THINGS WORTH KNOWING. 259 



For the Prevention of Baldness. 



A medical author says, " After trying many remedies, but ali 

 in vain, I have finally found a successful one; which is the German 

 or French soft, green soap. Take two ounces of the soap and the 

 same amount of alcohol, and twenty or thirty drops of the oil of 

 lavender as a perfumer. This is used as a shampoo, every morning 

 or evening pouring one or two tablespoonf uls on the head. Upon 

 the addition of water and a smart friction with the fingers, a copious 

 lather is soon produced. After keeping up the shampooing process 

 for some four or five minutes, all the soap must be washed out of 

 the hair by the free use of warm or cold water, and the hair thor- 

 oughly dried by means of gentle friction with a soft towel. To 

 obviate a disagreeable feeling of tension of the scalp, and to keep 

 the scalp from getting too dry, follow up the shampooing with cas- 

 tor-oil one part, to alcohol three or four parts. But the best, as well 

 as the neatest preparation that 1 have employed for this purpose, is 

 cosmoline. This is a product obtained from petroleum and is com- 

 paratively cheap. 



The Health Tree Blue Gum. 



M. Gimbert has been long engaged in collecting evidence con- 

 cerning the Australian tree, Blue-gum or Eucalyptus globulus^ the 

 growth of which is surprisingly rapid, attaining besides gigantic 

 dimensions. This tree possesses an extraordinary power of destroy- 

 ing miasmatic influence in fever-stricken districts. It has the 

 singular property of absorbing ten times its weight of water from 

 the soil, and of emitting antiseptic camphorous effluvia. When 

 sown in marshy ground it will dry it up in a very short time. The 

 English were the first to try it at the Cape, and within two or three 

 years they completely changed the climatic condition of the 

 unhealthy parts of the colony. A few years later its plantation was 

 undertaken on a large scale in Algeria. At Pardock, a farm situ- 

 ated on the banks of the Hamyze, was noted for its extremely 

 pestilential air. About 13,000 of the eucalyptus were planted there. 

 In the fever season not a single case occurred ; yet the trees were not 

 more than nine feet high. Since then complete immunity from 

 fever has been maintained. The farm of Ben Machydlin was equally 

 in bad repute. In five years the whole ground was dried up by 

 14,000 of these trees, and farmers and children enjoy excellent 

 health. At the factory of the Gue de Constantine, a plantation of 

 eucalyptus has transformed twelve acres of marshy soil into a mag- 

 nificent park, whence fever has completely disappeared. In the 

 island of Cuba this and all other marsh diseases are fast disappear- 

 ing from all the unhealthy districts where this tree has been 

 introduced. A station-house in the Department of the Yar was so 

 pestilential that the officials could not be kept there longer than a 



