December 3, 1886 ."| 



SCIEN'CE, 



513 



fourth inch in those at the top. Ten wire-rope 

 guys were used to steady the tower. When the 

 test was being raade, the water had reached a 

 height of 227 feet, when a crack api^eared near 

 the bottom, running up about twenty feet, accom- 

 panied by a sharp rending sound. This was fol- 

 lowed instantly by the total shattering of the 

 lower part, and the fall of the tower, large frag- 

 ments of the plates being thrown fifty or sixty 

 feet from the foundation. The scene was visited 

 soon after the disaster by an expert in water-tower 

 construction, who states that " there was a distinct 

 circular impress in the ground, overlapping the 

 base somewhat, which would indicate an almost 

 vertical fall of the upper part of the tower before 

 it toppled over." The Engineering news says that 

 this agrees with other statements made, as well as 

 with the appearance of the wreckage about the 

 base. The utter destruction of the lower part, 

 and the general appearance of the fallen tower, 

 which was broken in two just above the cone, 

 and presented an almost clean square cut below 

 the cone, resembled the sudden smashing of the 

 lower part of a high glass cylinder, and the vertical 

 drop and then toppling over of the upper part. 

 The guys may have had some effect in maintain- 

 ing the structure in a vertical position for a 

 moment after the plates in the low-er part had 

 given way. These plates, it is said, were defective, 

 and could not have stood any considerable test for 

 tensile strength. 



— The exports of printed books from the United 

 Kingdom during the first six months of the current 

 year show an increase in quantity, but a decrease 

 in value. The totals are 54,299 hundredweight, 

 valued at £496,768, as against 52,858 hundred- 

 weight, valued at £516,266, in the corresponding 

 period of last year. 



— A report on the newspapers of the world has 

 recently been laid before the Imperial German diet. 

 Jt would appear that there exist 34,000 newspapers, 

 the total issues of which, during the year, amount 

 to 592,000,000. Of these, 19,000 papers appear in 

 Europe, 12,000 in North America, 775 in Asia, and 

 609 in South America ; 16,500 are in the English 

 language, 7,800 in German, 3,850 in French, and 

 about 100 in Spanish. 



— It will be remembered that Francis R. Brooks, 

 formerly a student at Harvard, commenced suit 

 against* the authorities of that university to recover 

 fifty thousand dollars damages for injuries which 

 he received at the bursting of a retort containing 

 sulphuric acid, which occurred during some ex- 

 periments being made before the class last spring. 

 The defendants have just filed their answer, in 

 which they charge the plaintiff with lack of care, 



negligence, disobedience, and neglect of instruc- 

 tions. 



— In the winter of 1884 a fatal case of typhoid- 

 fever occurred in Brooklyn in a house the plumb- 

 ing of which was in a defective condition. The 

 widow of the deceased has commenced suit against 

 the owner of the house to recover five thousand 

 dollars for the loss of her husband, on the ground 

 that the disease was contracted from the sewer 

 through the defective house-drains. 



— Dr. Hesse of Leipzig finds that bakers are 

 especially liable to suffer from decayed teeth, and 

 explains it by the lodgement of the dust from the 

 flour in the teeth, where it undergoes acid fermen- 

 tation. 



— Dr. Foster Pratt, in the Medical record, 

 estimates that our foreign-born population fur- 

 nishes the great proportion of our criminal and 

 diseased population. In 1850 they constituted one- 

 tenth of the population, and furnished one-seventh 

 of the insane ; in 1880 they formed one-seventh of 

 the population, and furnished one-thu-d of the in- 

 sane. The pi-oportion of msane to the sane among 

 natives, in 1880, was 1 to 662 ; among foreign-born, 

 1 to 250. He considers that the country is being 

 loaded down with the defective classes of Europe, 

 and believes that the matter is of so much impor- 

 tance as to demand serious attention. 



— Koch's museum of hygiene in Berlin has 

 been opened. 



— One of the methods employed for the detec- 

 tion of defects in the sewer-pipes of houses is by 

 introducing the oil of peppermint, diluted with 

 water, into the j)ipes, preferably on the roof of 

 the house, where the soil or waste pipes terminate, 

 and to search within the house for the odor of the 

 peppermint, which will be detected at or near the 

 point where the defect exists. The Sanitary engi- 

 neer figures and describes an apparatus consisting 

 of a receiver, a rubber ball or bellows, and rub- 

 ber tubing, by means of wliich the test solution 

 can be injected into the waste-pipes of the house 

 in which defects are suspected to exist. *Eow 

 this works practically we do not know, but it cer- 

 tainly has some advantages over the old method, 

 for, as is often the case, the pipes have no open- 

 ing at the roof, or other convenient place, into 

 which the solution can be poured. The tubing of 

 the apparatus we here refer to can be passed into 

 th soil-pipe through the trap, and the peppermint 

 then injected. 



— Cholera, whose presence in Htmgary we had 

 occasion to chronicle some time ago, appears to be 

 still raging in that and neighboring countries. 

 But one case has, so far as is announced, occurred 

 in Vienna ; but of its true nature there is no 



