NOTES, 



863 



a regular part of the routine. The fields 

 are left from time to time for three or four 

 years, by rotation, in grass. In the summer 

 months, female servants, or the daughters 

 of the farmer, tend the cattle high up in the 

 fjdd, living in scetcrs or cabins, where they 

 prepare cheese and butter. But this isola- 

 tion of the young women is sometimes at- 

 tended with serious moral disadvantages. 



The Coral-Harvest. — The most produc- 

 tive coral-beds, which also yield the best 

 and handsomest corals, are on the Algerian 

 coast, and have been fished upon since the 

 middle of the sixteenth century. Other 

 beds are on the coasts of Sicily, Sardinia, 

 Corsica, Spain, the Balearic Islands, and 

 Provence. More than five hundred Italian 

 vessels, with 4,200 men, are engaged in the 

 coral-fishery, and- collect annually 56,000 

 kilogrammes of coral, the value of which is 

 calculated at 4,200,000 lire ($840,000). Be- 

 sides these, 22,000 kilogrammes, worth 150,- 

 000 lire ($30,000), are collected in French, 

 Spanish, and other boats, making the 

 whole annual product 78,000 kilogrammes, 

 and its value 5,750,000 lire ($1,150,000). 

 The taxes which the Government exacts for 

 the privilege of fishing on the African coast 

 amount to 1,160 lire a boat in the summer 

 and half as much in the winter, and this, 

 taking into consideration the toil and dan- 

 ger of the fishery, reduces the profits to a 

 quite modest rate. Estimating the gross 

 returns per boat at 8,000 lire, and the cost 

 at 6,033 lire, we have a net profit of 1,967 

 lire ($393.40). There are some sixty estab- 

 lishments in Italy where coral is worked up, 

 forty of which are in Torre del Greco, and 

 at which 9,200 hands, chiefly women and 

 children, are employed. The principal mar- 

 kets for the coral are Germany, England, 

 Russia, Austria, Hungary, and Poland ; and 

 considerable quantities are sent to Madras 

 and Calcutta. 



Advantages of Low Ceilings. — Rooms 

 with low ceilings, or with ceilings even with 

 the window-tops, are more readily and com- 

 pletely ventilated than those with high ceil- 

 ings. The leakage of air which is always 

 going on keeps all parts of the air in motion 

 in such rooms, whereas if the ceiling is 

 higher, only the lower part of the air is 



moved, and an inverted lake of foul and 

 hot air is left floating in the space above the 

 window-tops. To have the currents of fresh 

 air circulating only in the lower parts of the 

 room, while the upper portion of the air is 

 left unaffected, is really the worst way of 

 ventilating; for the stagnant atmospheric 

 lake under the ceiling, although motionless, 

 keeps actively at work under the law of the 

 diffusion of gases, fouling the fresh cur- 

 rents circulating beneath it. With low ceil- 

 ings and high windows no such accumula- 

 tion of air is possible ; for the whole height 

 of the room is swept by the currents as the 

 dust of the floor is swept with a broom. 

 Low ceilings have also the advantage of en- 

 abling the room to be warmed with less ex- 

 penditure of heat and less cost for fuel. 



NOTES. 



A MiJp; of mercury — consisting of the 

 sulphuret and chloride, with drops of metal- 

 lic mercury, in a gangue of quartz — which 

 appears to have been worked in ancient 

 times, has been rediscovered at Schuppias- 

 tena, near Belgrade, in Servia. 



Additional interest will be given to the 

 coming meeting of the British Association 

 at Birmingham, to be opened September 

 1st, by the exhibition of local manufact- 

 ures which is to be held in connection with 

 it. Similar exhibitions have been held on 

 each of the three previous occasions when 

 the Association met in Birmingham, in 1838, 

 1849, and 1865 ; and it is said that all of 

 the international and other exhibitions which 

 have since been held had their origin and 

 prime model in the first of these ; and that 

 the Great International Exhibition of 1851 

 was suggested to Prince Albert by his visit 

 to Birmingham in 1849. The coming exhi- 

 bition will be more extensive and varied 

 than any of the previous ones. 



M. E. Riviere has discovered a new sta- 

 tion or workshop of the neolithic age in the 

 wood of Clamart, near the gates of Paris. 

 He has recovered from it nearly nine hun- 

 dred flints (from nodules in chalk), cut or 

 broken by the hand, all of which lay on or 

 near the surface of the ground. Among 

 them are pieces of polished hatchets, scrap- 

 ers (some very handsome ones), blades, 

 points, and two or three little polishers. 



Artificial lithographic stones are man- 

 ufactured in Frankfort by M. Rosenthal 

 from cement, whicli is put for the purpose 

 through a course of very careful manipula- 

 tions. 



