32 



THE ELECTRIC LIGHT. 



[1853 



As to the lesser niceties of flavour, this probably depends upon 

 otber odoriferous ingredients not so active ill their nature, or so 

 essential to the leaf as those already mentioned. The leaves of 

 plants, in this respect, are easily affected by a variety of circum- 

 stances, and especially by the nature of the soil the) 7 grow in, and 

 of the manure applied to them. Even to the grosser senses of us 

 Europeans, it is known, for example, that pigs' dung carries its 

 gout into the tobacco raised by its means. But the more refined 

 organs of the Druses and Maronites of Mount Lebanon readily 

 recognise, by the flavour of their tobacco, the kind of manure 

 employed in its cultivation, and esteem, above all others, that 

 which has been aided in its growth by the droppings of the goat. 



But in countries where high duties upon tobacco hold out a 

 temptation to fraud, artificial flavours are given by various forms 

 of adulteration. "Saccharine matter, (molasses, sugar, hone} 7 , 

 &c.,) which is the principal adulterating ingredient, is said to be 

 used both for the purpose of adding to the weight of the tobacco 

 and of rendering it more agreeable. Vegetable leaves, (as those 

 of rhubarb aud the beech), mosses, bran, the sproutings of malt, 

 beet-root dregs, licpiorice, terra japonica, rosin, yellow ochre, 

 fullers' earth, sand, saltpetre, common salt, sal-ammoniac" — such 

 is a list of the substances which have been detected in adulterated 

 tobacco. How many more may be in daily use for the purpose, 

 who can tell ? Is it surprising, therefore, that we should meet 

 with manufa "hired tobaccos possessing a thousand different 

 flavours for which the chemistry of the natural leaf can in no way 

 account ? 



There are two other circumstances in connection with the his- 

 tory of tobacco, which, because of their economical and social 

 bearings, are possessed of much interest. 



First, Every smoker must have observed the quantity of ash 

 he has occasion to empty out of his pipe, or the large nozzle he 

 knocks. off from time to time from the burning end of his cigar. 

 This incombustible part is equal to one-fourth or one-fifth of the 

 whole weight of the dried leaf, and consists of earthy or mineral 

 matter which the tobacco plant has drawn from the soil on which 

 it has grown. Every ton, when dried, of the tobacco leaf which 

 is gathered, carries off, therefore, from four to five hundred 

 weight of this mineral-matter from the soil. And as the sub- 

 stances of which the mineral matter consists are among those 

 whi:h are at once mo-t necessary to vegetation, and least abun- 

 dant even in fertile soils, it will readily be understood that the 

 frequent growth and removal of tobacco from the same field must 

 gradually affect its fertility, and sooner or later exhaust it. 



It has been, and still is, to a great extent, the misfortune of 

 many tobacco-growing regions, that this simple deduction was 

 unknown and unheeded. The culture has been continued year 

 after year upon virgin soils, till the best and richest were at last 

 wearied and worn out, and patches of deserted wilderness are at 

 length seen where tobacco plantations formerly extended and 

 flourished. Upon the Atlantic borders of the United States of 

 America, the best known modem instances of such exhausting 

 culture are to be fond. It is one of the triumphs of the chemis- 

 try of this century, that it has ascertained what the land loses by 

 such imprudent treatment — what is the cause, therefore, of the 

 barrenness that befalls it, and by what new management its 

 ancient fertility may be again restored. 



Second, It is melancholy to think that the- gratification of this 

 narcotic instinct of man should in some countries — and espeeialh 7 

 in North America, Cuba and Brazil — have become a source of 

 human misery in its most aggravated forms. It was lono- ago 

 remarked of the tobacco culture by President Jefferson, in his 

 j\ T otes on Virginia, that " it is a culture productive of infinite 

 wretche Iness. Those employed in it are in a continued state of 



exertion beyond the powers of nature to support. Little food of 

 any kind is raised by them, so that the men and animals on these 

 farms are badly fed, and the earth is rapidly impoverished." 

 But these words do not convey to the English reader a complete 

 idea of the misery they allude to. The men employed in the 

 culture, who suffer the " infinite Wretchedness," are the slaves on 

 the plantations. And it is melancholy, as we have said, to think 

 that the gratification of the passion for tobacco should not only 

 have been an early stimulus to the extension of slavery in the 

 United States, but should continue still to be one of the props by 

 which it is sustained. The exports of tobacco from the United 

 States in the year ending June 1850, were valued at ten millions 

 of dollars. This sum European smokers pay for the maintenance 

 of" slavery in these states, besides what they contribute for the 

 same purpose to Cuba and Brazil. The practice of smoking is in 

 itself, we believe, neither a moral nor a social evil ; it is merely 

 the gratification of a natural anil universal, as it is an innocent 

 instinct. Pity that such evils should be permitted to flow from 

 what is in itself so harmless ! 



% (To be continued)' 



The Electric Light. 



Suggestions for some new methods for its management by 

 Christopher Binks, Esq. 



In the ordinary arrangements of the carbon electrodes used 

 for producing light by the passage through them of a current 

 of voltaic electricity, two rods or peucils of solid charcoal are 

 employed, and these, held vertically, are placed end to end, the 

 straight line formed by thern being broken at the point where 

 the two ends meet, between which ends is left a minute interven- 

 ing space, measuring generally from about 5 j- to \ inch, accord- 

 ing to the strength of the passing current of electricity. These reds 

 though net in actual contact at their points, form part of the cir- 

 cuit, connecting together the two poles of the exciting battery ; 

 for the so-called current of electricity passes through the inter- 

 vening space, giving rise, in its passage, to the peculiar phenom- 

 enon of the electric light. So evolved, however, its intensity 

 is in all such arrangements, perpetually varying ; for the 

 quantity of the light varies according to the distance, one from 

 the other of the carbon ends or points, and this distance 

 is continually altering, either through alterations iu the power 

 of the batten 7 , or through the burning away of the carbon by 

 the disintegrating action upon it of the current of clectiieity, or 

 through the transference which continually takes place of particles 

 of the carbon from the one electrode to the other. The result, in 

 most or in all cases hitherto, is the production of a light that is 

 intermittent — the effects of fluctuations in the quantity of light 

 evolved from time to time, and which no contrivance that has yet 

 been applied with a view to the maintaining of the carbon points 

 at a fixed distance, under the existing conditions of change pecu- 

 liar to the elements engaged, has hitherto been able to obviate. 



I would suggest, firstly, in place of forming each electrode 

 (whether made of carbon or any other material) of a single rod 

 or pencil, as heretofore, that it be formed of two, three, four, or 

 more separate rods or pencils, and, consequently, have as many 

 light-emanating points as there are separate rods, and that these 

 rods be placed close together, and all act together at their points, 

 as a common centre of emanation for the production of one light; 

 so that the chances of perceptible variations m the amount, and 

 in the effects of the light evolved, shall be reduced in the propor- 

 tion to the number of points in the electrode from which the 

 light emanates, and that are brought into action at one and the 

 same time. 



This kind of arrangement I would call a comp>ound electrode. 

 A negative compound electrode may consist, for example, of two 



