352 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



impressed itself on the spectator. Truth to say, in actual per- 

 formance of an important operation Billroth showed no marked 

 superiority over his fellow-surgeons. He avoided any show of 

 brilliancy or flourish, went steadily to work, erred, if at all, on 

 the side of slowness, and was neither more nor less discomposed 

 by any complication or untoward event than any one else. The 

 finish of his operative work was rather the result of his immense 

 experience than of any remarkable aptitude. . . . From first to 

 last he was never a specialist, and his operative experience was 

 singularly varied." 



Dr. A. Wolfler, of Gratz, one of his most famous pupils, thinks 

 that the chief power of his fame was not so much in his actual 

 inventions in surgery as in the larger and more general ideas in 

 medicine and surgery which he suggested. In the days when 

 bacteriology was still groping in the dark twenty years ago he 

 made successful investigations of a bacterium of wounds which 

 he called streptococcus. In another direction he established and 

 gave effect to general principles in nursing. His highest aim was 

 to look out for the well-being and care of sufferers. Only in his 

 later years did he busy himself with biological questions, and 

 then pursued them with indefatigable ardor and persistence. His 

 works are the classical text-books in Germany. 



Prof. Billroth's earliest studies were in music, to which he was 

 devotedly attached, and he retained a strong love for the art and 

 its apostles. He was an excellent performer on the pianoforte 

 and violin, and maintained a close friendship with Johann Strauss, 

 Wagner, and Brahms. 



THE GREAT BLUESTONE INDUSTRY. 



BY HENRY BALCH INGRAM. 



HOWEVER unhappy New York city may be in the matter of 

 pavements between curbs, there is one fact apparent to the 

 most casual observer, and that is that New York has the finest 

 and best sidewalk pavements of any city in the universe. This is 

 due to the fact that the sidewalks are largely paved with huge 

 flat slabs of a natural product known in the commercial marts of 

 New York as North or Hudson River bluestone. These slabs, 

 which form smooth and dry platforms for the use of pedestrians, 

 come from the quarries much in the same shape as they are laid 

 upon the walks of nearly all of the Atlantic coast and many of 

 the inland cities. 



North ^iver bluestone is a fine-grained compact sandstone, ex- 

 tremely hard and wearing upon a tool, and is made up of micro- 

 scopic crystals of the sharpest sand. It abounds in inexhaustible 



