31. 



housjhold api)lication. Two ounces and a half of tlic wire is said to 

 be equal in illunnnating power to 20lbs. of composite candles. It is 

 sold in London at present at threepence per foot, but no doubt, if, as 

 in all probability there will soon be, a great demand should arise for 

 it, it will be manufactured at a much cheaper rate. The sources 

 from whence it may be obtamed, are perhajjs more numerous and in- 

 exhaustible than coal itself. I have long been sanguine, that the 

 electric-light might be made economically ap])licable ibr domestic and 

 public lighting, but as yet the cost has limited its use. For sanitary 

 ends, inasmuch as it is a generator of nature's grand aerial disinfectant, 

 Ozone, it would surpass in its beneficial effects, the magnesium-light, 

 with wliich many persons are apt to confound it. I apprehend no dis- 

 covery of modern times, since coal-gas was made use of in private 

 and public illumination, approaches any thing near in the pronn'se of 

 usefulness as this application of the combustion of magnesium wire. 

 My last subject is one of a purely sanitary nature, and refers to the 

 well-being 'of those helpless infants, Avho cannot obtain the maternal 

 nourishment. A loud cry has been raised throughout the civilised 

 world, at the fearful extent of infant mortality, arising from ignorance 

 and neglect. The greatest of modern dietetic chemists, the world- 

 renowned Baron Liebig of Munich, from a family necessity, has 

 been induced to direct his eminent skill to the compounding of a 

 substitute for mother's-milk, which shall resemble, in its nourishing 

 qualities, that best of all food for the human infant, '^rhe last number 

 of the "Lancet" notices these efforts thus: — "With that remarkable 

 estimation of the greatness of small things which is one of the most 

 valuable of his many high intellectual qualities, and with a tender 

 appreciation of the importance of small people, Baron Liebig devotes 

 a special article in an English scientific periodical (the Popular Science 

 Revitiv) to the description of a new article of diet which he conceives 

 to be the most fitting substitute for the natural nutriment for those 

 children who are by circumstances robbed of their mother's milk. It 

 is well known that cow's milk does not adequately represent the milk 

 of a healthy woman, and when wheaten flour is added, as it commonly 

 is, (I am sorry tosay in Tasmania other farinaceous articles of less 

 nutritious value than this, are more generally used, — corn-flour, 

 arrowroot, sago,rice,and such like starch-abounding, stomach-oppress- 

 ing, and diarrhaa-engendering viands.) Liebig points out that, 

 although starch be not unfitting for the nourishment of the infant,the 

 change of it into sugar in the stomach during digestion, imposes an 

 unnecessary labor on the organization, which will be spared it if the 

 starch be beforehand transformed into the soluble forms of (glucose) 

 sugar and dextrine. (In which forms only the cane sugar of domestic 

 use and the starch abounding in all cereals, can be assimilated for the 

 uses of the body.) This he effects b}' adding to the wheaten flour a 

 certain quantity of malt — "as wheaten flour and malt flour contain less 

 alkali than woman's milk, he supplies this when preparing the soup." 

 Cow's milk, and that of most animals whose offspring begin to move 

 about soon after birth, has a lar ger relative quantity of muscle and 

 bone-making ingredients, than human milk, while the latter has more 

 of the saccharine and oily,or respiratory materials. Some water there- 

 fore is ordered by medical men to dilute cow's milk, though it is 

 usually carried to an injurious excess, (Liebig only adds one-fifth of 

 water) and some loaf sugar added. Milk-sugar is expensive even 



