Ji'SE iG, 1885.] 



KNOWLEDGE 



551 



Bhould be substituted for them by the oxperiiucnter. " One 

 day," says the veracious American legend, " Billy come 

 home a holdin' a little mole by the tail wich some boy had 

 cot and give him, and it was a live. Wen my sister see 

 him she said, ' 0, you ci-ewel, crewel boy, thro it in the 

 fire this minnit !' " 



The art of advertising has been developed in this 

 country to an extent which is nothing short of marvellous, 

 and seemingly the old-fashioned method of merely an- 

 nouncing the name and address of a tradesman bids fair 

 to become as extinct as the Notornis. Mr. Samuel Weller 

 expressed bis conviction that " the great art o' letter 

 writin " was that the recipient should " vish there wos 

 more." The aim of the advertiser of the present day 

 would seem to be that his reader should get very nearly 

 through his announcement under the settled conviction 

 that it relates to some wholly different subject. We are 

 all pretty familiar with the form of advertisement which 

 begins " Soon after Wilkes was returned for Middlesex in 

 1768," and through which we wade in the hope and ex- 

 pectation of arriving at some piquant anecdote of social or 

 political life during that part of the reign of George III., 

 only though to be pulled up iu disgust at the end with a 

 recommendation to purchase " Smith's Improved Stomach- 

 Warmer," or the like. Or a single wholly unintelligible 

 word, such as " Botibol " or " Pratilique," is repeated in an 

 isolated form, week after week, ultimately to blossom into 

 the announcement of a new liqueur, or something of that 

 sort. 



OxE of the greatest misuses of advertising, though, that I 

 remember to have seen lies before me as I write, in the shape 

 of a pamphlet endorsed "A Costless Appeal," the "Appeal" 

 in question being ostensibly one on behalf of a hospital 

 (which nothing shall induce me to specify), but which is 

 indeed and in truth a sequence of advertisements of the 

 businesses of five firms of tradesmen (whose names wild 

 beasts should not tear from me), who have paid for the 

 ■whole thing out of their own pockets. I do not blame the 

 tradesmen so much as I do the officers of a charity who 

 lend themselves to such tactics as these. Charity and 

 commerce, benevolence and business, surely were never 

 more ill assorted than in this pseudo-begging petition. I 

 was about to express a hope that both sets of people con- 

 cerned in the prodi\ction of such a canting type of appeal 

 would meet with the success they deserve ; but I 

 forbear, because I believe that in that case some poor 

 creatures might have to forego such benefits as the hospital 

 affords them. 



Apropos of advertising, I am infinitely amused at the 

 "dodges" practised by people to obtain gratuitous puffs 

 and announcements in these columns. Persons, for example, 

 who have invented something write and ask me to describe 

 it, and casually mention that they want to sell their patents 

 and so on. Two journals, too — one a " spiritualistic," and 

 the other an earth-flattening one — have been perfectly 

 frantic in their endeavours to provoke me into a discussion 

 by the grossest abuse — of course, for the sake of the pub- 

 licity to be obtained through the apjiearance of replies in 

 Knowledge. But surely in vain the net is spread in the 

 sight of any bird. 



Another of those instances of heroism in humble life 

 and exhiVjitions of splendid physical and moral courage 

 under circumstances peculiarly adverse to its exhibition, of 

 which Englishmen may so well be proud, is supiplied by the 

 story of the " Gaffer " Worrall in the ghastly explosion 



which took place in the Clifton Hall mine on Thursday 

 week. Something like a third of a mile below the surface 

 of the earth, in the blackness of a darkness which might 

 be felt, this most gallant follow, on recovering from the 

 state of insensibility to which he had been reduced by the 

 explosion, manfully stood in the way of the unfortunate 

 creatures who, bereft of their senses by the catastrophe, 

 were bliudly rushing to certain death ; and. turning them 

 into the only possible way of escape, sav ! ihe lives of 

 every man and boy in that part of the mine under his 

 special supervision. Surely if anyone ever earned the 

 Albert Medal this poor " underlooker " should bear it on 

 his breast. 



TiiE occurrence of a pretty smart shock of earthquake in 

 Yorkshire last week, taken in conjunction with the more 

 severe one in Essex in April, ISSi, suffices to remind us 

 that even in this country wc can be no more assured of 

 immunity from these mysterious terrestrial convulsions 

 than elsewhere. A line drawn from Etna and Vesuvius to 

 Ilecla and the volcanic regions of Iceland passes through 

 the British Islands, and at any time a subterranean dis- 

 turbance along this line may affect us. Prior to our ex- 

 perience last year in the eastern counties, nothing like a 

 considerable shock had visited us since the year 17')0, and 

 that which then created such a universal scare, was slight 

 as compared with some which the old chroniclers record. 

 If we may credit Holinshed, flames issued from the earth 

 on the Monday preceding Easter week in 1185, while in 

 1247, on Feb. 1.3th, an earthquake did great damage in 

 London. On Sept. 12, 1275, a shock entirely destroyed 

 St. Michael's Church at Glastonbury ; while on April C, 

 1580, part of the Temple Church fell down, and stones 

 were dislodged from St. Paul's Cathedral from a similar 

 cause. In fact, I might fill this column with similar 

 records ; but enough has been said to show that if 

 familiarity with stable ground has bred contempt for danger, 

 such danger nevertheless does exist, remote though it be. 



The popular weekly, Choice Chips, is now pablished by Mr. 

 Joseph Hughes, of Ludgate-hill, London. It is edited by Mr. W. 

 Davenport Adams, wlio may he trusted to make it a thoroughly 

 readable miscellany. 



Alas, another poor Yorick ! Mr. Justice K.ay, on Saturday, 

 ordered the winding up of the Hammond Electric Light and 

 Power Company, a meeting of the shareholders having decided 

 that it could not continue to carry on its business. 



The Italian Government has ordered from the Pratt & Witney 

 Company, of Hartford, Connecticut, a hundred Gardner machine 

 guns. Competitive trials have recently been made in Italy, and 

 the preference was given to the Gardner gun, "not upon the 

 rapidity of firing, but upon the simplicity, durability, and certainty 

 of action of the mechanism." 



The United Telephone Company's Bill. — The United Tele- 

 phne Company, Limited, has withdrawn its Bill, deposited for the 

 purpose of obtaining parliamentary authority to carry wires for 

 telephonic communication over or under houses, streets, or high- 

 ways, within 100 miles of the General Post-Office. Against'this Bill 

 no fewer than forty-seven petitions had been presented, most of 

 which were from local boards and other governing bodies, includ- 

 ing the Metropolitan Board of Works and the Corporation of 

 London. 



Fike at the Inventions Exhibition. — The secretary of the 

 United Asbestos Company writes, pointing out, in connection with 

 the above fii-e, that in no portion of the buildings burnt had the 

 Asbestos Fireproof Paint been applied, and the great probabihty 

 that if the paint had been applied to the woodwork in the roof 

 near the flues where the fire originated, the disastrous fire would 

 not have occurred ; and, further, that a portion of the exhibition in 

 greatest danger from the fire, known as Duval's Refreshment- 

 rooms, and enclosed in the E-shaped burning mass of buildings 

 forming the India Museum, was no doubt protected from fire by 

 reason of the wooden walls liaving been coated with the paint. 



