260 THINGS WORTH KNOWING. 



year. Forty of these trees were planted, and it is now as healthy as 

 any other place on the line. 



This tree is now being cultivated very extensively in California. 

 For full information upon its medical properties, see Materia Med- 

 ica, page 501, Vol. I* 



Influence of Marriage on the Duration of Life. 



M. Bertillon lately read before the Academy of Medicine a 

 paper on the relative influence of marriage and celibacy, based on 

 statistical returns derived from France, Belgium and Holland. 

 In France, taking the ten years 1857-66, he found that, in 

 1,000 persons aged from twenty.five to thirty, four deaths 

 occurred in the married, 10.4- in the unmarried, and twenty- 

 two in widowers; in females at the same age, the mortality among 

 the married and unmarried was the same nine per 1,000, while in 

 widows it was seventeen. In persons aged from thirty to thirty -five, 

 the mortality among'men was, for the married, eleven per 1,000, for 

 the unmarried, fifteen, and for widowers, nineteen per 1,000 ; among 

 women, for the married, five; for the unmarried, ten; and for widows, 

 fifteen per 1,000. There appears to be a general agreement of these 

 results of marriage in Belgium and Holland, as well as in France 

 and Paris. 



Carpets, Dust and Disease. 



An atmosphere impregnated with the dust which has been 

 gathered in carpets and remained there for a considerable length of 

 time is positively unhealthy. The dust, after being stagnant for 

 some time, especially in warm weather, presents myriads of animal- 

 culse. To prevent the evil the carpet should be cleaned often. 

 The dust should be thoroughly removed every month. The trouble 

 of taking up, shaking and replacing will be amply repaid, first in 

 the matter of health, and secondly in preserving the carpet. "We 

 advise good housewives to make a note of this. 



Pure Air in the Kitchen. 



It is an essential to health that the air of the kitchen should be 

 as pure as that of the parlor, because food prepared in foul air par- 

 takes of the foulness to a great extent. A little sink near a kitchen 

 door-step, inadvertently formed, has been known, although not 

 exceeding in its dimensions a single square foot, to spread sickness 

 through a whole household. Hence everything of the kind should 

 be studiously obviated, so that there should be no spot about dwell- 

 ing which can receive and hold standing water, whether it be the 

 pure rain from the sky, the contents of a wash-basin, the slop-bowl 

 or the water-pail. 



