%8 



NA TORE 



[yune 28, 1877 



fat of some kind was, however, absolutely necessary to 

 supply the system with heat, and combining the former 

 in this way with pea-tlour was a most happy idea. The 

 pea-sausage might either be eiten cold in the condition 

 in which it was issued to the soldier, or made into a sort 

 of soup with boiling water. 



And here we may mention a circumstance of especial 

 interest to scientific men, in connection w'.lh the manu- 

 facture of this new food. The Erbswurst V13.S produced 

 in such huge quantities, that it was found to be absolutely 

 impossible to procure a suflicient number of skins and 

 bladders to contain the preparation. All sorts of substi- 

 tutes were tried. Oiled fabric and vegetable parchment, 

 as well as other waterproof materials were essayed in 

 vain, for an envelope was required which was elastic and 

 unaffected by boiling water. At last a chemist stepped in 

 and solved the problem. He proposed the use of gelatine 

 mixed with bichromate of potash, or in other words the 

 process employed by photographers now-a-days in pro- 

 ducing what are termed carbon-prints. It is well known 

 that if a solution of gelatine and bichromate of potash is 

 spread upon paper and e.xposed to light, the gelatine be- 

 comes insoluble in a very short time, and will effectually 

 resist the action of cold or hot water to dissolve it, this 

 principle being in fact that upon which photographic prints 

 are produced, the portions of a surface which refuse to 

 wash away, constituting a picture. This same mixture 

 was used for treating the sausages. The food was pressed 

 into proper shapes and then dipped into the bichromated 

 gelatine solution, after which it was exposed to daylight 

 for a couple of hours, when the gelatine formed a tough 

 skin around it, capable of being boiled with impunity. 



Turning to the British soldier we find in him the most 

 daintily fed of all warriors, unless it was the .Servian in 

 last year's war. If we are to believe special correspond- 

 ents, the rations of the Servian soldiers were almost 

 unlimited, and furnished a striking contrast to the fare of 

 the frugal Turks. An oka, or 2i lbs. of brown bread, half an 

 oka of fresh meat, together with a modicum of rice, meal, 

 and paprika was the daily ration, the last-named comes- 

 tible being employed for miking soup ; the pot-au-feit, so 

 we were assured, was to be found simmering in camp from 

 early morn till noon, and then only came off to make room 

 for the coffee kettle. The Servian soldiery, too, usually 

 had a ration of spirits called slivovitch, or plum brandy, 

 allowed them, and yet withal they had no such povvers of 

 endurance as the maize-fed Turks. In this country a 

 soldier's ration is three quarters of a pound of meat and 

 one pound of bread, which is supplemented in war time 

 by a quarter of a pound of cheese, together with cocoa or 

 tea. sugar, &c. In the Crimea there was a standing order 

 that hot tea should always be kept ready when practicable, 

 so that the men might partake of it at any time, and in the 

 Abyssinian and Ashantee campaigns the camps were 

 never broken up of a morning before the troops had been 

 supplied with a cup of warm coffee for breakfast. Tea 

 and coffee exercise the same effect upon the system as 

 wine and spirits, but their stimulative action is less 

 marked, and our commanding officers are enjoined never 

 to issue a ration of spirit except under extraordinary 

 circumstances, as in the case of distressing marches, or 

 when troops are engaged in the trenches or up at the 

 front. And yet, as we have said, with this apparently liberal 



feeding, our men do not receive so much actual nou- 

 rishment or nitrogenous matter as the German soldier, 

 whose mainstay is the 2lb. loaf of black bread he receives 

 daily. The meat, bread, sugar, &c., received by our 

 soldiers in the Crimea yielded, we are told by the Royal 

 Co.nmissioners, but 2352 oz. of nutritive principle, while 

 Germany gives her soldiers 32'95 oz., which is still 

 further increased when the latter are fed on such highly 

 nitrogenous diet as the pea-sausage. The Turks, po^r 

 as their food may seem to us, probably derive as much 

 nutriment from it as English troops from their bread, meat, 

 and cocoa, for weight for weight, the Turkish rations 

 contain more nitrogenous matter. If, too, their meal is 

 what is termed "whole flour" it will, since it includes 

 the husk, contain more nitrogen still, and, like oatmeal, be 

 one of the most generous foods known. Our Scotch 

 troops, we fancy, would be little the worse if fed solely on 

 porridge for a time. The reader may remember Lord 

 Elibank's retort on Dr. Johnson's definition of oats as the 

 food of horses in England and of men in Scotland : 

 " Yes," said he, " and where else will you find such 

 horses and such men .'' ' A growing soldier, hard at work 

 all day at gun-drill, or other laborious work, does not buy 

 extra meat when he is hungry, but foregoes his beer at the 

 canteen for another pound loaf, thus approaching his diet 

 very nearly to that of the German warrior, whom wc have 

 shown lives almost entirely on bread and enjoys the 

 most nutritive fare. At the same time it is necessary to 

 bear in mind that the conditions under which a man lives 

 must guide the nature of his food. A man inhabiting a 

 cold climate such as ours, requires more animal food than 

 would be the case if he lived in a country nearer the 

 equator, and British troops, we fear, would loose much 

 of their energy if fed altogether on farinaceous food. 

 But as we have s'.riven to show, it is not always a so- 

 called liberal diet which aflords the soldier the greatest 

 quantity of nutriment. H. Baden Pritchard 



GEIKIE'S '■'PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY" 

 Ekiiwntary Lessons in Physical Geograpliy. By Archibal 

 Geikie, LL.D., F.R.S., Murchison Professor of Geology 

 and Mineralogy in the University of Edinburgh, and 

 Director of the Geological Survey of Scotland. (Lon- 

 don : MacmiUan and Co., 1877.) 

 A S our knowledge of natural phenomena widens and 

 ^^ our insight into the character and mode of ope- 

 ration of the forces which give rise to these phenomena 

 becomes more profound, we are called upon from time 

 to time to take a new survey of the fields of inquiry 

 and to reconsider the principles on which the useful, but 

 necessarily more or less arbitrary, classification of the 

 natural history sciences is made to depend. To instance 

 a notable example, the time-honoured division of the 

 " three kingdoms in nature" has now, by almost universal 

 consent, been abandoned in favour of a more logical 

 grouping of the objects of natural history science 

 depending on the presence or absence in them of the 

 principle of life, and hence has arisen the term biology to 

 include botany and zoology, while mineralogy, released 

 from an unnatural bond, seeks and finds new alliances 

 with those branches of knowledge, crystallography, 

 chemistry, and petrography, with which it has so many 



