410 Progress in Scrence. (July, 
According to a decree in France, dated March 7, 1808, it has been enjoined 
that no wells shall be bored or dug out at aless distance than 100 metres in 
all directions from any burial-ground. Dr. Lefort having found that not only 
in many country villages, but ‘also in several towns, this regulation has not 
been observed, has made some experiments on the water of a well at Saint 
Didier (Département de l’Allier), which locality is situated on an alluvial soil. 
This water is used for drinking purposes by the parish priest and a portion of 
the inhabitants, and, on examination, the author found it to contain not only 
a large proportion of ammoniacal salts, but also, on evaporation, to leave a 
very large quantity of a dark-coloured organic matter mixed with carbonated 
salts, which, on being mixed with some hydrochloric acid, gave off an offensive 
carbonic acid gas, the smell being somewhat akin to a mixture of a concentrated 
solution of glue and butyric acid. The well is very deep, and the water is 
quite clear and bright, but exhibits, especially in summer time, a very vapid 
taste, while, in the warm season of the year it rapidly becomes putrid. The 
author comes to the conclusion that, in any soil, a well dug at the distance of 
100 metres from either burial-grounds or battle-fields is quite useless to prote& 
the water of even deep wells from becoming so contaminated with organic 
and other injurious matter as to make them very dangerous to health. 
A Detroit druggist, assisted by two gentlemen, resolved to make a number 
of experiments on spontaneous combustion. They first took a piece of cotton 
cloth, which had once formed part of a sheet, and which had been used until 
quite threadbare, and smeared it with boiled linseed oil. An old chest was 
placed in the loft of a store-room back of the drug store, a piece of zinc over it, 
and another piece under it, and then the chest was filled with paper and rags, and 
this particular piece of cloth placed in the centre. Although the room was 
not a light one, and the weather cold, in eight days there was such a smell of 
fire about the trunk, and the chances were so good for a conflagration within 
it, that the contents were emptied. An examination showed that the fibre 
of the oil-cloth had untwisted and shrivelled up, and that the rag looked as 
if it had been held too near a hot blaze. In April, when the rays of the sun 
were stronger, a pair of painter’s overalls, literally covered with paint and 
oil, were rolled up, a handful of pine shavings placed inside, and these were 
crowded in next to the roof boards of the loft. The experiment was not a 
week old when, during one warm afternoon, a smell of smoke alarmed a work- 
man in the next room, and he found the overalls burning, and so tinder-like 
was the cloth that it had to be crowded into a pail of water to prevent total 
destruction. During the hot weather of August, a handful of old cotton rags, 
in which two matches were placed, but which were not smeared with oil or 
other matter, were shut up in a tin box, and hung up in the loft, a rear window 
allowing the afternoon sun to shine directly on the box for several hours. 
Toward the close of the fourth day the druggist took down the box to see 
how the experiment was progressing, and found the contents to consist of 
nothing but a puff of black cinders, which flew all over him as the lid was 
lifted. Having a vacant corner in his brick wood-house at home, the druggist 
took the trunk up there, where there was no danger of burning a building. 
He filled the trunk with the contents of the paper rag-bag, and then smeared 
one with benzine and threw it in last of all. The trunk was shut tight, every- 
thing cleared away from its vicinity, and he commenced watching. One day 
the family came home to find a few ashes marking the place where the trunk 
stood, while the bricks above and around were badly stained with smoke. 
At the last meeting of the Chemico-Agricultural Society at Belfast, under 
the presidency of Dr. Knox, late Poor Law Inspector, the subject of whisky 
adulteration was brought under consideration by Dr. Hodges, who exhibited 
a specimen of that liquid brought to him by two men who had been physically 
incapacitated by drinking a small portion of it in a public-house. He found, 
on analysis, that it contained a large amount of naphtha. He had also dis- 
covered that ingredients of even a more deleterious character were used in the 
process of adulteration,—mixtures containing sulphate of copper (blue-stone), 
cayenne pepper, sulphuric acid (vitriol), and a little spirits of wine. One 
