SCIENCE LETTER FROM PARIS. 543 



There every practitioner on recognizing a patient attacked with fever is bound to 

 advise the Health Office, which at once sends its inspector to report on the situ- 

 ation, with summary powers to carry the patient to the hospital ; to disinfect the 

 apartment occupied, the bed, clothing, apparel, etc. ; to examine the sewage, 

 cleanliness of the premises, etc., and to remedy, on the moment, all defects, mak- 

 ing the proprietor pay if his responsibility be proved. And the result? A dim- 

 inution of I GO per cent in the deaths from zymotic diseases. Up to the present 

 it was concluded that a dry season was favorable to an outbreak of typhus. 

 Never had an autumn been wetter than the present, and never was the disease 

 more prevalent. In some of the city barracks the occupants of one wing of the 

 building only were attacked; in the case of another barracks, the cavalry alone 

 suffered. The Sanitary Committee of the municipality in its instructions suggest 

 that the patients be placed in the middle of the room, and the members of the family 

 kept away; that disinfectants be employed, etc. But the fever has its home in 

 families that have but one room, and not a farthing to buy medicine or food, let 

 alone disinfectants. The 250,000 night-soil reservoirs, as already alluded to, and 

 which are presumed to be " hermetically closed " till emptied once or twice a 

 year, until superseded by some other plan, must remain a permanent nursery for 

 the seeds of infectious diseases. 



The early-morn comet that has been our visitor so long, has given birth to a 

 daughter, as M. Schmidt, of Athens, has discovered. One morning a little comet 

 was observed running alongside the big one — the mother. The little stranger has 

 been produced by segmentation ; the two stars have the appearance to march to- 

 gether, but the mother has changed in form ; the noyau from being spherical has 

 become elongated. It Is not the first occasion that our world has witnessed the 

 birth of a star. The Biela comet in 1846 split into two. Discovered in 1826 

 by Biela, it returned later, in six years and nine months, as was accurately pre- 

 dicted. On the 13th of January, 1846, it opened in two, lengthways, and that 

 evening the twins traveled in beauty side by side — two complete comets with inde- 

 pendent heads and tails. A few days later they separated, and by the i oth of Febru- 

 ary they were already 180,000 miles asunder. One lost its tail rapidly and also its 

 briUiancy; by March both were invisible. In 1852, after a punctual revolution 

 of six years and nine months, they reappeared, but distant 1,500,000 miles from 

 each other. Since, nothing has been heard of either. However, it is suspected that 

 the showers of falling stars that so signally marked the year 1872 were the debris 

 of the Biela comets. According to Schiaparelli a swarm of shooting stars follow 

 in space orbits identical with comets, and are simply comets reduced to morsels^- 

 by disintegration. 



Other celestial curiosity, the planets Mars and Venus, are those 4hat have the 

 greatest degree of relationship with our earth. All planets would seem to pass 

 through the same series of transformations, their actual differences being due to 

 their state of evolution. Thus Venus would be almost akin, in point of evolu- 

 tion, to the earth ; while, on the contrary. Mars would be more advanced. Spec- 



