68 SCIENCE IN SHORT CHAPTERS. 



or anathematize, but no amount of words of any kind will 

 render a gloomy ill-lighted cottage so attractive as the 

 bright bar and tap-room ; and human nature, irrespective 

 of conventional distinctions of rank and class, always seeks 

 cheerfulness after a day of monotonous toil. Fifty years 

 ago the middle classes were accustomed to spend their even- 

 ings in taverns, but now they prefer their homes, simply 

 because they have learned to make their homes more com- 

 fortable and attractive. 



We have not yet learned how to supply the working 

 millions with suburban villas, but if their small rooms can 

 be made bright and cheerful during the long evenings, a 

 most important step is made towards that general improve- 

 ment of social habits which necessarily results from a 

 greater love of home. We may safely venture to predict 

 that the paraffin lamp will have as much influence in 

 elevating the domestic character of the poorer classes as 

 the street lamps have had in purging the streets of our 

 cities from the crimes of darkness that once infested 

 them. 



A great deal has been said about the poisonous character 

 of paraffin works. I admit that they have much to answer 

 for in reference to trout that the clumsy and wasteful 

 management of certain ill-conducted works has interfered 

 with the sport of the anglers of one or two of the trout 

 streams of the United Kingdom but all the assertions that 

 have been made relative to injury to human health are 

 quite contrary to truth. 



The fact is that the manufacture of mineral oils from 

 cannel and shale is an unusually healthful occupation. The 

 men certainly have dirty faces, but are curiously exempt 

 from those diseases which are most fatal among the poor. 

 I allude to typhus fever, and all that terrible catalogue of 

 ills usually classed under the head of zymotic diseases. 

 This has been strikingly illustrated in the Flintshire dis- 

 trict. The very sudden development of the oil trade in 

 the neighborhood of Leeswood caused that little village and 

 the scattered cottages around to be crowded to an extent 

 that created the utmost alarm among all who are familiar 

 with the results of such overcrowding in poor, ill-drained, 



