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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



left the Bcale as the corona was brought upon 

 the fine slit by which the tasimeter itself was 

 protected." 



Progress of the Electric Light. Prog- 

 ress is being steadily made with the electric 

 light, both in the sense of improving the 

 apparatus needed for utilizing it and in 

 finding for it practical application. In Paris 

 the railway-station Gare St.-Lazare is now 

 very effectively lighted with the aid of the 

 instrument known as Lontin's distributing 

 machine. The contrast between the pure, 

 clear white electric light and the dull-yel- 

 low gaslights in the surrounding streets is 

 enough to convince the most skeptical of 

 the superiority of electricity over gas as an 

 illuminating agent. In the Lontin machine 

 ordinary prepared carbon-wicks are em- 

 ployed, which are regulated by a Lontin 

 burner : the light is remarkably steady, and 

 the wicks burn in the open air without 

 globes or shades of any kind. A strong 

 objection to this machine, unfitting it for 

 use in private houses, is the hissing noise 

 it makes when in operation. The electric 

 candle invented by Jobloshkoff is used for 

 illuminating the Place de l'Opera in the 

 same city. Across the open area of the 

 Place, and extending toward the new Ave- 

 nue de l'Opdra, there is a double row of large 

 lamp-posts down each side, each surmounted 

 by a large cylindrical lamp of clouded glass, 

 and containing twelve electric candles. The 

 whole space is lighted as bright almost as 

 day. As soon as a candle burns down, an- 

 other is moved by mechanism into its place 

 without much appreciable disturbance of the 

 general effect. There is no flickering. The 

 great drawback to the Jabloshkoff candle is 

 its costliness, the illumination being as ex- 

 pensive as when gas is used. 



Bathing as a Canse of Ear-Disease. In- 

 flammation of the middle ear, often resulting 

 in chronic deafness, is a not infrequent con- 

 sequence of bathing. The damage, accord- 

 ing to Dr. Sexton, in the Medical Record, 

 consists in the admission of water to the 

 ear, either through the external auditory 

 canal or the Eustachian tube. When water 

 finds admittance to the former, if cold or 

 salt, inflammation of the meatus alone may 

 result ; or, if violently injected, as in surf- 

 bathing, or long retained in the canal from 



diving, the disease may affect the drum- 

 head and middle ear. Whenever water is 

 forced from the mouth and nostrils into the 

 middle ear through the Eustachian tube, in- 

 flammation of the middle ear is almost sure 

 to occur, even though the water be warm. 

 According to the author, several thousand 

 severe cases of aural disease result annual- 

 ly from bathing in New York City alone. 

 The bather, when in the surf, should take 

 the water on his chest or back, with mouth 

 and nostrils closed, and never presenting 

 the ear to the in-coming wave. A firm 

 pledget of cotton-wool in the ears is some 

 protection. 



The Carpet-Beetle. Notices have ap- 

 peared from time to time during the last 

 four or five years of a new carpet-beetle 

 said to be far more destructive than the 

 familiar carpet-moth. This insect has been 

 identified by Dr. J. L. Le Conte as Anthre- 

 nus scrophtdarice, a European species. A 

 good account of it is given in the American 

 Naturalist by Mr. J. A. Lintner, who has 

 studied this insect attentively since its first 

 appearance on our shores. The larva, he 

 says, measures at maturity about three- 

 sixteenths of an inch in length, and it is in 

 this stage of its existence that Anthrenus 

 preys upon carpets. A number of hairs 

 radiate from its last segment in nearly a 

 semicircle, forming a tail-like appendage 

 almost as long as the body. The front part 

 of the body, which has no distinct head, is 

 thickly set with short brown hairs and a few 

 longer ones. Similar short hairs clothe the 

 body. The body has the appearance of be- 

 ing banded in two shades of brown, the 

 darker one being the central portion of each 

 ring, and the lighter the connecting portion 

 of the rings. Having attained its full larval 

 growth, it prepares for its pupal change 

 without forming a cocoon, but merely seek- 

 ing some convenient retreat. Here it re- 

 mains motionless until it has completed its 

 pupation, when the skin is rent along the 

 back and through the fissure the pupa is 

 seen. A few weeks later the pupal skin is 

 split down the middle of its dorsal aspect, 

 and the brightly-colored wing-covers of the 

 beetle are disclosed. Soon after their emer- 

 gence from the pupal case during the fall, 

 winter, and spring, the beetles pair and the 



