SCIENCE LETTER FROM PARIS. 97 



and though America be accused of importing the disease, the United States never 

 made larger consignments of ham and pork to France than at present. It was an 

 unsettled point as to whether or not the worm existed in the fat — its natural home 

 being the muscle. M. Chatin, after devoting much attention to the solution of 

 the question, has finished by discerning it in the fat of bacon. 



Some months ago four laborers, employed to look after the city sewers, de- 

 scended by the trap door into a main situated on the Boulevard de Rochechouart. 

 Fifteen minutes later they were brought up suffocated. Inquiry demonstrated that 

 they were victims of the reprehensible practice of the drivers of the night-soil 

 carts, emptying the liquid stuff into the sewers — an act severely prohibited. It 

 was alleged by the Night Soil Company that death could not have resulted from 

 such a cause, admitting even that the carters had been guilty. The authorities 

 directed Messrs. Boutney and Descourt to investigate the matter. They have 

 just made known the result. The night soil liquid disengages poisonous gases, 

 even when disinfected with sulphate of copper They placed Guinea pigs in a 

 cage and submitted them to the gases emanating from a night-soil reservoir. The 

 animals died within a period of five seconds and three minutes. The experiment 

 was repeated on a large dog. After two minutes it fell on its side ; another min- 

 ute and it expired. The capacity of the cage in which the Guinea pigs were 

 enclosed was 3^ gallons. One quart of liquid was poured inside; the animals 

 expired in five seconds. So much for the unpurified liquid. That disinfected 

 invariably produced death in the space of five minutes. Chemical analysis dem- 

 onstrated that the toxical gases disengaged were sulphuretted hydrogen and sulph- 

 hydrate of ammonia; that the non-disinfected liquid, when shaken, gave off per 

 quart 140 per cent of sulphuretted hydrogen, and the disinfected 40. Further 

 experiments showed that the 200th part of that hydrogen in the air sufficed to 

 suffocate animals ; that a cubic yard of the non-purified and the same quantity of 

 disinfected liquid poisoned respectively twenty-eight and eight cubic yards of air 

 so as to render its respiration mortal. 



In France it is an old woman's remedy to conduct children suffering from 

 whooping cough to breathe the air in the refining chamber of a gas factory. The 

 inspiration of the gas was never known to do good, and Dr. Poincare now asserts 

 that after numerous experiments on animals, he found that their lungs had been 

 profoundly altered by breathing coal gas ; that granulations were produced. 



In the cavern of Lherm, in the department of the Ariege, paleontologists 

 draw their suppUes of bones of carnivorous animals that sought refuge there dur- 

 ing pre-historic times. Bears' heads are very plentiful, and M. Filhol has presented 

 specimens quite different from any race of bears hitherto known. He also con- 

 cludes the white polar bear has come southward and accommodated its habits to 

 the life of other bears. The same cave in question has yielded the fossilized femur 

 of a lion, 18 inches long — proof that the animal must have been of an enormous, 

 size. 



V-7 



