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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



silk between the teeth every day. Tooth- 

 picks may do- harm if abused, by causing 

 irritation of the gum between the teeth, and 

 its consequent absorption ; and if the picks 

 are made of wood, splinters are liable to be 

 left behind, which have in many cases 

 caused even the loss of a tooth ; but used 

 judiciously they are of great value in rout- 

 ing the attacking forpes in caries namely, 

 accumulations of food and mucous secre- 

 tions. It has been urged against them that 

 they might dislodge a filling ; but if a fill- 

 ing is so insecure it must be faulty, and the 

 sooner it is replaced the better, for decay, 

 due to the impossibility of keeping the sur- 

 face clean, must be going on underneath it. 



A Foot, Stilt, and Horse Race. A race 

 between three pedestrians, three stilt walk- 

 ers, and three horses took place from Bor- 

 deaux, France, early in May, over a course, 

 returning to Bordeaux, of four hundred and 

 twenty kilometres. At ninety-one kilometres 

 the horses were ahead, one an hour and a 

 half in advance of the third ; the stiltmen 

 were behind them, and the pedestrians were 

 far in the rear, with one of them dropped 

 from the course. At one hundred and fifty 

 kilometres a stiltman had got ahead of one 

 of the horses. At one hundred and sixty- 

 six kilometres one of the horses was taken 

 out ill, and the horse which had been passed 

 by a stilt walker had caught up with him. 

 At two hundred and thirty-five kilometres 

 the pedestrians had given up the struggle. 

 At three hundred and five kilometres the 

 rivals were the leading stilt walker and the 

 horse which he had once passed, the other 

 horse beginning to fail. The rivalry between 

 the stilt walker and horse was kept up till 

 the end of the race, when the horse came 

 into Bordeaux twenty-eight minutes ahead. 

 The time was sixty-two hours and twenty- 

 seven minutes. 



Marine Silk. To the various kinds of 

 silks known in trade must now be added, ac- 

 cording to the French journal L'Industrie tex- 

 tile, a marine silk, derived from shells, or from 

 the filaments, technically known as the bys- 

 sus, which are secreted by some mollusks, in- 

 cluding the mussels, which fasten themselves 

 to the rocks. These filaments are very strong, 

 as one may easily find out by trying to pull 



apart a cluster of mussels attached by them 

 to one another. Though very fine, the fila- 

 ments of the mussel shells are generally too 

 short to be of much use ; but they are long 

 enough in some kinds, among which is a 

 pinna very common in the Mediterranean 

 and known to French fishermen as the jam- 

 bonneau, or little ham, from its peculiar shape 

 and color. These shells are raked up from a 

 depth of between six and nine metres near the 

 coast of Sicily. The threads are slender but 

 extremely tough, and a considerable effort is 

 required to detach them from the rock. The 

 tuft, having been detached from the shell, is 

 washed in soapsuds and dried in the shade. 

 The useless parts are cut away, and the avail- 

 able threads are rubbed in the hands to give 

 them suppleness, and then sorted and sepa- 

 rated by combing an operation in which a 

 waste of about two thirds of the raw material 

 is incurred. Two or three of the threads are 

 spun with a thread of silk, whereby a very 

 strong cord is obtained. The cord is washed 

 in water acidulated with lime juice, rubbed 

 again with the hand, and smoothed with a 

 hot iron, by which it is finally given a beauti- 

 ful brownish gilt color. 



John Wesley an Evolutionist. It will 

 probably be a novel idea to our Methodist 

 friends to find in John Wesley a precursor of 

 Spencer and Darwin in outlining the doctrine 

 of evolution. This has, nevertheless, been 

 done by William H. Mills, in a paper read 

 before the Chit Chat Club of San Francisco, 

 entitled " John Wesley an Evolutionist." 

 Mr. Mills exhibits as his authority a work 

 entitled Wesley's Philosophy, in two volumes, 

 which was published by the Methodist Book 

 Concern in New York in 1823. In this 

 work, in which Mr. Wesley expressed himself 

 as believing that he was presenting only such 

 matters as had been established by investi- 

 gation and research, he says : " The same 

 general design comprises all parts of terres- 

 trial creation. A globule of light, a mole- 

 cule of earth, a grain of salt, a particle of 

 moldiness, a polypus, a shell-fish, a bird, 

 a quadruped, and man, are only different 

 strokes of tliis design, and represent all pos- 

 sible modifications of the matter of our 

 globe. My expression falls greatly beneath 

 reality ; these various productions are not 

 different strokes of the same design ; they are 



