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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



civilized Africa than are found among the 

 1 Wa-nyakyusa ' people " of the district north 

 of Lake Nyassa. Round houses are occu- 

 pied by the married people, but they also 

 build square houses and long cattle-folds. 

 The walls are of bamboo set into the ground 

 at an angle of about 100. Small bricks 

 about the size of an ostrich egg are fitted 

 neatly, while plastic, into the framework. 

 The whole is a huge basket of bamboo reeds 

 and mud. The reeds on the roof are tied 

 in wavy lines in the form of a dome, the 

 thatch is laid with great skill, and the house 

 is scrupulously clean. Large villages are 

 uncommon, but on the plains one village is 

 connected with another by banana groves 

 which often extend for miles. Trees are 

 planted for utility and for ornamentation, 

 and are regarded with pride. There are no 

 stockaded villages, but a kind of poisonous 

 cactus is grown as a defense. All manual 

 work in cultivation is done with giant hoes. 

 Their fields look as if they had been deep- 

 ly plowed, and every furrow is perfectly 

 straight. They are a tall, muscular race, of 

 few wants, desiring nothing of strangers. 

 They appreciate cloth, but have little idea of 

 its value. They are in what one might call 

 the " brass-wire age." That is their medium 

 of exchange, and anything can be bought for 

 it. Iron is found in the King's Mountains, 

 and is extensively wrought. They make 

 iron, copper, and brass belts as thick as 

 one's little finger, and wear them on the 

 waist. Six or more of such belts may be 

 worn on the person of one individual. Their 

 word for riches means iron. The Nkonde 

 spears are famed. Though not so large as 

 those of the Masai, their spears and bill- 

 hooks are cruel-looking weapons, with long 

 barbs. The shafts are made of a dark, hard 

 wood, and are frequently dyed black. They 

 are ornamented, and often beautifully inlaid 

 with a delicate tracery of brass, copper, or 

 iron. They have fifteen varieties of spears, 

 bearing different names. 



The Storing of Acetylene. In a recent 

 letter to the Engineering News, Frederick 

 H. Lewis gives the result of some instructive 

 calculations. It has been claimed, it seems, 

 by several concerns that acetylene gas may 

 be liquefied and stored in metal " bottles," 

 and in this form advantageously handled and 



transported. " The writer," says Mr. Lewis, 

 " had occasion some time since to ascertain 

 whether a small cylinder of about one half 

 cubic foot capacity could possibly contain 

 the amount of gas that the company's orator 

 in Philadelphia had declared it to hold. A 

 little calculation showed that if the gas was 

 present, as stated, its density must be nearly 

 equal to that of cast iron." Mr. Lewis cal- 

 culates that a cylinder containing sufficient 

 gas to supply a private house for a month 

 would have to be about eight feet and a 

 half long, and would weigh three hundred 

 pounds. u But," he says, " even this state- 

 ment of the case is entirely too favorable. 

 The fact which the acetylene-gas people 

 must face is this, that it is entirely unsafe 

 to liquefy gas whose critical point is only 

 98 F., and subject such cylinders to the in- 

 cidents of transportation and of ordinary use 

 in dwelling houses. It has been found neces- 

 sary to adopt this view in the case of nitrous 

 oxide for dentists' use, and it will be neces- 

 sary with acetylene." 



Gont and Genius. From an interesting 

 little essay in the Lancet, by Mr. J. F. This- 

 elton Dyer, on the folklore of gout, we take 

 the following : Many years ago one Misausus 

 wrote a curious little book in honor of the 

 gout, with the object of proving that it was 

 a blessing for which mankind could not be 

 too thankful, arguing that if Paracelsus could 

 make men proof against death his secret 

 consisted in inoculating them with gout. 

 But when it was suggested that gouty people 

 do die, he replied that men know not when 

 they are well off, but must needs be curing 

 the gout, and therefore deal with death's fac- 

 tor, the physician. It was, however, a popu- 

 lar notion that gout lengthened life, and 

 statistics at the present day show that it is not 

 answerable for more than one death in every 

 seventeen hundred and eighty. For a long 

 time gout had the reputation of being pre- 

 eminently the rich man's disease, and Syden- 

 ham, who, it may be remembered, was the 

 first man minutely to study the disease, re- 

 marked that, unlike any other complaint, " it 

 kills more rich than poor; more wise than 

 simple. Great kings, emperors, generals, ad- 

 mirals, and philosophers have died of gout." 

 In one of Pitt's last letters to the Marquess 

 Wellesley, he alludes to his slow recovery 



