40 



SCIENCE. 



[YOL. VI., No. 127. 



details. The reader is not left to lose his way 

 among a bewildering array of traps, vents, and 

 fixtures of every possible variety of style and 

 shape. The writer addresses these chapters, 

 not to plumbers, architects, or engineers, but, 

 as he says, to ' ' the limited class who are willing 

 to learn, and with whom a promising sugges- 

 tion becomes a fruitful germ ; to the few who 

 will agree with their teachings ; and to the more 

 who will take their propositions into earnest 

 consideration, without 

 the intention, and often 

 without the result, of 

 agreeing with them." 



If the wise counsel 

 offered in this volume 

 were generally complied 

 with, diphtheria, typhoid, 

 and other filth-diseases 

 would undoubtedly be re- 

 duced to a minimum, 

 and the death-rate would 

 show a corresponding im- 

 provement. 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



If the air carries infec- 

 tious germs, it certainly 

 would be well to filter it 

 before inhaling. We repro- 

 duce from Science et nature 

 a cut showing a French phy- 

 sician of the time of the pesti- 

 lence of Marseilles (1720-21) 

 on his round of visits. He is 

 incased in an armor con- 

 sisting of a short morocco 

 gown, a helmet of the same 

 material, and a nose stuffed 

 with aromatics, which, not- 

 withstanding its being a doc- 

 tor's nose, would prove an 

 enlivening feature at a car- 

 nival. Did the doctors touch 

 their patients only with the 



end of a stick ? The illustration seems to indicate 

 as much. 



— The conductor of the Cartographic institute, 

 Hamburg, Herr L. Friedrichsen, writes thus concern- 

 ing the limits of the German possessions in West 

 Africa: " The Mahin district on the Gulf of Benin, 

 between Lagos and the mouth of the Niger, settled 

 by the Hamburg firm of G. L. Gaiser, has not yet 

 been placed under German protection. The coast 

 from Jaboo to Old Calabar will, in my opinion, be in 

 future regarded as under British protection, but has 

 not hitherto been ofiicially placed under any Euro- 

 pean power. The frontier of the German Cameroon 

 begins with the Ethiopian cataract on the Great 



A FRENCH DOCTOR OF THE OLD SCHOOL 



River lying from there in a south-westerly direction, 

 to the sources of the Eio del Rey, following the right 

 bank of this river to the coast, then the coast-line 

 in a south-easterly direction to the river Behuwe, 

 excluding the town and neighborhood of Victoria as 

 British, as well as the island of Malimba. The 

 latter, as well as the whole coast from the river 

 Behuwe to Gumbegumbe, is not described by me in 

 the commissions of foreign officials as without a 

 ruler, but as a tract on which the actual raising of 

 the German flag is yet the subject of diplomatic 

 treaty. The German protec- 

 torate in south-west Africa 

 begins with 18° south lati- 

 tude, not with Cape Frio." 



— Prior to 1850, there were 

 no effectual laws in England 

 to regulate the number of 

 hours of work per day for 

 children and women: conse- 

 quently they were in many 

 places obliged to work from 

 fifteen to sixteen hours 

 daily. Certain laws had 

 been passed, but they were 

 so loosely drawn up that 

 they were easily evaded. 

 After 1850, practical laws 

 were passed at frequent in- 

 tervals, to protect the people 

 in various kinds of industry, 

 and ten hours and a half 

 were made the extreme limit 

 of work. A. Ollendorff has 

 studied the mortality statis- 

 tics of England for a series 

 of years before and after 

 1850, and he finds that the 

 mortality of women and 

 children in manufacturing 

 towns has notably dimin- 

 ished since these protective 

 laws came in force. 



— The Oil trade review 

 reports that rich petroleum 

 grounds have been found at 

 Deli, on the east coast of 

 Sumatra. After experimen- 

 tal borings, a well was found at a depth of thirty 

 metres, which yields about three hundred and sixty 

 gallons in an hour. When the last layer of earth was 

 pierced, the oil rose in a strong volume to a height 

 of two metres out of the bore. 



— Reichemberg's system of employing the same 

 wire for telegraphing and for the use of the tele- 

 phone simultaneously, has been tried with great 

 success between Toledo and Madrid. 



— A committee has been formed in Stendal to put 

 up a monument of the late Dr. Gustav Nachtigall, 

 the African explorer and general consul so recently 

 dead. 



