178 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIV. No. 345 



when the bacillus enters the alimentary canal, there must be a degen- 

 erated condition of the tissues before it can find lodgment and fruc- 

 tify ; that to a healthy person, therefore, the danger is perfectly vis- 

 ionary ; that the alimentary canal is the least favorable channel for 

 entrance into the system ; that the disease in these cases was so 

 localized as not to affect the flesh in general ; that, in any case, the 

 danger to health and life must be extremely small, too small to 

 justify the exclusion from the market or destruction of large 

 amounts of good, wholesome food. 



The prosecution pointed out the inherent difficulty of proving, as 

 a matter of fact, and not merely as a matter of opinion, the actual 

 communication of tuberculosis to human beings by the ingestion of 

 the flesh of tuberculous animals ; and adduced evidence that the 

 flesh of animals affected with tuberculosis, more or less, and of- 

 fered for sale for food in Glasgow, is one half per cent in the year. 



In summing up the evidence and the arguments, the court held that 

 whether ingestion be or be not the commonest way in which tuber- 

 culosis is communicated, it must certainly be regarded as one mode 

 of its communication ; except on the footing that the meat was the 

 medium of the transmission of the disease, it Would be unnecessary 

 and wasteful to exclude from the food-supply the carcasses of ani- 

 mals suffering from tuberculosis, however generalized and exten- 

 sive ; but the previously existent practice in Glasgow and else- 

 where of condemning extensively diseased animals, clearly showed 

 that the transmissibility of the disease by ingestion had long been 

 recognized, and the evidence leads to the conclusion that it would 

 not be proper to trust to cooking as a sufficient protection ; that 

 every animal suffering from tuberculosis, hovi^ever limited in degree 

 or apparently in locality, probably ought to be condemned, and that 

 such condemnation would not cause a loss of food of more than 

 one-quarter of one per cent ; but, in the present instances, the dis- 

 ease, having extended to the lympathic glands, was undoubtedly 

 generalized. 



The number and character of the witnesses, the clearness of 

 statement of the counsel, the respectability of the court, and the 

 Scotch reputation for shrewd, practical common sense, give the 

 report and result of this trial a considerable interest, as bearing 

 upon the present position of science and practice in regard to the 

 questions involved. Should it ultimately appear, as we see by the 

 published abstract of a paper, to be read at the approaching meet- 

 ing of the Association of American Physicians, Dr. H. C. Ernst 

 thinks he is in a position to prove, that the milk from a cow suffer- 

 ing from tuberculosis is dangerous as an article of food, no matter 

 where the pathological change may be situated, and that Koch's 

 limitation of the danger to tuberculosis of the lacteal tract was too 

 restricted, then the position of those who condemn the meat, even 

 of locally infected animals, would be greatly strengthened. 



The Air in Edinburgh Theatres. — An interesting account 

 has been given by Mr. Cosmo J. Burton of the amount of carbonic 

 acid and organic matter in Theatre Royal and Royal Lyceum Thea- 

 tre in Edinburgh. At the time of the experiments the theatres 

 were by no means full ; nevertheless, the temperature was from ten 

 to fifteen degrees above that recorded immediately before the 

 houses were opened, while carbonic acid was multiplied from three 

 to five times. Mr. Burton remarks, as quoted by the Lancet, that 

 the vitiation of the air proceeds with extraordinary rapidity at first, 

 but the rate of change soon decreases, till towards the end of the 

 performance the air becomes little or no worse, and, indeed, in a 

 few instances it appeared to slightly improve. The atmosphere of 

 all parts of the theatre was not equally vitiated. The air of the 

 gallery was considerably worse than that of any other part of the 

 house ; the amphitheatre, dress circle, and pit did not come in the 

 same order as to degree of impurity in the experiments, but the pit 

 was always worse than the dress circle. The late Dr. Parkes stated 

 that headache and vertigo are produced when the amount of car- 

 bonic acid in the air of respiration is not more than from fifteen to 

 thirty volumes per ten thousand, and the experience of some thea- 

 tres leads to the suspicion that Mr. Burton's results are not special 

 to Edinburgh. The facts as to all theatres ought to be known ; 

 for the public had much better lose an evening's enjoyment than 

 submit to the enforced inhalation of a polluted atmosphere for a 

 number of hours. 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



It is stated by the Scientific American that carefully repeated 

 experiments made by an EngHsh navigator at Santander, on the 

 north coast of Spain, showed the crest of the sea waves in a pro- 

 longed and heavy gale of wind to be forty-two feet high ; and al- 

 lowing the same for the depth between the waves, would make the 

 height eighty-four feet from crest to base. The length from crest 

 to crest WBS found to be three hundred and eighty-six feet. Other 

 estimates of the waves in the South Atlantic during great storms 

 give a height of fifty feet for the crests and four hundred feet for 

 length. In the North Sea the height of crest seldom exceeds ten 

 feet and the length one hundred and fifty feet. 



— At a recent meeting of the Paris Academy of Sciences, M. 

 Benger described the curious effects of an electric discharge which 

 struck a silvered mirror during a terrific thunderstorm near 

 Prague, on June 9, 1889. The mirror shows over ten points at 

 which the electric fluid penetrated through its gilded frame, vola- 

 tilizing and transferring the gold to the anterior face of the glass, 

 while on the opposite side the volatilization of the silver coating 

 produced the most beautiful electric figures. These figures show 

 that there occurred repeated and successive discharges, as also in- 

 dicated by recent photographs of flashes taken with the oscillating 

 camera obscura. 



— In a recent letter from Paris to the Engineering and Mining 

 Journal, Mr. George F. Kunz says it may be interesting to know 

 that the following minerals are exhibited in and are for sale in 

 quantity in the Norwegian section of the Paris Exposition at the 

 following rates per pound : Molybdenite, 32 cents ; Gadolinite, 

 $2.54; Zircon, $1.27 ; Cerite, 32 cents ; Orthite, 13 cents; Rutile, 

 20 cents; Thorite, S10.54; Yttrotitanite, 20 cents; Columbite, 94 

 cents. In reference to the occurrence and the use of vanadic and 

 molybdic acids, both of these acids have until recently been con- 

 sidered rare. Since they, however, replace phosphoric acid in the 

 lead ores of New Mexico and Arizona in the minerals wulfenite, 

 vanadinite, etc., which exist there in quantities, they can be ob- 

 tained at much less cost than they could before. 



— " The great development in electricity will be, I am firmly con- 

 vinced," said Mr. Edison to an interviewer in Paris, " in discovering 

 a more economical process of producing it. At present we only 

 get from coal consumed about four or five per cent of its latent 

 electricity. The rest is wasted in heating water, expanding steam, 

 pushing pistons, turning wheels, and finally causing a dynamo-ma- 

 chine to operate. A process will ultimately be found for extracting 

 ninety to ninety-five per cent of the latent electricity directly from 

 the coal. Then steam engines will be abolished, and that day is 

 not far off now. Already we can get electricity direct from coal to 

 the amount of ninety per cent, but only for experimental purposes. 

 When I was on shipboard coming over I used to sit on deck by 

 the hour and watch the waves. It made me positively savage to 

 think of all that power going to waste. But we'll chain it up one 

 of these days, along with Niagara Falls and the winds. That will 

 be the electric millennium." 



— It is stated in the Metallarbeiier that iron can be coppered 

 by dipping it into melted copper, the surface of which is protected 

 by a melted layer of cryolite and phosphoric acid, the articles to be 

 thus treated being heated at the same temperature as the melted 

 copper. Another process consists in dipping the articles into a 

 melted mixture of one part of chloride or fluorine of copper, five or 

 six parts of cryolite, and a little chloride of barium. If the article, 

 when immersed, is connected with the negative pole of a battery, 

 the process is hastened. A third method consists in dipping the 

 articles in a solution of oxalate of copper and bicarbonate of soda, 

 dissolved in ten or fifteen parts of water, acidified with organic 

 gas. 



— If London is the metropolis of the land of fogs, there is much 

 consolation to be found in the fact that in spite of its smoke and 

 its fogs it is not only one of the healthiest cities in the world, but 

 is growing healthier every year. According to the official statistics 

 for the quarter ending June last, as stated by a leading London 

 newspaper, the annual deaths are only at the rate of sixteen per 

 thousand. If some overcrowded and notoriously unhealthy dis- 



