132 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XVI II. No. 448 



1880 was about forty-eight per cent. The census may be 

 faulty, but I take it that we shall have to admit that growth 

 of the cities has been much more rapid than that of the 

 country. This being so, it still further tends to increase the 

 burdens of those classes who can least easily conceal their 

 property under a general-property tax system, viz., the far- 

 mers. 



The rapid growth of the cities, in many cases at the ex- 

 pense of the country, tends, moreover, to leave a continually 

 increasing burden of expense upon the shoulders of the rural 

 districts, which tends to overburden the latter still more. 



Under our system of taxation, then, the farmer, using that 

 term for the country districts in general, is at a disadvantage 

 in several respects. In the first place, as we have seen, our 

 method of obtaining public revenue by taxation touches 

 chiefly that form of property which is visible and can not 

 escape the eye of the tax assesssor or tax collector; while 

 that which can be hidden, or known only by a general sys- 

 tem of registry, such as mortgages, bonds, stocks, etc., prac- 

 tically escapes taxation altogether. Now the farmer has a 

 larger proportion of his property in this form than any other 

 class. If he is thrifty he can bay more land, put up abetter 

 class of buildings, get a better breed of stock, use better ma- 

 chinery, etc. Every improvement in his condition, in a 

 word, reflects itself in something visible about the farm, and 

 thus subjects him to heavier taxation. It is very difPerent 

 with the inhabitants of the cities. A wealthy man, of course, 

 occupies as a rule a better house in a dearer neighborhood 

 than a poor man, and to that extent pays more taxes; but as 

 his wealth increases, his house does not necessarily grow 

 better. His scale of living may not increase proportionately. 

 A millionaire is quite as likely to live on as great a scale as 

 one who has ten times the property. As a result, the visible 

 forms of wealth do not increase as rapidly in the case of the 

 wealthy city man as in the case of the country farmer. More 

 and more of the property takes the form of mortgages, bank, 

 railroad, and manufacturing stock, and bonds. All these 

 things escape the eye of the tax assessor, and to that extent 

 relatively lighten the burden of the wealthier classes. 



(To be continued.) 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



The bacillus of tuberculosis, says Nature, is often to be found 

 in places lived in by consumptives. Herr Prausnitz has lately 

 collected the dust in various compartments of trains which often 

 convey patients from Berlin to Meran, and inoculated a number 

 of guinea-pigs with it. Two out of five compartments so exam- 

 ined were found to contain the bacillus; the dust of one rendered 

 three out of four guinea-pigs tuberculous, that of the other, two. 

 The animals were killed after ten to twelve weeks, but in no case 

 was the disease very advanced ; the author supposes the number 

 of bacilli to have been but small. The facts, however, seem to 

 point to the necessity of disinfection of such railway carriages, 

 especially the carpets or mats. 



— Under the will of Dr. Fothergill (1831), funds were bequeathed 

 to the Society of Arts, London, for the offer of medals for subjects, 

 in the first instance, relating to the prevention of fire. The soci- 

 ety now offers a gold medal or £30 for the best invention having 

 for its object the prevention or extinction of fires in theatres or 

 other places of public amusement. In cases where the invention 

 is in actual use, reference should be made to places whex-e it could 

 be inspected. A full description of the invention, accompanied 

 by such drawings or models as are necessary for its elucidation, 

 must be sent in on or before the 31st of December, 1891, to the 

 secretary of the Society of Arts, John Street, Adelphi, London. 

 The council reserve the right of withholding the prize, in case there 

 is nothing, in their opinion, deserving the award, or sufiiciently 

 complying with the conditions sent in for competition. 



— To the usual well-known ways of stimulating muscles to 

 contraction, viz., electrical, thermal, mechanical, and chemical, 

 M. DArsonval has recently added that by means of light {Nature, 

 Aug. 20). He could not, indeed, get any contraction in a fresh 

 frog-muscle, when he suddenly threw bright light on it in a dark 

 chamber; but having first in darkness stimulated a muscle with 

 induction currents too weak to give a visible effect, and then sud- 

 denly illuminated the muscle with an arc light, the muscle 

 showed slight tremulation. Not thinking this conclusive, how- 

 ever, M. DArsonval attached a muscle to the middle of a piece of 

 skin stretched on a funnel, and connected the tube of the funnel, 

 by means of a piece of india-rubber tube, with the ear. The mus- 

 cle being now subjected to intense intermittent light, he heard a 

 tone corresponding to the period of illumination, and this ceased 

 when the muscle was killed with heat. Arc light was used, which 

 was concentrated by a lens and passed through an alum-solution 

 to stop the heat rays. 



— From a recent issue of Nature we learn that M. Raspail has 

 lately called attention in the Zoological Society of France to the 

 serious diminution of birds in that country through destruction of 

 their nests. Some insectivorous species are becoming very rare, 

 while the ravages x)f parasites on useful plants are extending. 

 Boys, of course, do a great deal of the mischief; and of the vari- 

 ous animals which attack nests (the squirrel, the hedgehog, the 

 dormouse, the magpie, etc.), M. Raspail regards the cat as the 

 worst offender. On a recently wooded property of about seven 

 acres he observed last year as follows : Out of thirty-seven nests, 

 carefully watched, only eight succeeded; twenty-nine were de- 

 stroyed, fourteen of these by the cat, though effort had been 

 made to ward off this insatiable marauder. On a large property 

 in the centre of a village the owner had about eighty cats annu- 

 ally caught in traps. The place having lately changed hands, the 

 gardeners estimate that more than one hundred nests were de- 

 stroyed last year, three-fourths of these by cats. M. Raspail ad- 

 vocates a rigorous application of the law for protection of insec- 

 tivorous species, the disqualification of the cat as a domestic 

 animal, and the giving of prizes to foresters and others for de- 

 struction of all animals which prey on eggs and young in the 

 nest. 



— Tobacco fermentation, a very essential process, is brought 

 about by firmly packing ripe tobacco in large quantities. Nature 

 states that it had been generally supposed that the fermentation 

 is of purely chemical nature, but Herr Suchsland, of the German 

 Botanical Society, finds that a fungus is concerned in it. In all 

 the tobaccos he examined, he found large quantities of fungi, 

 though of only two or three species. Bacteriaceae were predomi- 

 nant, but Coccacese also occurred. When they were taken and 

 increased by pure cultivation, and added to other kinds of to- 

 bacco, they produced changes of taste and smell which recalled 

 those of their original nutritive base. In cultivation of tobacco 

 in Germany it has been sought to get a good quality, chiefly by 

 ground cultivation and introduction of the best kinds of tobacco. 

 But it is pointed out that failure of the best success may be due 

 to the fact that the more active fermenting fungi of the original 

 country are not brought with the seeds, and the ferments here 

 cannot give such good results. Experiments made with a view 

 to improvement on the lines suggested have apparently proved 

 successful. 



— Experiments in various methods of seeding wheat have been 

 conducted for a series of years at the Ohio Experiment Station, 

 with the following results : In the average of four years' experi- 

 ments, wheat covered one inch or less has produced at the rate of 

 thirty-four bushels per acre, that covered two inches has 4)ro- 

 duced thirty-five bushels, and that covered three inches thirty- 

 four bushels. Judging from a smaller number of experiments it 

 does not seem advisable to sow deeper than three inches. In the 

 average of six years, wheat sown with the roller-press drill has 

 yielded about eight per cent more than that sown with the ordi- 

 nary drill. More or less increase has followed the roller-press in 

 almost every season, but a single trial has given results unfavora- 

 ble to the use of the common roller after seeding. Broadcast 

 wheat has this year yielded about the same as that drilled; but in 



