. ... I prefer the bra- 

 chial artery above the elbow as the point for 

 introduction of the glass tube, for the pri- 

 mary incision is slighter, and consequently 

 divides smaller and fewer veins than when 

 I expose the femoral artery. I use the 

 gravity method, and introduce about five 

 gallons of the antiseptic fluid. The effects 

 are eminently satisfactory. The color of 

 the integument is improved." A body 

 treated in this way was transported from j 

 New York to Richmond last summer with- 

 out odor, disfigurement, or external sign of 

 decay. 



NOTES. 



The Count de Saporta has discovered in 

 the Silurian rocks of Angers the remains of 

 ferns the first evidence so far found in 

 Europe of the existence of terrestrial vege- 

 tation during Silurian times. In the Ameri- 

 can Silurian formation Prof. Leo Lesquereux 

 had already found fern-remains. 



Prof. William Dwight Whitney, of Yale 

 College, has been named a member of the 

 French Academy of Inscriptions and Belles- 

 Lettres. 



An interesting law case lately came be- 

 fore a London magistrate, namely, the vio- 

 lation by a gas company of the act of Par- 

 liament which fixes the maximum of impu- 

 rity permissible in illuminating gas. The 

 company defendant were sued to recover 

 eight penalties of 50 each for having on 

 eight days supplied gas of less purity than 

 the act allows. The court ordered a war- 

 rant to issue for the full amount of penalties 

 claimed. 



We have to record the first instance 

 that has come under our notice of a house- 

 owner being arrested and held to account 

 in New York City for neglecting duly to 

 provide against the entrance of poisonous 

 sewer-gases into his tenements. In January, 

 an agent of the Board of Health sued out 

 a warrant against a house-owner who had 

 offended in this way, and the accused was 

 bound over for examination. The Health 

 Board is to be commended for its action in 

 this case, and encouraged to go on with 

 the good work. 



Died at Paris, December 20th, Henri 

 Daniel Ruhmkorff, aged about seventy-five 

 years. He was by birth a Hanoverian, but 

 came to Paris at a very early age, and there 



spent the remainder of his life. He was first 

 a porter in a physical laboratory, where he 

 acquired a taste for electrical experiments. 

 He soon opened a little shop for making 

 physical apparatus. His famous magneto- 

 electric " coil " was produced in 1851 ; in 

 1858 he received for it the first prize of 

 50,000 francs at the French Exhibition of 

 electrical apparatus. 



Mr. E. A. Barber, in the American Natu- 

 ralist, notes a singular rite formerly practised 

 by the Seminoles at the " christening " of 

 their male children. At the age of fourteen 

 the boy was scratched or incised with a 

 sharp flint six times on each arm and leg, 

 the length of the incisions being about a 

 foot. If the lad flinched or cried out, he 

 received an insignificant name; but if he 

 bore the pain manfully, he received a high- 

 sounding title, and was destined to become 

 a great man in the tribe. 



The statistics of rainfall at San Fran- 

 cisco for the past twenty-five years or more 

 are contradictory of the theory according 

 to which the amount of rainfall is in direct 

 proportion to the number of spots on the 

 sun. It has been shown by Mr. J. S. Hit- 

 tell that during the four years from 1865 to 

 1869 there was at San Francisco a total fall 

 of 118 inches the greatest quantity ever 

 noted there for an equal period and yet 

 those four years were " in the minimum 

 portion of the sun-spot cycle." The table 

 of annual rainfall given by Mr. Hittell is in 

 fact, as far as it goes, an evidence that 

 there is no periodicity either of maximum 

 or minimum rainfall at San Francisco. 



The advantages of crying and groaning 

 in pain are set forth by a French physician, 

 who holds that these modes of expression 

 are Nature's own methods of subduing the 

 keenness of physical suffering. He would 

 have men freely avail themselves of this 

 means of numbing their sensibility during 

 surgical operations. Crying in children 

 should not be repressed, for, according to 

 this authority, such repression may result 

 in very serious consequences, as St. Vitus's 

 dance, epileptic fits, etc. 



A baker in Paris having used, for heat- 

 ing his oven, painted wood from old houses 

 which had been torn down in opening a 

 new street, many persons who ate the bread 

 were seized with violent symptoms of lead- 

 poisoning. The heat converted the paint 

 into pulverulent oxide of lead, which ad- 

 hered to the moist surface of the loaves. 

 The men who brushed these loaves were 

 the first to suffer, and then all who ate the 

 crust experienced with more or less inten- 

 sity the agonies of " painters' colic." A po- 

 lice regulation has been issued forbidding 

 the use by bakers of wood from old houses. 



