Title: Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884
Author: Various
Language: English
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Scientific American Supplement No. 458



NEW YORK, OCTOBER 11, 1884

Scientific American Supplement. Vol. XVIII, No. 458.

Scientific American established 1845

Scientific American Supplement, $5 a year.

Scientific American and Supplement, $7 a year.



TABLE OF CONTENTS.

I.    CHEMISTRY AND METALLURGY.--Chemical Nature of Starch
      Grains.

      The Amalgamation of Silver Ores.--Description of the Francke
      tina, or vat process for amalgamation of silver ores.--By E.P.
      RATHBONE.--6 figures.

      Interesting Facts about Platinum.--Draw stones used for drawing
      wire of precious metals.

II.   ENGINEERING, MINING, ETC.--Modern Locomotive Practice.--Paper
      read before the Civil and Mechanical Engineers' Society.--By
      H. MICHELL WHITLEY--10 figures.

      New Screw Steam Collier, Frostburg.--1 figure.

      Destruction of the Tardes Viaduct by Wind.--With engraving.

      Joy's Reversing and Expansion Valve Gear.--1 figure.

      The Steam Bell for Locomotives.--2 figures.

      Diamond Mining in Brazil.--With engravings showing the dam
      on the Ribeirao Inferno at Portao de Ferro, and the arrangement
      of the machinery.

III.  ELECTRICITY, ETC.--The Frankfort and Offenbach Electric
      Railway.--With 3 engravings.

      Possibilities of the Telephone.--Its use by vessels at sea.

      Pyrometers.--The inventions of Siemens and others.

IV.   ARCHÆOLOGY.--The Cay Monument at Uxmal.--Discovered by
      Dr. Le Plongeon on June 1, 1881.--With engraving.

V.    ASTRONOMY.--The Temperature of the Solar Surface Corresponding
      with the Temperature Transmitted to the Sun Motor.--By
      J. ERICSSON.--With 2 engravings of the sun motor.

VI.   HORTICULTURE.--Halesia Hispida, a Hardy Shrub.--With engraving.

      Windflowers or Anemone.--With engraving.

VII.  MEDICINE, HYGIENE. ETC.--What we Really Know about
      Asiatic Cholera.--By J.C. PETERS, M.D.

      Dr. Koch on the Cholera.

      Malaria.--The natural production of malaria and the means of
      making malarial countries healthier.--By C.T. CRUDELI, of Rome.

      Story of Lieut. Greely's Recovery.--Treatment by Surgeon
      Green.

VIII. MISCELLANEOUS.--Bayle's New Lamp Chimney.--With engraving.

      Lieut. Greely before the British Association.

       *       *       *       *       *



THE FRANKFORT AND OFFENBACH ELECTRIC RAILWAY.


The electric railway recently set in operation between Frankfort and
Offenbach furnishes an occasion for studying the question of such roads
anew and from a practical standpoint. For elevated railways Messrs.
Siemens and Halske a long time ago chose rails as current conductors. The
electric railway from Berlin to Lichterfelde and the one at Vienna are in
reality only elevated roads established upon the surface.

Although it is possible to insulate the rails in a satisfactory manner in
the case of an elevated road, the conditions of insulation are not very
favorable where the railway is to be constructed on a level with the
surface. In this case it becomes necessary to dispense with the simple and
cheap arrangement of rails as conductors, and to set up, instead, a number
of poles to support the electric conductors. It is from these latter that
certain devices of peculiar construction take up the current. The simplest
arrangement to be adopted under these circumstances would evidently be to
stretch a wire upon which a traveler would slide--this last named piece
being connected with the locomotive by means of a flexible cord. This
general idea, moreover, has been put in practice by several constructors.

In the Messrs. Siemens Bros.' electric railway that figured at Paris in
1881 the arrangement adopted for taking up the current consisted of two
split tubes from which were suspended two small contact carriages that
communicated with the electric car through the intermedium of flexible
cables. This is the mode of construction that Messrs. Siemens and Halske
have adopted in the railway from Frankfort to Offenbach. While the Paris
road was of an entirely temporary character, that of Frankfort has been
built according to extremely well studied plans, and after much light
having been thrown upon the question of electric traction by three years
of new experiments.

Fig. 1 shows the electric car at the moment of its start from Frankfort,
Fig. 2 shows the arrangement of a turnout, and Fig. 3 gives a general plan
of the electric works.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.--THE ELECTRIC RAILWAY, FRANKFORT, GERMANY.]

The two grooved tubes are suspended from insulators fixed upon external
cast iron supports. As for the conductors, which have their resting points
upon ordinary insulators mounted at the top of the same supports, these
are cables composed of copper and steel. They serve both for leading the
current and carrying the tubes. The same arrangement was used by Messrs.
Siemens and Halske at Vienna in 1883.

The motors, which are of 240 H.P., consist of two coupled steam engines of
the Collmann system. The one shaft in common runs with a velocity of 60
revolutions per minute. Its motion is transmitted by means of ten hempen
cables, 3.5 cm. in diameter. The flywheel, which is 4 m. in diameter,
serves at the same time as a driving pulley. As the pulley mounted upon
the transmitting shaft is only one meter in diameter, it follows that the
shafting has a velocity of 240 revolutions per minute. The steam
generators are of the Ten Brink type, and are seven in number. The normal
pressure in them is four atmospheres. There are at present four
dynamo-electric machines, but sufficient room was provided for four more.
The shafts of the dynamos have a velocity of 600 revolutions per minute.
The pulleys are 60 cm. in diameter, and the width of the driving belts is
18 cm. The dynamos are mounted upon rails so as to permit the tension of
the belting to be regulated when necessity requires it. This arrangement,
which possesses great advantages, had already been adopted in many other
installations.

The electric machines are 2 meters in height. The diameter of the rings is
about 45 cm. and their length is 70 cm. The electric tension of the
dynamos measures 600 volts.

[Illustration: FIG. 2.--TURNOUT TRACK OF THE ELECTRIC RAILWAY, FRANKFORT,
GERMANY.]

The duty varies between 80 and 50 per cent., according to the arrangement
of the cars. The total length of the road is 6,655 meters. Usually, there
are four cars _en route_, and two dynamos serve to create the current.
When the cars are coupled in pairs, three dynamos are used--one of the
machines being always held in reserve. All the dynamos are grouped for
quantity.

[Illustration: FIG. 3.--GENERAL PLAN OF THE ELECTRIC WORKS.]

The company at present owns six closed and five open cars. In the former
there is room for twenty-two persons. The weight of these cars varies
between 3,500 and 4,000 kilos.--_La Lumiere Electrique._

       *       *       *       *       *


By the addition of ten parts of collodion to fifteen of creasote (says the
_Revue de Therap._) a sort of jelly is obtained which is more convenient
to apply to decayed teeth than is creasote in its liquid form.

       *       *       *       *       *



POSSIBILITIES OF THE TELEPHONE.


The meeting of the American Association was one of unusual interest and
importance to the members of Section B. This is to be attributed not only
to the unusually large attendance of American physicists, but also to the
presence of a number of distinguished members of the British Association,
who have contributed to the success of the meetings not only by presenting
papers, but by entering freely into the discussions. In particular the
section was fortunate in having the presence of Sir William Thomson, to
whom more than to any one else we owe the successful operation of the
great ocean cables, and who stands with Helmholtz first among living
physicists. Whenever he entered any of the discussions, all were benefited
by the clearness and suggestiveness of his remarks.

Professor A. Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, read a paper
giving a possible method of communication between ships at sea. The simple
experiment that illustrates the method which he proposed is as follows:
Take a basin of water, introduce into it, at two widely separated points,
the two terminals of a battery circuit which contains an interrupter,
making and breaking the circuit very rapidly. Now at two other points
touch the water with the terminals of a circuit containing a telephone. A
sound will be heard, except when the two telephone terminals touch the
water at points where the potential is the same. In this way the
equipotential lines can easily be picked out. Now to apply this to the
case of a ship at sea: Suppose one ship to be provided with a dynamo
machine generating a powerful current, and let one terminal enter the
water at the prow of the ship, and the other to be carefully insulated,
except at its end, and be trailed behind the ship, making connection with
the sea at a considerable distance from the vessel; and suppose the
current be rapidly made and broken by an interrupter; then the observer on
a second vessel provided with similar terminal conductors to the first,
but having a telephone instead of a dynamo, will be able to detect the
presence of the other vessel even at a considerable distance; and by
suitable modifications the direction of the other vessel may be found.
This conception Professor Bell has actually tried on the Potomac River
with two small boats, and found that at a mile and a quarter, the furthest
distance experimented upon, the sound due to the action of the interrupter
in one boat was distinctly audible in the other. The experiment did not
succeed quite so well in salt water. Professor Trowbridge then mentioned a
method which he had suggested some years ago for telegraphing across the
ocean without a cable, the method having been suggested more for its
interest than with any idea of its ever being put in practice. A conductor
is supposed to be laid from Labrador to Patagonia, ending in the ocean at
those points, and passing through New York, where a dynamo machine is
supposed to be included in the circuit. In Europe a line is to extend from
the north of Scotland to the south of Spain, making connections with the
ocean at those points, and in this circuit is to be included a telephone.
Then any change in the strength of the current in the American line would
produce a corresponding change in current in the European line; and thus
signals could be transmitted. Mr. Preece, of the English postal telegraph,
then gave an account of how such a system had actually been put into
practice in telegraphing between the Isle of Wight and Southampton during
a suspension in the action of the regular cable communication. The
instruments used were a telephone in one circuit, and in the other about
twenty-five Leclanche cells and an interrupter. The sound could then be
heard distinctly; and so communication was kept up until the cable was
again in working order. Of the two lines used in this case, one extended
from the sea at the end of the island near Hurst Castle, through the
length of the island, and entered the sea again at Rye; while the line on
the mainland ran from Hurst Castle, where it was connected with the sea,
through Southampton to Portsmouth, where it again entered the sea. The
distance between the two terminals at Hurst Castle was about one mile,
while that between the terminals at Portsmouth and Rye amounted to six
miles.--_Science._

       *       *       *       *       *



PYROMETERS.


The accurate measurement of very high temperatures is a matter of great
importance, especially with regard to metallurgical operations; but it is
also one of great difficulty. Until recent years the only methods
suggested were to measure the expansion of a given fluid or gas, as in the
air pyrometer; or to measure the contraction of a cone of hard, burnt
clay, as in the Wedgwood pyrometer. Neither of these systems was at all
reliable or satisfactory. Lately, however, other principles have been
introduced with considerable success, and the matter is of so much
interest, not only to the practical manufacturer but also to the
physicist, that a sketch of the chief systems now in use will probably be
acceptable. He will thus be enabled to select the instrument best suited
for the particular purpose he may have in view.

The first real improvement in this direction, as in so many others, is due
to the genius of Sir William Siemens. His first attempt was a calorimetric
pyrometer, in which a mass of copper at the temperature required to be
known is thrown into the water of a calorimeter, and the heat it has
absorbed thus determined. This method, however, is not very reliable, and
was superseded by his well-known electric pyrometer. This rests on the
principle that the electric resistance of metal conductors increases with
the temperature. In the case of platinum, the metal chosen for the
purpose, this increase up to 1,500°C. is very nearly in the exact
proportion of the rise of temperature. The principle is applied in the
following manner: A cylinder of fireclay slides in a metal tube, and has
two platinum wires one one-hundredth of an inch in diameter wound round it
in separate grooves. Their ends are connected at the top to two
conductors, which pass down inside the tube and end in a fireclay plug at
the bottom. The other ends of the wires are connected with a small
platinum coil, which is kept at a constant resistance. A third conductor
starting from the top of the tube passes down through it, and comes out at
the face of the metal plug. The tube is inserted in the medium whose
temperature is to be found, and the electric resistance of the coil is
measured by a differential voltameter. From this it is easy to deduce the
temperature to which the platinum has been raised. This pyrometer is
probably the most widely used at the present time.

Tremeschini's pyrometer is based on a different principle, viz., on the
expansion of a thin plate of platinum, which is heated by a mass of metal
previously raised to the temperature of the medium. The exact arrangements
are difficult to describe without the aid of drawings, but the result is
to measure the difference of temperature between the medium to be tested
and the atmosphere at the position of the instrument. The whole apparatus
is simple, compact, and easy to manage, and its indications appear to be
correct at least up to 800°C.

The Trampler pyrometer is based upon the difference in the coefficients of
dilatation for iron and graphite, that of the latter being about
two-thirds that of the former. There is an iron tube containing a stick of
hard graphite. This is placed in the medium to be examined, and both
lengthen under the heat, but the iron the most of the two. At the top of
the stick of graphite is a metal cap carrying a knife-edge, on which rests
a bent lever pressed down upon it by a light spring. A fine chain attached
to the long arm of this lever is wound upon a small pulley; a larger
pulley on the same axis has wound upon it a second chain, which actuates a
third pulley on the axis of the indicating needle. In this way the
relative dilatation of the graphite is sufficiently magnified to be easily
visible.

A somewhat similar instrument is the Gauntlett pyrometer, which is largely
used in the north of England. Here the instrument is partly of iron,
partly of fireclay, and the difference in the expansion of the two
materials is caused to act by a system of springs upon a needle revolving
upon a dial.

The Ducomet pyrometer is on a very different principle, and only
applicable to rough determinations. It consists of a series of rings made
of alloys which have slightly different melting-points. These are strung
upon a rod, which is pushed into the medium to be measured, and are
pressed together by a spiral spring. As soon as any one of the rings
begins to soften under the heat, it is squeezed together by the pressure,
and, as it melts, it is completely squeezed out and disappears. The rod is
then made to rise by the thickness of the melted ring, and a simple
apparatus shows at any moment the number of rings which have melted, and
therefore the temperature which has been attained. This instrument cannot
be used to follow variations of temperature, but indicates clearly the
moment when a particular temperature is attained. It is of course entirely
dependent on the accuracy with which the melting-points of the various
alloys have been fixed.

Yet another principle is involved in the instrument called the
thalpotasimeter, which may be used either with ether, water, or mercury.
It is based on the principle that the pressure of any saturated vapor
corresponds to its temperature. The instrument consists of a tube of metal
partly filled with liquid, which is exposed to the medium which is to be
measured. A metallic pressure gauge is connected with the tube, and
indicates the pressure existing within it at any moment. By graduating the
face of the gauge when the instrument is at known temperatures, the
temperature can be read off directly from the position of the needle. From
100° to 220°F. ether is the liquid used, from thence to 680° it is water,
and above the latter temperature mercury is employed.

Another class of pyrometers having great promise in the future is based on
what may be called the "water-current" principle. Here the temperature is
determined by noting the amount of heat communicated to a known current of
water circulating in the medium to be observed. The idea, which was due to
M. De Saintignon, has been carried out in its most improved form by M.
Boulier. Here the pyrometer itself consists of a set of tubes one inside
the other, and all inclosed for safety in a large tube of fireclay. The
central tube or pipe brings in the water from a tank above, where it is
maintained at a constant level. The water descends to the bottom of the
instrument, and opens into the end of another small tube called the
explorer (_explorateur_). This tube projects from the fireclay casing into
the medium to be examined, and can be pushed in or out as required. After
circulating through this tube the water rises again in the annular space
between the central pipe and the second pipe. The similar space between
the second pipe and the third pipe is always filled by another and much
larger current of water, which keeps the interior cool. The result is that
no loss of heat is possible in the instrument, and the water in the
central tube merely takes up just so much heat as is conducted into it
through the metal of the explorer. This heat it brings back through a
short India-rubber pipe to a casing containing a thermometer. This
thermometer is immersed in the returning current of water, and records its
temperature. It is graduated by immersing the instrument in known and
constant temperatures, and thus the graduations on the thermometer give at
once the temperature, not of the current of water, but of the medium from
which it has received its heat. In order to render the instrument
perfectly reliable, all that is necessary is that the current of water
should be always perfectly uniform, and this is easily attained by fixing
the size of the outlet once for all, and also the level of water in the
tank. So arranged, the pyrometer works with great regularity, indicating
the least variations of temperature, requiring no sort of attention, and
never suffering injury under the most intense heat; in fact the tube, when
withdrawn from the furnace, is found to be merely warm. If there is any
risk of the instrument getting broken from fall of materials or other
causes, it may be fitted with an ingenious self-acting apparatus shutting
off the supply. For this purpose the water which has passed the
thermometer is made to fall into a funnel hung on the longer arm of a
balanced lever. With an ordinary flow the water stands at a certain height
in the funnel, and, while this is so, the lever remains balanced; but if
from any accident the flow is diminished, the level of the water in the
funnel descends, the other arm of the lever falls, and in doing so
releases two springs, one of which in flying up rings a bell, and the
other by detaching a counterweight closes a cock and stops the supply of
water altogether.

It will be seen that these instruments are not adapted for shifting about
from place to place in order to observe different temperatures, but rather
for following the variations of temperature at one and the same place. For
many purposes this is of great importance. They have been used with great
success in porcelain furnaces, both at the famous manufactories at Sevres
and at another porcelain works in Limoges. From both these establishments
very favorable reports as to their working have been received.--_W.R.
Browne, in Nature_.

       *       *       *       *       *

[NATURE.]



THE TEMPERATURE OF THE SOLAR SURFACE.


I have, during the summer solstice of 1884, carried out an experimental
investigation for the purpose of demonstrating the temperature of the
solar surface corresponding with the temperature transmitted to the sun
motor. Referring to the illustrations previously published, it will be
seen that the cylindrical heater of the sun motor, constructed solely for
the purpose of generating steam or expanding air, is not well adapted for
an exact determination of the amount of surface exposed to the action of
the reflected solar rays. It will be perceived on inspection that only
part of the bottom of the cylindrical heater of the motor is acted upon by
the reflected rays, and that their density diminishes _gradually_ toward
the sides of the vessel; also that owing to the imperfections of the
surface of the reflecting plates the exact course of the terminal rays
cannot be defined. Consequently, the most important point in the
investigation, namely, the area acted upon by the reflected radiant heat,
cannot be accurately determined. I have accordingly constructed an
instrument of large dimensions, a polygonal reflector (see Fig. 1),
composed of a series of inclined mirrors, and provided with a central
heater of conical form, acted upon by the reflected radiation in such a
manner that each point of its surface receives an equal amount of radiant
heat in a given time. The said reflector is contained within two regular
polygonal planes twelve inches apart, each having ninety-six sides, the
perimeter of the upper plane corresponding with a circle of eight feet
diameter, that of the lower plane being six feet. The corresponding sides
of these planes are connected by flat taper mirrors composed of thin glass
silvered on the outside. When the reflector faces the sun at right angles,
each mirror intercepts a pencil of rays of 32.61 square inches section,
hence the entire reflecting surface receives the radiant heat of an
annular sunbeam of 32.61 × 96 = 3,130 square inches section. It should be
observed that the area thus stated is 0.011 less than the total
foreshortened superficies of the ninety-six mirrors if sufficiently wide
to come in perfect contact at the vertices. Fig. 2 represents a transverse
section of the instrument as it appears when facing the sun; the direct
and reflected rays being indicated by dotted lines. The reflector and
conical heater are sustained by a flat hub and eight radial spokes bent
upward toward the ends at an angle of 45°. The hub and spokes are
supported by a vertical pivot, by means of which the operator is enabled
to follow the diurnal motion of the sun, while a horizontal axle, secured
to the upper end of the pivot, and held by appropriate bearings under the
hub, enables him to regulate the inclination to correspond with the
altitude of the luminary. The heater is composed of rolled plate iron
0.017 inch thick, and provided with bead and bottom formed of
non-conducting materials. By means of a screw-plug passing through the
bottom and entering the face of the hub the heater may be applied and
removed in the course of five minutes, an important fact, as will be seen
hereafter. It is scarcely necessary to state that the proportion of the
ends of the conical heater should correspond with the perimeters of the
reflector, hence the diameter of the upper end, at the intersection of the
polygonal plane, should be to that of the lower end as 8 to 6, in order
that every part may be acted upon by reflected rays of equal density. This
condition being fulfilled, the temperature communicated will be perfectly
uniform. A short tube passes through the upper head of the heater, through
which a thermometer is inserted for measuring the internal temperature.
The stem being somewhat less than the bore of the tube, a small opening is
formed by which the necessary equilibrium of pressure will be established
with the external atmosphere. It should be mentioned that the indications
of the thermometer during the experiment have been remarkably prompt, the
bulb being subjected to the joint influence of radiation and convection.

The foregoing particulars, it will be found, furnish all necessary data
for determining with absolute precision the _diffusion_ of rays acting on
the central vessel of the solar pyrometer. But the determination of
temperature which uninterrupted solar radiation is capable of transmitting
to the polygonal reflector calls for a correct knowledge of atmospheric
absorption. Besides, an accurate estimate of the loss of radiant heat
attending the reflection of the rays by the mirrors is indispensable. Let
us consider these points separately.

[Illustration: _Fig._ 2.]

_Atmospheric Absorption._--The principal object of conducting the
investigation during the summer solstice has been the facilities afforded
for determining atmospheric absorption, the sun's zenith distance at noon
being only 17° 12' at New York. The retardation of the sun's rays in
passing through a clear atmosphere obviously depends on the depth
penetrated; hence--neglecting the curvature of the atmospheric limit--the
retardation will be as the secants of the zenith distances. Accordingly,
an observation of the temperature produced by solar radiation at a zenith
distance whose secant is _twice_ that of the secant of 17° 12', viz., 61°
28', determines the minimum atmospheric absorption at New York. The result
of observations conducted during a series of years shows that the maximum
solar intensity at 17° 12' reaches 66.2° F., while at a zenith distance of
61° 28' it is 52.5° F.; hence, minimum atmospheric absorption at New York,
during the summer solstice,

                               13.7
is 66.2°-52.5° = 13.7° F., or ------ = 0.207 of the sun's
                               66.2

radiant energy where the rays enter the terrestrial atmosphere.

[Illustration: CAPTAIN ERICSSON'S SOLAR PYROMETER, ERECTED AT NEW YORK,
1884.]

In order to determine the loss of energy attending the reflection of the
rays by the diagonal mirrors, I have constructed a special apparatus,
which, by means of a parallactic mechanism, faces the sun at right angles
during observations. It consists principally of two small mirrors,
manufactured of the same materials as the reflector, placed diagonally at
right angles to each other; a thermometer being applied between the two,
whose stem points toward the sun. The direct solar rays entering through
perforations of an appropriate shade, and reflected by the inclined
mirrors, act simultaneously on opposite sides of the bulb. The mean result
of repeated trials, all differing but slightly, show that the energy of
the direct solar rays acting on the polygonal reflector is reduced 0.235
before reaching the heater.

In accordance with the previous article, the investigation has been based
on the assumption that _the temperatures produced by radiant heat at given
distances from its source are inversely as the diffusion of the rays at
those distances. In other words, the temperature produced by solar
radiation is as the density of the rays._

It will be remembered that Sir Isaac Newton, in estimating the temperature
to which the comet of 1680 was subjected when nearest to the sun, based
his calculations on the result of his practical observations that the
maximum temperature produced by solar radiation was one-third of that of
boiling water. Modern research shows that the observer of 1680 underrated
solar intensity only 5° for the latitude of London. The distance of the
comet from the center of the sun being to the distance of the earth from
the same as 6 to 1,000, the author of the "Principia" asserted that the
density of the rays was as 1,000² to 6² = 28,000 to 1; hence the comet was
subjected to a temperature of 28,000 × 180°/3 = 1,680,000°, an intensity
exactly "2,000 times greater than that of red-hot iron" at a temperature
of 840°. The distance of the comet from the solar surface being equal to
one-third of the sun's radius, it will be seen that, in accordance with
the Newtonian doctrine, the temperature to which it was subjected
indicated a solar intensity of

4² × 1,680,000
-------------- = 2,986,000° F.
     3

The writer has established the correctness of the assumption that "the
temperature is as the density of the rays," by showing practically that
the _diminution_ of solar temperature (for corresponding zenith distances)
when the earth is in aphelion corresponds with the increased diffusion of
the rays consequent on increased distance from the sun. This practical
demonstration, however, has been questioned on the insufficient ground
that "the eccentricity of the earth's orbit is too small and the
temperature produced by solar radiation too low" to furnish a safe basis
for computations of solar temperature.

In order to meet the objection that the diffusion of the rays in aphelion
do not differ sufficiently, the solar pyrometer has been so arranged that
the density, _i. e._, the diffusion of the reflected rays, can be changed
from a ratio of 1 in 5,040 to that of 1 in 10,241. This has been effected
by employing heaters respectively 10 inches and 20 inches in diameter.
With reference to the "low" solar temperature pointed out, it will be
perceived that the adopted expedient of increasing the density of the rays
without raising the temperature by _converging_ radiation, removes the
objection urged.

Agreeably to the dimensions already specified, the area of the 10-inch
heater acted upon by the reflected solar rays is 331.65 square inches, the
area of the 20-inch heater being 673.9 square inches. The section of the
annular sunbeam whose direct rays act upon the polygonal reflector is
3,130 square inches, as before stated.

Regarding the diffusion of the solar rays during the investigation, the
following demonstration will be readily understood. The area of a sphere
whose radius is equal to the earth's distance from the sun in aphelion
being to the sun's area as 218.1² to 1, while the reflecter of the solar
pyrometer intercepts a sunbeam of 3,130 square inches section, it follows
that the reflector will receive the radiant heat developed by 3,130 /
218.1² = 0.0658 square inch of the solar surface. Hence, as the 10-inch
heater presents an area of 331.65 square inches, we establish the fact
that the reflected solar rays, acting on the same, are _diffused_ in the
ratio of 331.65 to 0.0658, or 331.65 / 0.0658 = 5,040 to 1; the diffusion
of the rays acting on the 20-inch heater being as 673.9 to 0.0658, or
673.9 / 0.0658 = 10,241 to 1.

The atmospheric conditions having proved unfavorable during the
investigation, maximum solar temperature was not recorded. Accordingly,
the heaters of the solar pyrometer did not reach maximum temperature, the
highest indication by the thermometer of the small heater being 336.5°,
that of the large one being 200.5° above the surrounding air. No
compensation will, however, be introduced on account of deficient solar
heat, the intention being to base the computation of solar temperature
solely on the result of observations conducted at New York during the
summer solstice of 1884. It will be noticed that the temperature of the
large heater is proportionally higher than that of the small heater, a
fact showing that the latter, owing to its higher temperature, loses more
heat by radiation and convection than the former. Besides, the rate of
cooling of heated bodies increases more rapidly than the augmentation of
temperature.

The loss occasioned by the imperfect reflection of the mirrors, as before
stated, is 0.235 of the energy transmitted by the direct solar rays acting
on the polygonal reflector, hence the temperature which the solar rays are
capable of imparting to the large heater will be 200.5° × 1.235 =
247.617°; but the energy of the solar rays acting on the _reflector_ is
reduced 0.207 by atmospheric absorption, consequently the ultimate
temperature which the sun's radiant energy is capable of imparting to the
heater is 1.207 × 247.617° = 298.87° F. It is hardly necessary to observe
that this temperature (developed by solar radiation diffused fully
ten-thousandfold) must be regarded as an _actual_ temperature, since a
perfectly transparent atmosphere, and a reflector capable of transmitting
the whole energy of the sun's rays to the heater, would produce the same.

The result of the experimental investigation carried out during the summer
solstice of 1884 may be thus briefly stated. The diffusion of the solar
rays acting on the 20 inch heater being in the ratio of 1 to 10,241, the
temperature of the solar surface cannot be less than 298.87° × 10,241 =
3,060,727° F. This underrated computation must be accepted unless it can
be shown that the temperature produced by radiant heat is not inversely as
the diffusion of the rays. Physicists who question the existence of such
high solar temperature should bear in mind that in consequence of the
great attraction of the solar mass, hydrogen on the sun's surface raised
to a temperature of 4,000° C. will be nearly twice as heavy as hydrogen on
the surface of the earth at ordinary atmospheric temperatures; and that,
owing to the immense depth of the solar atmosphere, its density would be
so enormous at the stated low temperature that the observed rapid
movements within the solar envelope could not possibly take place. It
scarcely needs demonstration to prove that extreme tenuity can alone
account for the extraordinary velocities recorded by observers of solar
phenomena. But _extreme tenuity_ is incompatible with low temperature and
the pressure produced by an atmospheric column probably exceeding 50,000
miles in height subjected to the sun's powerful attraction, diminished
only one-fourth at the stated elevation. These facts warrant the
conclusion that the high temperature established by our investigation is
requisite to prevent undue density of the solar atmosphere.

It is not intended at present to discuss the necessity of tenuity with
reference to the functions of the sun as a radiator; yet it will be proper
to observe that on merely dynamical grounds the enormous density of the
solar envelope which would result from low temperature presents an
unanswerable objection to the assumption of Pouillet, Vicaire,
Sainte-Claire Deville, and other eminent _savants_, that the temperature
of the solar surface does not reach 3,000° C.

J. ERICSSON.

       *       *       *       *       *



CHEMICAL NATURE OF STARCH GRAINS.


Dr. Brukner has contributed to the _Proceedings_ of the Vienna Academy of
Sciences a paper on the "Chemical Nature of the Different Varieties of
Starch," especially in reference to the question whether the granulose of
Nageli, the soluble starch of Jessen, the amylodextrin of W. Nageli, and
the amidulin of Nasse are the same or different substances. A single
experiment will serve to show that under certain conditions a soluble
substance maybe obtained from starch grains.

If dried starch grains are rubbed between two glass plates, the grains
will be seen under the microscope to be fissured, and if then wetted and
filtered, the filtrate will be a perfectly clear liquid showing a strong
starch reaction with iodine. Since no solution is obtained from uninjured
grains, even after soaking for weeks in water, Brukner concludes that the
outer layers of the starch grains form a membrane protecting the interior
soluble layers from the action of the water.

The soluble filtrate from starch paste also contains a substance identical
with granulose. Between the two kinds of starch, the granular and that
contained in paste, there is no chemical but only a physical difference,
depending on the condition of aggregation of their micellæ.

W. Nageli maintains that granulose, or soluble starch, differs from
amylodextrin in the former being precipitated by tannic acid and acetate
of lead, while the latter is not. Brukner fails to confirm this
difference, obtaining a voluminous precipitate with tannic acid and
acetate of lead in the case of both substances. Another difference
maintained by Nageli, that freshly precipitated starch is insoluble,
amylodextrin soluble in water, is also contested; the author finding that
granulose is soluble to a considerable extent in water, not only
immediately after precipitation, but when it has remained for twenty-four
hours under absolute alcohol. Other differences pointed out by W. Nageli,
Brukner also maintains to be non-existent, and he regards amidulin and
amylodextrin as identical. Brucke gave the name erythrogranulose to a
substance nearly related to granulose, but with a stronger affinity for
iodine, and receiving from it not a blue but a red color. Brukner regards
the red color as resulting from a mixture of erythrodextrin, and the
greater solubility of this substance in water.

If a mixture of filtered potato starch paste and erythrodextrin is dried
in a watch glass covered with a thin pellicle of collodion, and a drop of
iodine solution placed on the latter, it penetrates very slowly through
the pellicle, the dextrin becoming first tinctured with red, and the
granulose afterward with blue. If, on the other hand, no erythrodextrin is
used, the diffusion of the iodine causes at once simply a blue coloring.

With regard to the iodine reaction of starch, Brukner contests Sachsse's
view as to the loss of color of iodide of starch at a high temperature. He
shows that the iodide may resist heat, and that the loss of color depends
on the greater attraction of water for iodine as compared with starch, and
the greater solubility of iodine in water at high temperatures.

The different kinds of starch do not take the same tint with the same
quantity of (solid) iodine. That from the potato _arum_ gives a blue, and
that from wheat and rice a violet tint; while the filtrate from starch
paste, from whatever source, always gives a blue color.

       *       *       *       *       *



THE AMALGAMATION OF SILVER ORES.

DESCRIPTION OF THE FRANCKE "TINA" OR VAT PROCESS FOR THE AMALGAMATION OF
SILVER ORES.

[Footnote: Paper read before the Institution of Mechanical Engineers at
the Cardiff meeting.--_Engineering_.]

By Mr. EDGAR P. RATHBONE, of London.


In the year 1882, while on a visit to some of the great silver mines in
Bolivia, an opportunity was afforded the writer of inspecting a new and
successful process for the treatment of silver ores, the invention of Herr
Francke, a German gentleman long resident in Bolivia, whose acquaintance
the writer had also the pleasure of making. After many years of tedious
working devoted to experiments bearing on the metallurgical treatment of
rich but refractory silver ores, the inventor has successfully introduced
the process of which it is proposed in this paper to give a description,
and which has, by its satisfactory working, entirely eclipsed all other
plans hitherto tried in Bolivia, Peru, and Chili. The Francke "tina"
process is based on the same metallurgical principles as the system
described by Alonzo Barba in 1640, and also on those introduced into the
States in more recent times under the name of the Washoe process.[1]

[Footnote 1: Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers,
vol. ii., p. 159.]

It was only after a long and careful study of these two processes, and by
making close observations and experiments on other plans, which had up to
that time been tried with more or less success in Bolivia, Peru, and
Chili--such as the Mexican amalgamation process, technically known as the
"patio" process; the improved Freiberg barrel amalgamation process; as
used at Copiapo; and the "Kronke" process--that Herr Francke eventually
succeeded in devising his new process, and by its means treating
economically the rich but refractory silver ores, such as those found at
the celebrated Huanchaca and Guadalupe mines in Potosi, Bolivia. In this
description of the process the writer will endeavor to enter into every
possible detail having a practical bearing on the final results; and with
this view he commences with the actual separation of the ores at the
mines.

_Ore Dressing, etc._--This consists simply in the separation of the ore by
hand at the mines into different qualities, by women and boys with small
hammers, the process being that known as "cobbing" in Cornwall. The object
of this separation is twofold: first to separate the rich parts from the
poor as they come together in the same lump of ore, otherwise rich pieces
might go undetected; and, secondly, to reduce the whole body of ore coming
from the mine to such convenient size as permits of its being fed directly
into the stamps battery. The reason for this separation not being effected
by those mechanical appliances so common in most ore dressing
establishments, such as stone breakers or crushing rolls, is simply
because the ores are so rich in silver, and frequently of such a brittle
nature, that any undue pulverization would certainly result in a great
loss of silver, as a large amount would be carried away in the form of
fine dust. So much attention is indeed required in this department that it
is found requisite to institute strict superintendence in the sorting or
cobbing sheds, in order to prevent as far as practicable any improper
diminution of the ores. According to the above method, the ores coming
from the mine are classified into the four following divisions:

1. Very rich ore, averaging about six per cent. of silver, or containing
say 2,000 ounces of silver to the ton (of 2,000 lb.).

2. Rich ore, averaging about one per cent. of silver, or say from 300 to
400 ounces of silver to the ton.

3. Ordinary ore, averaging about ½ per cent. of silver, or say from 150
oz. to 200 oz. of silver to the ton.

4. Gangue, or waste rock, thrown on the dump heaps.

The first of these qualities--the very rich ore--is so valuable as to
render advantageous its direct export in the raw state to the coast for
shipment to Europe. The cost of fuel in Bolivia forms so considerable a
charge in smelting operations, that the cost of freight to Europe on very
rich silver ores works out at a relatively insignificant figure, when
compared with the cost of smelting operations in that country. This rich
ore is consequently selected very carefully, and packed up in tough
rawhide bags, so as to make small compact parcels some 18 in. to 2 ft.
long, and 8 in. to 12 in. thick, each containing about 1 cwt. Two of such
bags form a mule load, slung across the animal's back.

The second and third qualities of ore are taken direct to the smelting
works; and where these are situated at some distance from the mines, as at
Huanchaca and Guadalupe, the transport is effected by means of strong but
lightly built iron carts, specially constructed to meet the heavy wear and
tear consequent upon the rough mountain roads. These two classes of ores
are either treated separately, or mixed together in such proportion as is
found by experience to be most suitable for the smelting process.

On its arrival at the reduction works the ore is taken direct to the stamp
mill. At the Huanchaca works there are sixty-five heads of stamps, each
head weighing about 500 lb., with five heads in each battery, and crushing
about 50 cwt. per head per twenty-four hours. The ore is stamped dry,
without water, requiring no coffers; this is a decided advantage as
regards first cost, owing to the great weight of the coffers, from 2 to 3
tons--a very heavy item when the cost of transport from Europe at about
50_l_. per ton is considered. As fast as the ore is stamped, it is
shoveled out by hand, and thrown upon inclined sieves of forty holes per
lineal inch; the stuff which will not pass through the mesh is returned to
the stamps.

Dry stamping may be said to be almost a necessity in dealing with these
rich silver ores, as with the employment of water there is a great loss of
silver, owing to the finer particles being carried away in suspension, and
thus getting mixed with the slimes, from which it is exceedingly difficult
to recover them, especially in those remote regions where the cost of
maintaining large ore-dressing establishments is very heavy. Dry stamping,
however, presents many serious drawbacks, some of which could probably be
eliminated if they received proper attention. For instance, the very fine
dust, which rises in a dense cloud during the operation of stamping, not
only settles down on all parts of the machinery, interfering with its
proper working, so that some part of the battery is nearly always stopped
for repairs, but is also the cause of serious inconvenience to the
workmen. At the Huanchaca mines, owing to the presence of galena or
sulphide of lead in the ores, this fine dust is of such an injurious
character as not unfrequently to cause the death of the workmen; as a
precautionary measure they are accustomed to stuff cotton wool into their
nostrils. This, however, is only a partial preventive; and the men find
the best method of overcoming the evil effect is to return to their homes
at intervals of a few weeks, their places being taken by others for the
same periods. In dry stamping there is also a considerable loss of silver
in the fine particles of rich ore which are carried away as dust and
irrevocably lost. To prevent this loss, the writer proposed while at
Huanchaca that a chamber should be constructed, into which all the fine
dust might be exhausted or blown by a powerful fan or ventilator.

_Roasting_.--From the stamps the stamped ore is taken in small ore cars to
the roasting furnaces, which are double bedded in design, one hearth being
built immediately above the other. This type of furnace has proved, after
various trials, to be that best suited for the treatment of the Bolivian
silver ores, and is stated to have been found the most economical as
regards consumption of fuel, and to give the least trouble in labor.

At the Huanchaca mines these furnaces cost about 100_l_. each, and are
capable of roasting from 2 to 2½ tons of ore in twenty-four hours, the
quantity and cost of the fuel consumed being as follows:

                                  Bolivian dollars at 3s. 1d.
Tola (a kind of shrub), 3 cwt., at 60 cents.   1.80
Yareta (a resinous moss), 4 cwt., at 80 cents. 3.20
Torba (turf), 10 cwt., at 40 cents.            4.00
                                               ----
                       Bolivian dollars.       9.00, say 28s.

One man can attend to two furnaces, and earns 3s. per shift of twelve
hours.

Probably no revolving mechanical furnace is suited to the roasting of
these ores, as the operation requires to be carefully and intelligently
watched, for it is essential to the success of the Francke process that
the ores should not be completely or "dead" roasted, inasmuch as certain
salts, prejudicial to the ultimate proper working of the process, are
liable to be formed if the roasting be too protracted. These salts are
mainly due to the presence of antimony, zinc, lead, and arsenic, all of
which are unfavorable to amalgamation.

The ores are roasted with 8 per cent. of salt, or 400 lb. of salt for the
charge of 2½ tons of ore; the salt costs 70 cents, or 2s. 2d. per 100 lb.
So roasted the ores are only partially chlorinized, and their complete
chlorination is effected subsequently, during the process of amalgamation;
the chlorides are thus formed progressively as required, and, in fact, it
would almost appear that the success of the process virtually consists in
obviating the formation of injurious salts. All the sulphide ores in
Bolivia contain sufficient copper to form the quantity of cuprous chloride
requisite for the first stages of roasting, in order to render the silver
contained in the ore thoroughly amenable to subsequent amalgamation.

_Amalgamating_.--From the furnaces the roasted ore is taken in ore cars to
large hoppers or bins situated immediately behind the grinding and
amalgamating vats, locally known as "tinas," into which the ore is run
from the bin through a chute fitted with a regulating slide. The tinas or
amalgamating vats constitute the prominent feature of the Francke process;
they are large wooden vats, shown in Figs. 1 and 2, page 173, from 6 ft.
to 10 ft. in diameter and 5 ft. deep, capacious enough to treat about 2½
tons of ore at a time. Each vat is very strongly constructed, being bound
with thick iron hoops. At the bottom it is fitted with copper plates about
3 in. thick, A in Fig. 1; and at intervals round the sides of the vat are
fixed copper plates, as shown in Figs. 3 and 4, with ribs on their inner
faces, slightly inclined to the horizontal, for promoting a more thorough
mixing. It is considered essential to the success of the process that the
bottom plates should present a clear rubbing surface of at least 10 square
feet.

[Illustration: THE FRANCKE "TINA" PROCESS FOR THE AMALGAMATION OF SILVER
ORES.]

Within the vat, and working on the top of the copper plates, there is a
heavy copper stirrer or muller, B, Figs. 1 and 2, caused to revolve by the
shafting, C, at the rate of 45 revolutions per minute. At Huanchaca this
stirrer has been made with four projecting radial arms, D D, Figs. 1 and
2; but at Guadalupe it is composed of one single bell-shaped piece, Figs.
3 and 4, without any arms, but with slabs like arms fixed on its
underside; and this latter is claimed to be the most effective. The
stirrer can be lifted or depressed in the vat at will by means of a worm
and screw at the top of the driving shaft, Fig. 3.

The bevel gearing is revolved by shafting connected with pulley wheels and
belting, the wheels being 3 ft. and 1½ ft. in diameter, and 6 in. broad.
The driving engine is placed at one end of the building. Each vat requires
from 2½ to 3 horse-power, or in other words, an expenditure of 1
horse-power per ton of ore treated.

At the bottom of the vat, and in front of it, a large wooden stop-cock is
fitted, through which the liquid amalgam is drawn off at the end of the
process into another shallow-bottomed and smaller vat, Figs. 1 and 2.
Directly above this last vat there is a water hose, supplied with a
flexible spout, through which a strong stream of water is directed upon
the amalgam as it issues from the grinding vat, in order to wash off all
impurities.

The following is the mode of working usually employed. The grinding vat or
tina is first charged to about one-fifth of its depth with water and from
6 cwt. to 7 cwt. of common salt. The amount of salt required in the
process depends naturally on the character of the ore to be treated, as
ascertained by actual experiment, and averages from 150 lb. to 300 lb. per
ton of ore. Into this brine a jet of steam is then directed, and the
stirrer is set to work for about half an hour, until the liquid is in a
thoroughly boiling condition, in which state it must be kept until the end
of the process.

As soon as the liquid reaches boiling point, the stamped and roasted ore
is run into the vat, and at the end of another half-hour about 1 cwt. of
mercury is added, further quantities being added as required at different
stages of the process. The stirring is kept up continuously for eight to
twelve hours, according to the character and richness of the ores. At the
end of this time the amalgam is run out through the stop-cock at bottom of
the vat, is washed, and is put into hydraulic presses, by means of which
the mercury is squeezed out, leaving behind a thick, pulpy mass, composed
mainly of silver, and locally termed a "piña," from its resembling in
shape the cone of a pine tree. These piñas are then carefully weighed and
put into a subliming furnace, Figs. 5 and 6, in order to drive off the
rest of the mercury, the silver being subsequently run into bars. About
four ounces of mercury are lost for every pound of silver made.

The actual quantities of mercury to be added in the grinding vat, and the
times of its addition, are based entirely on practical experience of the
process. With ore assaying 150 oz. to 175 oz. of silver to the ton, 75
lb. of mercury are put in at the commencement, another 75 lb. at intervals
during the middle of the process, and finally another lot of 75 lb.
shortly before the termination. When treating "pacos," or earthy chlorides
of silver, assaying only 20 oz. to 30 oz. of silver to the ton, 36 lb. of
mercury is added to 2½ tons of ore at three different stages of the
process as just described.

The _rationale_ of the process therefore appears to be that the
chlorination of the ores is only partially effected during the roasting,
so as to prevent the formation of injurious salts, and is completed in the
vats, in which the chloride of copper is formed progressively as required,
by the gradual grinding away of the copper by friction between the bottom
copper plates and the stirrer; and this chloride subsequently becoming
incorporated with the boiling brine is considered to quicken the action of
the mercury upon the silver.

_Subliming_.--The subliming furnace, shown in Figs. 5 and 6, is a plain
cylindrical chamber, A, about 4 ft. diameter inside and 4½ ft. high, lined
with firebrick, in the center of which is fixed the upright cast-iron
cylinder or retort, C, of 1 ft. diameter, closed at top and open at
bottom. The furnace top is closed by a cast-iron lid, which is lifted off
for charging the fuel. Round the top of the furnace is a tier of radial
outlet holes for the fuel smoke to escape through; and round the bottom is
a corresponding tier of inlet air-holes, through which the fuel is
continually rabbled with poles by hand. The fuel used is llama dung,
costing 80 cents, or 2s. 6d., per 250 lb.; it makes a very excellent fuel
for smelting purposes, smouldering and maintaining steadily the low heat
required for subliming the mercury from the amalgam. Beneath the furnace
is a vault containing a wrought-iron water-tank, B, into which the open
mouth of the retort, C, projects downward and is submerged below the
water. For charging the retort, the water-tank is placed on a trolly; and
standing upright on a stool inside the tank is placed the piña, or conical
mass of silver amalgam, which is held together by being built up on a
core-bar fitted with a series of horizontal disks. The trolly is then run
into the vault, and the water-tank containing the piña is lifted by
screw-jacks, so as to raise the piña into the retort, in which position
the tank is then supported by a cross-beam. The sublimed mercury is
condensed and collected in the water; and on the completion of the process
the tank is lowered, and the spongy or porous cone of silver is withdrawn
from the retort. The subliming furnaces are ranged in a row, and
communicate by lines of rails with the weigh-house.

       *       *       *       *       *



INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT PLATINUM.


After an excellent day of weakfishing on Barnegat Bay and an exceptionable
supper of the good, old fashioned, country tavern kind, a social party of
anglers sat about on Uncle Jo Parker's broad porch at Forked River,
smoking and enjoying the cool, fragrant breath of the cedar swamp, when
somehow the chat drifted to the subject of assaying and refining the
precious metals. That was just where one of the party, Mr. D.W. Baker, of
Newark, was at home, and in the course of an impromptu lecture he told the
party more about the topic under discussion, and especially the platinum
branch of it, than they ever knew before.

"Our firm," he said, "practically does all the platinum business of this
country, and the demand for the material is so great that we never can get
more than we want of it. The principal portion, or, in fact, nearly all of
it, comes from the famous mines of the Demidoff family, who have the
monopoly of the production in Russia. It is all refined and made into
sheets of various thicknesses, and into wire of certain commercial sizes,
before it comes to us; but we have frequently to cut, roll, and redraw it
to new forms and sizes to meet the demands upon us. At one time it was
coined in Russia, but it is no longer applied to that use. We have
obtained some very good crude platinum ore from South America and have
refined it successfully, but the supply from that source is, as yet, very
small. I am not aware that it has been found anywhere else than in
Colombia, on that continent, but the explorations thus far made into the
mineral resources of South America have been very meager, and it is by no
means improbable that platinum may yet be discovered there in quantities
rivaling the supply of Russia.

"A popular error respecting platinum is that its intrinsic value is the
same as that of gold. At one time it did approximate to gold in value, but
never quite reached it, and is now worth only $8 to $12 an ounce,
according to the work expended upon it in getting it into required forms
and the amount of alloy it contains. The alloy used for it is iridium,
which hardens it, and the more iridium it contains the more difficult it
is to work, and consequently the more expensive. When pure, platinum is as
soft as silver, but by the addition of iridium it becomes the hardest of
metals. The great difficulty in manipulating platinum is its excessive
resistance to heat. A temperature that will make steel run like water and
melt down fireclay has absolutely no effect upon it. You may put a piece
of platinum wire no thicker than human hair into a blast furnace where
ingots of steel are melting down all around it, and the bit of wire will
come out as absolutely unchanged as if it had been in an ice box all the
time.

"No means has been discovered for accurately determining the melting
temperature of platinum, but it must be enormous. And yet, if you put a
bit of lead into the crucible with the platinum, both metals will melt
down together at the low temperature that fuses the lead, and if you try
to melt lead in a platinum crucible, you will find that as soon as the
lead melts the platinum with which it comes into contact also melts and
your crucible is destroyed.

"A distinguishing characteristic of platinum is its extreme ductility. A
wire can be made from it finer than from any other metal. I have a sample
in my pocket, the gauge of which is only one two-thousandth of an inch,
and it is practicable to make it thinner. It has even been affirmed that
platinum wire has been made so fine as to be invisible to the naked eye,
but that I do not state as of my own knowledge. This wire my son made."

Mr. Baker exhibited the sample spoken of. It looked like a tress of silky
hair, and had it not been shown upon a piece of black paper could hardly
have been seen. He went on:

"The draw plates, by means of which these fine wires are made, are
sapphires and rubies. You may fancy for yourselves how extremely delicate
must be the work of making holes of such exceeding smallness to accurate
gauge, too, in those very hard stones. I get all my draw plates from an
old Swiss lady in New York, who makes them herself to order. But, delicate
as is the work of boring the holes, there is something still more delicate
in the processes that produce such fine wire as this. That something is
the filing of a long point on the wire to enable the poking of the end of
it through the draw plate so that it can be caught by the nippers. Imagine
yourself filing a long, tapering point on the end of a wire only one
eighteen-hundredths of an inch in diameter, in order to get it through a
draw plate that will bring it down to one two-thousandths. My son does
that without using a magnifying glass. I cannot say positively what uses
this very thin wire is put to, but something in surgery, I believe, either
for fastening together portions of bone or for operations. A newly
invented instrument has been described to me, which, if it does what has
been affirmed, is one of the greatest and most wonderful discoveries of
modern science. A very thin platinum wire loop, brought to incandescence
by the current from a battery--which, though of great power, is so small
that it hangs from the lapel of the operator's coat--is used instead of a
knife for excisions and certain amputations. It sears as it cuts, prevents
the loss of blood, and is absolutely painless, which is the most
astonishing thing about it.

"Our greatest consumers of platinum are the electricians, particularly the
incandescent light companies. I supply the platinum wire for both the
Edison and the Maxim companies, and the quantity they require so
constantly increases that the demand threatens to exceed the supply of the
metal. Sheets of platinum are bought by chemists, who have them converted
into crucibles and other forms."

The reporter's curiosity was awakened by Mr. Baker's mention of the old
lady who made those very fine draw plates, and on his return to the city
he hunted her up. Mrs. Francis A. Jeannot, the lady in question, was found
in neat apartments in a handsome flat in West Fifty-first street. Age has
silvered her hair, but her eyes are still bright, and her movements
indicate elasticity and strength. She is a native of Neufchatel,
Switzerland, and speaks English with a little difficulty, but whenever the
reporter's English was a little hard for her a very pretty girl with
brilliant eyes and crinkly jet-black hair, who subsequently proved to be a
daughter of Mrs. Jeannot, came to the rescue. With the girl's occasional
aid, the old lady's story was as follows:

"I have been in this business for thirty years. I learned it when I was a
girl in Switzerland. Very few in this country know anything correctly
about it. Numbers of people endeavor to find it out, and they experiment
to learn it, especially to do it by machinery, but without success. But,
ah, me! It is no longer a business that is anything worth. Thirty years
ago many stone draw plates were wanted, for then there was a great deal
done in filigree gold jewelry. Then the plates were worth from $2.50 up to
as high as $15, according to the magnitude of the stones and the size of
the holes I bored in them. Now, however, all that good time is past.
Nobody wants filigree gold jewelry any more, and there is so little demand
for fine wire of the precious metals that few draw plates are desired. The
prices now are no more than from $1.25 up to say $8, but it is very rare
that one is required the cost of which is more than $4. And of that a very
large part must go to the lapidary to pay for the stone and for his work
in cutting it to an even round disk. Then, what I get for the long and
hard work of boring the stone by hand is very little. 'By hand?' Oh, yes.
That must always be the only good way. The work of the machine is not
perfect. It never produces such good plates as are made by the hand and
eye of the trained artisan. 'How are they bored?' Ah, sir, you must excuse
me that I do not tell you that. It is simple, but there is just a little
of it that is a secret, and that little makes a vast difference between
producing work which is good and that which is not. It has cost me no
little to learn it, and while it is worth very little just now, perhaps
fashion may change, and plates may be wanted to make gold wire again to an
extent that may be profitable. I do not wish to tell everybody that which
will deprive me of the little advantage my knowledge gives me. 'The
stones?' Oh, we of course do not use finely colored ones. They are too
valuable. But those that we employ must be genuine sapphires and rubies,
sound and without flaws. Here are some. You see they look like only
irregular lumps of muddy-tinted broken glass. Here is a finished one."

The old lady exhibited a piece of solid brass about an inch long,
three-quarters of an inch in width, and one-sixteenth in thickness. In its
center was a small disk of stone with a hole through it, a hole that was
very smooth, wide on one side and hardly perceptible on the other. The
stone was sunk deep into the brass and bedded firmly in it. She went on:

"You will find, if you try, that you can with difficulty push through that
hole a hair from your beard. But, small as it is, it must be perfectly
smooth, and of an accurate gauge. I do not any longer myself set the
stones in the brass, as I am not so strong as I once was. My son does that
for me. But neither he nor my daughter, nor anybody else in this country,
I believe, can bore the holes so well as I can even yet. 'How long does a
draw plate last?' Ah! Practically forever. Except by clumsy handling or
accident, it does not need to be replaced, at least in one lifetime. And
there is another reason why I sell so few now. Those who require them are
supplied. 'Watch jewels?' Yes, I used to make them, but do so no longer.
They can be imported from Europe at the price of $1 a dozen, and at such a
figure one could not earn bread in making them here."--_Manuf. Gazette._

       *       *       *       *       *



BAYLE'S LAMP CHIMNEY.


The different types of lamps used in domestic lighting present several
imperfections, and daily experience shows too often how difficult it is,
even with the most careful and best studied models, to have a perfect
combustion of the usual liquids--oil, kerosene, etc.

[Illustration: BAYLE'S NEW LAMP CHIMNEY.]

Mr. P. Bayle has endeavored to remedy this state of things by experiments
upon the chimney, inasmuch as he could not think of modifying the
arrangements of the lamps of commerce "without injury to man" interests,
and encountering material difficulties.

The chimney is not only an apparatus designed to carry off the smoke and
gases due to combustion, for its principal role is to break the
equilibrium of the atmospheric air, which is the great reservoir of
oxygen, and to suck into the flame, through the difference of densities,
this indispensable agent to combustion. The lamps which we now use are
provided with cylindrical chimneys either with or without a shoulder at
the base. The shouldered chimney would be sufficient to suck in the
quantity of air necessary for a good combustion if we could at will
increase its dimensions in the direction of the diameter or height. But,
on account of the fragile nature of the material of which it consists, as
also because of the arrangement of the lighting apparatus, we are forced
lo give the chimney limited dimensions. The result is an insufficient
draught, and consequently an imperfect combustion. It became a question,
then, of finding a chimney which, with small dimensions, should have great
suctional power. Mr. Bayle has taken advantage of the properties of
convergent-divergent ajutages, and of the discovery of Mr. Romilly that a
current of gas directed into the axis and toward the small base of a
truncated cone, at a definite distance therefrom, has the property of
drawing along with it a quantity of air nearly double that which this same
current could carry along if it were directed toward a cylinder. In
getting up his new chimney, Mr. Bayle has utilized these principles as
follows: Round-burner lamps have, as well known, two currents of air--an
internal current which traverses the small tube that carries the wick, and
an external one which passes under the chimney-holder externally to the
wick. In giving the upper part of the chimney, properly so called, the
form of a truncated cone whose smaller base is turned toward the internal
current of air, that is to say, in directing this current toward the
contracted part of the upper cone, at the point where the depression is
greatest, a strong suction is brought about, which has the effect of
carrying along the air between the wick and glass, and giving it its own
velocity. The draught of the two currents having been effected through the
conical form of the upper part of the chimney, it remained to regulate the
entrance of the external current into the flame. If this current should
enter the latter at too sharp an angle, it would carry it toward the mouth
of the chimney before the chemical combustion of the carbon and oxygen was
finished; and if, on the contrary, it should traverse it at too obtuse an
angle, it would depress and contract it. Experience has shown that in the
majority of cases the most favorable angle at which the external current
of air can be led into the flame varies between 35° and 45°. We say in the
majority of cases, for there are exceptions; this depends upon the
combustive materials and upon the conditions under which they enter the
flame. The annexed figure shows the form adopted by the inventor for oil
and kerosene lamps. As may be seen, the chimney consists of two cones, A
and B, connected end to end by their small bases. The upper one, A, or
divergent cone, is constructed according to a variable angle, but one
which, in order to produce its maximum effect, ought not to differ much
from 5°. This cone rests upon the convergent one, B, whose angle, as we
have said, varies between 35° and 45°. To the large base of this cone
there is soldered a cylindrical part, c, designed for fixing the chimney
to the holder. The height given the divergent cone is likewise variable,
but a very beautiful light is obtained, when it is equal to six times the
diameter of the contracted part. When the lamp is designed to be used in a
still atmosphere, free from abrupt currents of air, the height may be
reduced to four times the diameter of the base, without the light being
thereby rendered any the less bright. As for the height to be given the
convergent cone, B, that is determined by the opening of the angle
according to which it has been constructed. Finally, as a general thing,
the diameter of the small base should be equal to half the large base of
the convergent cone, B.

The new chimney should be placed upon the holder in such a way that the
upper part of the wick tube, D, is a few millimeters beneath the base of
the convergent cone. The height to be given the wick varies according to
the lamp used. It is regulated so as to obtain a steady and regular
combustion. In oil lamps it must project about 1½ centimeters. If two
lamps of the same size be observed, one of which is fitted with the new
chimney and the other with the old style, we shall be struck with the
difference that exists in the color of the flame as well as in its
intensity. While in the case of the cylindrical glass the flame is red and
dull, in that of the circuit it is white and very bright. This, however,
is not surprising when we reflect upon the theoretical conditions upon
which the construction of the new chimney is based--the strong influx of
air having the result of causing a more active combustion of the liquid,
and consequently of raising to white heat the particles of carbon
disseminated through the flame. As it was of interest to ascertain what
the increase of illuminating power was in a given lamp provided with the
new chimney, Mr. Felix le Blanc undertook some photometric experiments.
The trials were made with a Gagneau lamp provided with a chimney of the
ordinary shape, and then with one of Mr. Bayle's. The measurements were
made after each had been burned half an hour. The light of the standard
Carcel lamp being 1, there was obtained with the Gagneau lamp with the
ordinary chimney 1.113 carcels, and with the Bayle chimney 1.404 carcels.
Thus 1.113:1.404 represents the ratio of the same lamp with the ordinary
chimney and with that of Bayle. Whence it follows that the light of the
lamp with the old chimney being 1, that with the new one is 1.26, say an
increase of about 25 per cent. There is nothing absolute about this
figure, however. On kerosene lamps the new chimney, compared with the
contracted Prussian one, gives an increase of 40 per cent. in illuminating
power, and the oil is burned without odor or smoke.

As it was of interest to see whether this increase in intensity was not
due to a greater consumption of oil, a determination was made of the
quantity of the latter consumed per hour. The Gagneau lamp, with the old
chimney, burned 62.25 grammes per hour, and with the Bayle 63 grammes in
the same length of time.

It may be concluded, then, that the increase in light is due to the
special form given the chimney. This new burner is applicable to gas lamps
as well as to oil and petroleum ones.

The effects obtained by the new chimney may be summed up as follows:
increase in illuminating power, as a natural result of a better
combustion; suppression of smoke; and a more active combustion, which
dries the carbon of the wick and thus facilitates the ascent of the oil.
The velocity of the current of air likewise facilitates the action of
capillarity by carrying the oil to the top of the wick. Moreover, the
great influx of air under the flame continually cools the base of the
chimney as well as the wick tube, and the result is that the excess of oil
falls limpid and unaltered into the reservoir, and produces none of those
gummy deposits that soil the external movements and clog up the conduits
through which the oil ascends. Finally, the influx of air produced by this
chimney permits of burning, without smoke and without charring the wick,
those oils of poor quality that are unfortunately too often met with in
commerce.--_La Nature._

       *       *       *       *       *



MODERN LOCOMOTIVE PRACTICE.

[Footnote: Paper read before the Civil and Mechanical Engineers' Society,
April 2, 1884.]

By H. MICHELL WHITLEY, Assoc. M.I.C.E., F.G.S.


A little more than half a century ago, but yet at a period not so far
distant as to be beyond the remembrance of many still living, a
clear-headed North-countryman, on the banks of the Tyne, was working out,
in spite of all opposition, the great problem of adapting the steam engine
to railway locomotion. Buoyed up by an almost prophetic confidence in his
ultimate triumph over all obstacles, he continued to labor to complete an
invention which promised the grandest benefits to mankind. What was
thought of Stephenson and his schemes may be judged by the following
extracts from the _Quarterly Review_ of 1825, in which the introduction of
locomotive traction is condemned in the most pointed manner:

"As to those persons who speculate on making railways general throughout
the kingdom, and superseding every other mode of conveyance by land and
water, we deem them and their visionary schemes unworthy of notice.... The
gross exaggeration of the locomotive steam engine may delude for a time,
but must end in the mortification of all concerned.... It is certainly
some consolation to those who are to be whirled, at the rate of 18 or 20
miles per hour, by means of a high-pressure engine, to be told that they
are in no danger of being sea-sick while on shore, that they are not to be
scalded to death or drowned by the bursting of a boiler, and that they
need not mind being shot by the shattered fragments, or dashed in pieces
by the flying off or breaking of a wheel. But with all these assurances,
we would as soon expect the people of Woolwich to suffer themselves to be
fired off upon one of Congreve's ricochet rockets, as trust themselves to
the mercy of such a machine going at such a rate."

These words, strange and ludicrous as they seem to us, but tersely
expressed the general opinion of the day; but fortunately the clear head
and the undaunted will persevered, until success was at last attained, and
the magnificent railway system of the present, which has revolutionized
the world, is the issue. And the results are almost overwhelming in their
magnitude. Here, in Great Britain alone, 654,000,000 people travel
annually. There are 14,000 locomotives, and the rolling stock would form a
train nearly 2,000 miles long; while the number of miles traveled in a
year by trains is more than 10,000 times round the world; and the
passengers would form a procession 100 abreast, a yard apart, and 3,700
miles long.

These stupendous results have been attained gradually; if we go back to
1848, we find that on the London and Birmingham Railway the number of
trains in and out of Euston was forty-four per day. The average weight of
the engines was 18 tons, and the gross loads were, for passenger trains 76
tons, and for goods 160. Now, the weight of an express engine and tender
is about 65 tons, and gross loads of 250 to 300 tons for an express, and
500 tons for a coal train are not uncommon, while not only have the trains
materially increased in weight, owing to the carriage of third-class
passengers by all (except a few special) trains, and also to the lowering
of fares and consequent more frequent traveling, but the speed, and
therefore the duty of the engines, is greatly enhanced. A "Bradshaw's
Guide" of thirty-five years ago is now a rare book, but it is very
interesting to glance over its pages, and in doing so it will be found
that the fastest speed in all cases but one falls far short of that which
obtains at present. The following table will show what the alteration has
been:

_________________________________________________________________
                                         |   1849.   |   1884.   |
                                         |Speed miles|Speed miles|
                                         | per hour. | per hour. |
-----------------------------------------+-----------+-----------+
Great Western--London to Didcot.         |    56     |    --     |
      "           "   to Swindon.        |    --     |    53     |
North-Western--Euston to Wolverton.      |    37     |    --     |
      "        Northampton to Willesden. |    --     |    51½    |
South-Western--Waterloo to Farnborough.  |    39     |    --     |
      "        Yeovil to Exeter.         |    --     |    46     |
Brighton--London Bridge to Reigate.      |    36     |    --     |
    "     Victoria to Eastbourne.        |    --     |    45     |
Midland--Derby to Masborough.            |    43     |    --     |
   "     London to Kettering.            |    --     |    47     |
North-Eastern--York to Darlington.       |    38     |    --     |
      "              "                   |    --     |    50     |
Great Eastern--London to Broxbourne.     |    29     |    --     |
      "        Lincoln to Spalding.      |    --     |    49     |
Great Northern--King's Cross to Grantham.|    --     |    51     |
Cheshire Lines--Manchester to Liverpool. |    --     |    51     |
-----------------------------------------+-----------+-----------+

With this problem then before them, increased weight, increased speed, and
increased duty, the locomotive superintendents of our various railways
have designed numerous types of engines, of which the author proposes to
give a brief account, confining himself entirely to English practice, as
foreign practice in addition would open too wide a field for a single
paper.

Commencing then with passenger engines for fast traffic, and taking first
in order the Great Western Railway, we find that it holds a unique
position, as its fast broad gauge trains are worked by the same type of
engine as that designed by Sir Daniel Grooch in 1848, although, of course,
the bulk of the stock has been rebuilt, almost on the same lines, and
rendered substantially new engines. They are single engines of 7 ft. gauge
with inside cylinders 18 in. diameter, and 24 in. stroke; the
driving-wheels are 8 ft. in diameter, and there are two pairs of leading
wheels, and one of trailing, all of 4 ft. 6 in. diameter. The total wheel
base is 18 ft. 6 in.; the boiler is 4 ft. 6 in. diameter, and 11 ft. 3 in.
long. The grate area is 21 square feet, and the heating surface is, in the
fire-box, 153 square feet; tubes, 1,800 square feet; total, 1,953 square
feet. The weight in full working order is, on the four leading wheels, 15
ton 18 cwt.; driving wheels, 16 tons; trailing wheels, 9 tons 10 cwt.;
total, 41 tons 8 cwt. The tender, which is low-sided and very graceful in
appearance, weighs 15 tons 10 cwt., and will hold 2,700 gallons of water.

The boiler pressure is 140 lb. on the square inch, and the tractive power
per pound of steam pressure in the cylinders is 81 lb. These engines take
the fast trains to the West of England; the Flying Dutchman averages 170
tons gross load, and runs at a mean time-table speed of 53 miles per hour,
which allowing for starting, stopping, and slowing down to 25 miles per
hour through Didcot gives a speed of nearly 60 miles an hour.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.--GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY.]

The average consumption of coal per mile, of thirteen of these engines,
with the express trains between London and Bristol, during the half-year
averaged 24.67 lb. per mile, the lowest being 23.22 lb., and the highest
26.17 lb., the average load being about eight coaches, or 243 tons. We
have already seen that in 1849 the Great Western express ran at a higher
rate than at present, being an exception to the general rule; and the
fastest journey on record was performed at this time by one of these
engines, when on May 14, 1848, the Great Britain took this Bristol
express, consisting of four coaches and a van, to Didcot, fifty-three
miles, in forty-seven minutes, or at the average speed of sixty-eight
miles an hour. The maximum running speed was seventy-five miles an hour,
and the indicated horse-power 1,000. A class of engines corresponding to
this type in their general dimensions, but with 7 ft. coupled wheels, was
introduced on the line, but it was not found successful. Through the
courtesy of Mr. Dean, I am enabled to give a table showing the running
speeds and loads of the principal express trains, broad and narrow gauge,
to the West and North of England, run on the Great Western Railway.

_Great Western Railway.--Average Speed and Weight of Express
Trains._

------------------+---------------------------+----------------------
                  |  Speed to first stopping  |
                  |          station.         |   Weight of train.
                  +-------+--------+---------+-------+---------+-----
                  |       |        | Average |       |         |
     Train.       |       |        | speed-- |Engine |Carriages|
                  |       |        |miles per|  and  |and vans,|
                  |Station|Distance|  hour.  |tender.| empty.  |Total
------------------+-------+--------+---------+-------+---------+-----
                  |       | miles  |         | tons. |  tons.  |
  BROAD GAUGE TO WEST OF ENGLAND:  |         |       |         |
9.0 Paddington to |Reading|  36    |   47    |   67  |   149   | 216
    Plymouth      |       |        |         |       |         |
11.45     do.     |Swindon| 77¼    |   53    |   67  |   104   | 171
                  |       |        |         |       |         |
 NARROW GAUGE TO THE NORTH|        |         |       |         |
10.0 Paddington to|Reading|  36    |  39.2   |   60  |   190   | 250
     Birkenhead   |       |        |         |       |         |
4.45      do.     |Oxford | 63½    |  48.8   |   60  |   129   | 189
------------------+-------+--------+---------+-------+---------+-----

[Illustration: FIG 2.--GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY.]

The narrow gauge trains are worked by two classes of engines. The first is
a single engine with inside cylinders 18 in. diameter, 24 in. stroke. The
driving wheels are 7 ft. diameter, and the leading and trailing wheels 4
ft. The frames are double, giving outside bearings to the leading and
trailing axles, and outside and inside bearings to the driving axle; this
arrangement gives a very steady running engine, and insures, as far as can
possibly be done, safety in case of the fracture of a crank axle. The
frames are 15 inches deep, of BB Staffordshire iron. The wheel base is,
leading to driving wheels, 8 ft. 6 in; driving to trailing wheels, 9 ft.;
total, 17 ft. 6 in. The boiler is of Lowmoor iron, 10 ft. 6 in. long and 4
ft. 2 in. outside diameter. The grate area is 17 square feet, and the
heating surface is, tubes, 1,145½ square feet; fire-box 133 square feet;
total, 1,278½ square feet. The boiler pressure is 140 lb. on the square
inch, and the tractive power per lb. of mean pressure in cylinders, 92 lb.
The weight in full working order is, engine, leading wheel, 10 tons; ditto
driving wheels, 14 tons; ditto trailing wheels, 9 tons 10 cwt.; tender,
with 40 cwt. coal and 2,600 gals. water, 26 tons 10 cwt.; total, 60 tons.
These engines are extremely simple, but well proportioned, and are a very
handsome type, and their average consumption of coal, working trains
averaging ten coaches, is about 24.87 lb. per mile. The standard coupled
passenger express engine on the narrow gauge has inside cylinders 17 in.
diameter and 24 in. stroke; the coupled wheels are 6 ft. 6 in. diameter,
and the leading wheels 4 ft.; the wheel base is 16 ft. 9 in. The frames
are double, giving outside bearings to the leading axle, and inside
bearings to the coupled wheels. The boiler is 11 ft. long by 4 ft. 2 in.
diameter; the grate area is 16.25 square feet; and the heating surface is,
tubes, 1,216.5 square feet; fire-box, 97.0 square feet; total, 1,313.5
square feet. The boiler pressure is 140 lb., and the tractive power per
lb. of steam pressure in the cylinders, 88 lb. The weight in full working
order is on the leading wheels, 10 tons 5 cwt.; driving wheels, 11 tons;
trailing wheels, 9 tons 15 cwt.; total, 31 tons.

[Illustration: FIG. 3.--LONDON & NORTH-WESTERN RAILWAY.]

[Illustration: FIG. 4.--JOY'S VALVE GEAR.]

Turning now to the London and North-Western Railway, we find that between
1862 and 1865 the express trains were worked with a handsome type of
engines, known as the "Lady of the Lake" class. They have outside
cylinders 16 in. diameter and 24 in. stroke, with single driving wheels of
7 ft. 6 in. diameter, and leading and trailing wheels 3 ft. 6 in.
diameter, with a total wheel base of 15 ft. 5 in. The frames are single,
with inside bearings to all the wheels. The boiler is 11 ft. long and 4
ft. diameter, and the heating surface is in the tubes, 1,013 feet;
fire-box, 85 ft.; total, 1,098 feet. The tractive power per lb. of steam
pressure in the cylinders is 68 lb. The weight in full working order is on
the leading wheels, 9 tons 8 cwt.; driving wheels, 11 tons 10 cwt.;
trailing wheels, 6 tons 2 cwt.; total, 27 tons. The tender weighs 17½ tons
in working order. These engines burn about 27 lb. of coal per mile with
trains of the gross weight of 117 tons, which is not at all an economical
duty. About 1872, the weight of the heavier express trains on the
North-Western had so increased, that a new standard type for this service
was designed, and is now the standard passenger engine; it has inside
cylinders 17 in. diameter and 24 in. stroke; the driving and trailing
wheels are coupled, and are 6 ft. 6 in. diameter, and the leading wheels 3
ft. 6 in. The frames of steel are single, with inside bearings to all the
wheels, and the boiler, of steel, is 9 ft. 10 in. long and 4 ft. 2 in.
diameter. The steel used has a tensile strength of 32 to 34 tons per
square inch, all the rivets are put in by hydraulic pressure, and the
magnetic oxide on the surface of the plates where they overlap is washed
off by a little weak sal-ammoniac and water. In testing, steam is first
got up to 30 lb. on the square inch, the boiler is then allowed to cool,
it is then proved to 200 lb. with hydraulic pressure, and afterward to 160
lb. with steam. The fire-box is of copper, fitted with a fire brick arch
for coal burning, and the grate area is 15 square feet. The heating
surface is, in the tubes, 1,013 square feet; fire-box, 89 square feet;
total, 1,102 square feet. The wheel base is 15 ft. 8 in., and the tractive
power 88 lb. for each lb. of steam pressure in the cylinders. These
engines, working the fast passenger trains at a speed of about 45 miles
per hour, burn about 35 lb. of coal per mile, when taking trains weighing
about 230 tons gross. A variation from this type has been adopted on the
Northern and Welsh sections, known as the "Precursor" class. These engines
have 5 ft. 6 in. coupled wheels, and weigh 31 tons 8 cwt. in working
order, but in other respects are very similar to the standard engines just
described; with the Scotch express, averaging in total weight 187 tons,
between Crewe and Carlisle, over heavy gradients, they burn 33 lb. of coal
per mile. These engines, although much more powerful than the standard
type, are not nearly of so handsome an appearance, the drivers seeming
much too small for the boiler under which they are placed. But by far the
boldest innovation on existing practice is the new class of compound
locomotives now being introduced by Mr. Webb. It is a six wheel engine,
with leading wheels 4 ft. diameter, and two pairs of drivers, 6 ft. 6 in.
diameter. The trailing drivers are driven by a pair of outside cylinders,
18 in. diameter and 24 in. stroke; and the leading drivers by a single
low-pressure cylinder--which takes the exhaust steam from the
high-pressure cylinders--of 26 in. diameter and 24 in. stroke, placed
under the center of the smoke-box. The boiler is the same as that in the
standard type of engine, but the wheel base is 17 ft. 7 in., and in order
to allow it to traverse curves easily, the front axle is fitted with a
radial axle-box, which is in one casting from journal to journal, and
fitted at each end with brass steps for the bearings; the box is radial,
struck from the center of the rigid wheel base, and the horn plates are
curved to suit the box, the lateral motion being controlled by strong
springs. Another peculiarity of this engine is that, instead of the
ordinary link motion, it is fitted with Joy's valve gear, which is now
being more and more adopted. This gear--which is of a most ingenious
decription--dispenses altogether with eccentrics, and so allows the inside
bearings to be much increased, those on these engines being 13½ in. long;
and it is also claimed for it that it is simpler and less costly, weighs
less, and is more correct in its action than the ordinary link motion; the
friction is less, the working parts are simplified, it takes less oil,
and is well under the driver's eye. It also allows larger cylinders to be
got in between the frames of inside cylinder engines, as, the slide valves
may be placed on the top or bottom of the cylinders. This latter advantage
is a great one, as, with the ordinary link motion, large cylinders are
exceedingly difficult to design so as to get the requisite clear exhaust.
The action of the gear is as follows: A rod, a, is fixed by a pin at b, on
which it is free to turn, and is attached to a rod, c, at d, the other end
of which link is fastened to the connecting rod at e. At the point, f, in
this rod another lever, g, is connected to it, the upper end of which is
coupled to the valve rod, h, at i, and just below this point a second
connection is made to a block at j, sliding in a short curved piece, k.
The inclination of the block, k, governs the travel of the valve. The
total weight of the engine in working order is: On the leading wheels, 10
tons 8 cwt.; front drivers, 14 tons 4 cwt.; rear drivers, 13 tons 10 cwt.;
total, 37.75 tons. The tender weighs 25 tons in full working order. The
boiler pressure is 150 lb., and the usual point of cut-off in the high
pressure cylinders, when running at speed, is half-stroke, while the
pressure of steam admitted to the large cylinder is never to exceed 75 lb.
per square inch. The average consumption of coal between London and Crewe
is 26.6 lb. per train mile, or about 8 lb. per mile less than the standard
coupled engine. In an experiment made in October, 1883, one of these
engines took the Scotch express from Euston to Carlisle at an average
speed, between stations, of 44 miles an hour, the engine, tender, and
train weighing 230 tons, with a consumption of 29½ lb. of coal per mile,
and an evaporation of 8.5 lb. of water per pound of fuel.

Mr. Webb's object, in designing this engine was to secure in the first
place a greater economy of fuel, and secondly, to do away with coupling
rods, while at the same time obtaining greater adhesion, with the freedom
of a single engine. The cost is much more than an ordinary locomotive, but
the saving in fuel is said to be 20 per cent. over the other engines of
the North Western Rail way. These engines run very sweetly, and are said
to steam freely, although with only half the usual number of blasts; but
from the small size of the high pressure cylinders, they are liable to
slip when starting heavy trains, as the low pressure cylinders are not
then effective, while the consumption of coal does not seem to show the
saving that would have been expected, when compared with ordinary engines
doing similar duty on other lines; for instance, the Great Northern single
engine takes trains of the same weight with the same consumption of coal
and at a somewhat higher speed. But it must, of course, be borne in mind
in making such a comparison, that the fuel used may not be of the same
quality.

Mr. Stirling, of the Great Northern, has adopted an entirely different
type of engine to those last described. Holding strongly that single
engines are more economical not only in running, but in repairs, and that
cylinder power is generally inadequate to the adhesion, he has designed
his magnificent well-known class of express engines. They have single
driving wheels 8 ft. in diameter, with a four-wheel bogie in front and a
pair of trailing wheels, 4 ft. diameter, behind. The frames are single,
and inside of one solid piece; the cylinders are outside 18 in. diameter
and 28 in. stroke; and the valve gear is of the usual shifting link
description. The boiler is of Yorkshire plates, 11 ft. 5 in. long and 4
ft. diameter, and the steam pressure is 140 lb.; while the tractive power
per lb. of steam in the cylinders is 94 lb. The fire-box is of copper, and
the roof is stayed to the outer shell by wrought iron radiating stays
screwed into both; a sloping mid-feather is placed in the fire-box.

[Illustration: FIG. 5.--GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY.]

The tubes, 217 in number, are of brass, 1-9/16 in. diameter; and the
heating surface is in the tubes, 1,043 square feet; fire-box, 122 square
feet; total, 1,165 square feet. The fire-grate area is 17.6 square feet.
The wheel base from the center of the bogie pin to the trailing axle is 19
ft. 5 in., and the weight in working order is, on the bogie wheels, 15
tons; driving wheels, 15 tons; trailing wheels, 8 tons; total, 38 tons.
The tender weighs 27 tons. These engines are remarkable for their
efficiency; the traffic of the Great Northern Railway is exceedingly
heavy, and the trains run at a high rate, the average speed of the Flying
Scotchman being fifty miles an hour, and no train in the kingdom keeps
better time. "Those who remember this express at York in the icy winter of
1879-80, when the few travelers who did not remain thawing themselves at
the waiting-room fires used to stamp up and down a sawdusted platform,
under a darkened roof, while day after day the train came gliding in from
Grantham with couplings like wool, icicles pendent from the carriage
eaves, and an air of punctual unconcern; or those who have known some of
our other equally sterling trains--these will hardly mind if friendship
does let them drift into exaggeration when speaking of expresses." The
author well remembers how, when living some years ago at
Newcastle-on-Tyne, it was often his custom to stroll on the platform of
the Central Station to watch the arrival of the Flying Scotchman, and as
the hands of the station clock marked seven minutes past four he would
turn around, and in nine cases out of ten the express was gliding into the
station, punctual to the minute after its run of 272 miles. Such results
speak for themselves, and for the power of the engines employed, and one
of the best runs on record was that of the special train, drawn by one of
these locomotives, which in 1880 took the Lord Mayor of London, to
Scarborough. The train consisted of six Great Northern coaches, and ran
the 188 miles to York in 217 minutes, including a stop of ten minutes at
Grantham, or at the average rate of 54½ miles an hour. The speed from
Grantham to York, 82½ miles, with three slowing downs at Retford,
Doncaster, and Selby, averaged 57 miles an hour, and the 59 miles from
Claypole, near Newark, to Selby, were run in 60½ minutes, and for 22½
consecutive miles the speed was 64 miles an hour. In ordinary working
these engines convey trains of sixteen to twenty-six coaches from
King's-Cross with ease, and often twenty-eight are taken and time kept.
Considering that the Great Northern main line rises almost continuously to
Potter's Bar, 13 miles, with gradients varying from 1 in 105 to 1 in 200,
this is a very high duty, while, with regard to speed, they have run with
sixteen coaches for 15 miles at the rate of 75 miles an hour. Their
consumption of coal with trains averaging sixteen ten ton carriages is 27
lb. per mile, or 8 lb. per mile less than the standard coupled engine of
the North-Western with similar loads. Mr. Stirling's view, that the larger
the wheel the better the adhesion, seems borne out of these facts; thus to
take twenty-eight coaches, or a gross load of 345 tons, up 1 in 200 at a
speed of 35 miles an hour, would require an adhesive force of 8,970 lb.,
or 600 lb. per ton--more than a quarter the weight on the driving wheels.
These engines are magnificent samples of the most powerful express engines
of the present day.

The London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway Company has in the last few
years had its locomotive stock almost entirely replaced, and instead of
seventy-two different varieties of engines out of a total of 233, which
was the state of locomotive stock in 1871. a small number of
well-considered types, suited to the different class of work required, are
now in use. Mr. Stroudley considers--contrary to the opinion once almost
universally held--that engines with a high center of gravity are the
safest to traverse curves at high speed, as the centrifugal force throws
the greatest weight on the outer wheels, and prevents their mounting; also
that the greatest weight should be on the leading wheels, and that there
is no objection to these wheels being of a much larger diameter than that
usually adopted; in fact, by coupling the leading and driving wheels where
the main weight is placed a lighter load is thrown on the trailing wheels,
thus enabling them to traverse curves at a high speed with safety, while
it permits of a larger fire-box being used; and these principles have been
carried out in the newest class of engines, especially designed for
working the heavy fast passenger traffic of the line.

The modern express engines are of two types. The first is a single engine
with 6 ft. 6 in. driving wheels, and leading and trailing wheels 4 ft. 6
in. in diameter and a wheel base of 15 ft. 9 in. The frames are single,
with inside bearings to all the wheels; the cylinders are inside, 17 in.
diameter and 24 in. stroke. The boiler is 10 ft. 2 in. long and 4 ft. 3
in. diameter; the fire-box is of copper with a fire-grate area of 17.8
square feet, and the heating surface is in the tubes 1,080 square feet,
fire-box 102 square feet; total, 1182 square feet. The weight in working
order is about 35 tons. These engines have a tractive power of 89 lb. per
pound of mean steam pressure in the cylinders, and their consumption of
coal with trains averaging nine coaches is about 20 lb. per mile. The next
type of engine designed has coupled wheels under the barrel of the boiler
6 ft. 6 in. diameter, with cylinders 17¼ in. diameter and 26 in. stroke,
and were found so successful that Mr. Stroudley designed a more powerful
engine of the same class, especially to take the heaviest fast trains in
all weathers.

The 8:45 A.M. train from Brighton has grown to be one of the heaviest fast
trains in the kingdom, although the distance it runs is but very short,
while it is also exceptional in consisting entirely of first class
coaches, and the passengers mainly season ticket holders; it often weighs
in the gross 350 tons, and to take this weight at a mean speed of
forty-five to fifty miles an hour over gradients of 1 in 264 is no light
work.

[Illustration: FIG. 6.--LONDON, BRIGHTON, AND SOUTH COAST RAILWAY.]

The engines known as the "Gladstone" type have inside cylinders 18¼ in.
diameter and 26 in. stroke, with coupled wheels 6 ft. 6 in. diameter under
the barrel of the boiler; the trailing wheels are 4 ft. 6 in. diameter,
and the total wheel base is 15 ft. 7 in. The frames are inside, of steel 1
in. thick, with inside bearings to all the axles. The cylinders are cast
in one piece 2 ft. 1 in. apart, but in order to get them so close together
the valves are placed below the cylinders, the leading axle coming between
the piston and slide valve. The boiler is of iron, 10 ft. 2 in. long, and
4 ft. 6 in. diameter; and the heating surface is, in the tubes, 1,373
square feet; fire-box, 112 square feet; total, 1,485 square feet. The
grate area is 20.65 square feet, and the tractive power per pound of mean
cylinder pressure is 111 lb. The weight in full working order is--leading
wheels, 13 tons 16 cwt.; driving wheels, 14 tons 10 cwt.; trailing wheels,
10 tons 8 cwt.; total, 38 tons 14 cwt. The tender weighs 27 tons.

To enable these engines to traverse curves easily a special arrangement of
draw-bar is used, consisting of a T-piece with a wheel at each end working
in a curved path in the back of the frame under the foot plate; on the
back buffer beam a curved plate abuts against a rubbing piece on the
tender, through which the draw-bar is passed and screwed up against an
India-rubber washer, thus allowing the engine to move free of the tender
as the curvature of the road road requires; the flanges on the driving
wheel are also cut away, so as not to touch the rail. In order to reduce
the wear of the leading flanges, a jet of steam from the exhaust is
directed against the outer side of each wheel. The center line of the
boiler is 7 ft. 5 in. above the rails, and the tubes, of which there are
as many as 331, are bent upward 1½ in., which permits expansion and
contraction to take place without starting the tubes, and they are stated
never to leak or give trouble. The feed-water is heated by a portion of
the exhaust steam and the exhaust from the Westinghouse brake, and the
boiler is consequently fed by pumps, is kept cleaner, and makes steam
better. The reversing gear is automatic and exceedingly ingenious, the
compressed air from the Westinghouse brake reservoir being employed to do
the heavy work. A cylinder 4½ in. diameter is fitted with a piston and
rod attached to the nut of the reversing screw, and a three-way cock
supplies the compressed air behind the piston; this forces the engine into
back gear, and by allowing the air to escape, the weight of the valve
motion puts the engine in forward gear. There are no balance weights, and
the screw regulates the movement. There is also a very ingenious speed
indicator, which consists of a small brass case filled with water, in
which is a small fan driven by a cord from the driving wheel; a copper
pipe leads from the fan case to a glass gauge tube; the faster the fan
runs the higher the water will stand in the tube, thus indicating the
speed.

The author has been led to describe this engine fully on account of the
numerous ingenious appliances which have been adopted in its design. In a
trial trip on October 3, 1883, from Brighton to London Bridge and back,
with an average load of 19½ coaches, or 285 tons gross, and with a speed
of 45 miles per hour, the consumption of coal was 31 lb. per train mile,
evaporating 8.45 lb. of water per pound of coal, and with as much as 1,100
indicated horse-power at one portion of the run. The finish and painting
of these engines is well considered, but the large coupled wheels give a
very high shouldered appearance, and as a type they are not nearly as
handsome as the single engines previously described.

From the Brighton to the South-Western Railway is but a step; but here a
totally different practice obtains to that adopted on most lines, all the
passenger engines having outside cylinders, where they are more exposed to
damage in case of accident, and, from being less protected, there is more
condensation of steam, while the width between the cylinders tends to make
an unsteady running engine at high speeds, unless the balancing is
perfect; but the costly crank axle, with its risk of fracture, is avoided,
and the center of gravity of the boiler may be consequently lowered, while
larger cylinders may be employed. On the other hand, inside cylinders are
well secured, protected, and kept hot in the smoke-box, thus minimizing
the condensation of steam. The steam ports are short, and the engine runs
steadier at high speeds, while with Joy's valve gear much larger cylinders
can be got in than with the link motion. Thus modern improvements have
minimized the advantages of the outside class.

The passenger engines for the fast traffic are of two types, the six-wheel
engines with 7 ft. coupled wheels, and the new bogie engines which are
being built to replace them. The former have 17 in. cylinders with 22 in.
stroke, and a pair of coupled wheels 7 ft. in diameter, the leading wheels
being 4 ft. diameter, and the wheel base 14 ft. 3 in. The grate area is
16.1 square feet, and the heating surface 1,141 square feet. The total
weight in working order is 33 tons. The chief peculiarity of this type of
engine consists in the boiler, which is fitted with a combustion chamber
stocked with perforated bricks, the tubes being only 5 ft. 4 in. long.
These engines are very expensive to build and maintain, owing to the
complicated character of the boiler and fire-box, but as a coal burning
engine there is no doubt the class was very efficient, but no more are
being built, and a new type has been substituted. This is an outside
cylinder bogie engine, with cylinders 18½ in. diameter and 26 in. stroke;
the driving and trailing coupled wheels are 6 ft. 6 in. diameter, and the
bogie wheels 3 ft. 3 in. The wheel base to the center of the bogie pin is
18 ft. 6 in.; the heating surface is, in the tubes, 1,112; fire box, 104;
total, 1,216 sq. ft. The weight of the engine in working order is 42 tons.

[Illustration: FIG. 7.--MIDLAND RAILWAY.]

The Midland Railway route to the North is distinguished by the heavy
nature of its gradients; between Settle and Carlisle, running through the
Cumberland hills, attaining a height of 1,170 ft. above sea level, the
highest point of any express route in the kingdom; and to work heavy fast
traffic over such a line necessitates the employment of coupled engines.
The standard express locomotive of this company has inside cylinders 18
in. in diameter and 26 in. stroke. The coupled wheels are 6 ft. 9 in.
diameter, and the leading wheels 4 ft. 3 in., the total wheel base being
16 ft. 6 in., and the tractive force 104 lb. for each lb. of mean cylinder
pressure. The boiler is of best Yorkshire iron, 10 ft. 4 in. long and 4
ft. 1 in. diameter. The grate area is 17.5 square feet, and the heating
surface is, in the tubes, 1,096; fire-box, 110; total, 1,206. There are
double frames to give outside bearings to the leading axle, as in the
Great Western engine, and the engine is fitted with a steam brake. The
weight in full working order is--leading wheels, 12 tons 2 cwt.; driving
wheels, 15 tons; trailing wheels, 11 tons 6 cwt.; total, 38 tons 8 cwt.
The tender weighs 26 tons 2 cwt., and holds 3,300 gallons of water and 5
tons of coal. Latterly a fine type of bogie express engine has been
introduced, with inside cylinders 18 in. diameter and 26 in. stroke, and
four coupled driving wheels 7 ft. diameter. The total wheel base to the
center of the bogie pin is 18 ft. 6 in. The grate area is 17.5 square
feet, and the heating surface is, in tubes, 1,203 square feet, and
fire-box, 110; total, 1,313; and the engine weighs 42 tons in working
order. These engines take fourteen coaches, or a gross load of 222 tons,
at 50 miles an hour over gradients of 1 in 120 to 1 in 130, with a
consumption of 28 lb. of coal per mile. The London, Chatham, and Dover
Company has also some fine engines of a similar type. They have inside
cylinders 17½ in. diameter and 26 in. stroke; the coupled wheels are 6 ft.
6 in. diameter, and the bogie wheels 3 ft. 6 in., the wheel base to the
center of the bogie pin being 18 ft. 2 in. The boiler is 10 ft. 2 in. long
and 4 ft. 2 in. diameter, the grate area is 16.3 square feet, and the
heating surface is, in the tubes, 962 square feet; fire-box, 107 square
feet; total, 1,069. The boiler pressure is 140 lb., and the tractive force
per lb. of steam in the cylinder 102 lb. The weight in full working order
is, on the bogie wheels, 15 tons 10 cwt.; driving wheels, 13 tons 10 cwt.;
trailing wheels, 13 tons; total, 42 tons.

Mr. Worsdell has lately designed for the Great Eastern Railway a fine type
of coupled express engine, which deserves mention. It has inside
cylinders 18 in. diameter and 24 in. stroke, with coupled wheels 7 ft.
diameter and leading wheels 4 ft. diameter, the latter being fitted with a
radial axle on a somewhat similar plan to that previously described as
adopted by Mr. Webb for the new North-Western engines; the frames are
single, with inside bearings to all the wheels, and Joy's valve gear is
used. The boiler pressure is 140 lb., and the tractive power per lb. of
mean cylinder pressure 92 lb. The total wheel base is 17 ft. 6 in. The
boiler, which is fed by two injectors, is of steel, 11 ft. 5 in. long and
4 ft. 2 in. diameter. The grate area is 17.3 square feet, and the heating
surface is, in the tubes, 1,083; fire-box, 117; total, 1,200 sq. ft. The
weight in working order is, on the leading wheels, 12 tons 19 cwt.;
driving wheels, 15 tons; trailing wheels, 13 tons 4 cwt.; total, 41 tons 3
cwt. These engines burn 27 lb. of coal per train mile with trains
averaging thirteen coaches. It has been seen that the Cheshire lines
express between Liverpool and Manchester is one of the fastest in England,
and the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Railway Company, who works
the trains, has just introduced a new class of engine specially for this
and other express trains on the line. The cylinders are outside, 17½ in.
diameter and 26 in. stroke, with single driving wheels 7 ft. 5 in.
diameter, the leading and trailing wheels being 3 ft. 8 in. diameter. The
total wheel base is 15 ft. 9 in., and the frames are double, giving
outside bearings to the leading and trailing axles, and inside bearings to
the driving axle. The boiler is 11 ft. 6 in. long and 3 ft. 11 in.
diameter, and the grate area is 17 square feet. The heating surface is in
the tubes 1,057 square feet; fire-box, 87 square feet; total, 1,144 square
feet. The tractive force per pound of mean cylinder pressure is 88.4 lb.
The weight in full working order is, on the leading wheels, 11 tons 3
cwt.; driving wheels, 17 tons 11 cwt.; trailing wheels, 11 tons 18 cwt.;
total, 40 tons 12 cwt. This engine is remarkable for the great weight
thrown on the driving wheels, and its cylinder power is great in
proportion to its adhesion, thus allowing the steam to be worked at a high
rate of expansion, which is most favorable to the economical consumption
of fuel. There are numerous fine engines running on other lines, such as
the new bogie locomotives on the North-Eastern and Lancashire and
Yorkshire railways, and the coupled express engines on the Caledonian; but
those already described represent fairly the lending features of modern
practice, and the author will now notice briefly the two other classes of
engines--tank passenger engines for suburban and local traffic and goods
engines. The Brighton tank passenger engine is a good example of the
former class; it has inside cylinders 17 in. diameter and 24 in. stroke.
The two coupled wheels under the barrel of the boiler are 5 ft. 6 in.
diameter, and the trailing wheels 4 ft. 6 in.; there are single frames
with inside bearings to all the axles. The boiler pressure is 140 lb., and
the tractive force per pound of mean cylinder pressure 106 lb.; the total
wheel base is 14 ft. 6 in. The boiler is 10 ft. 2 in. long and 4 ft. 4 in.
diameter, and the heating surface is in the tubes, 858 square feet;
fire-box, 90 square feet; total, 948 square feet. The engine is furnished
with wing tanks holding 860 gallons of water, and carries 30 cwt. of coal.
The weight in working order is 38 tons. These engines have taken a maximum
load of twenty-five coaches between London and Brighton, but are mainly
employed in working the suburban and branch line traffic; their average
consumption of coal is 23.5 lb. per mile, with trains averaging about ten
coaches.

Another example is Mr. Webb's tank engine on the North-Western Railway,
which presents a contrast to the foregoing. It has inside cylinders 17 in.
diameter and 20 in. stroke, coupled wheels 4 ft. 6 in. diameter, and a
tractive power per lb. of mean cylinder pressure of 107 lb.; the wheel
base is 14 ft. 6 in. with a radial box to the leading axle; the heating
surface is in the tubes, 887; fire-box, 84; total, 971 square feet; the
weight in working order is 35 tons 15 cwt. The engine is fitted with
Webb's hydraulic brake, and steel, manufactured at Crewe, is largely used
in its construction. The consumption of coal-working fast passenger trains
has been 28½ lb. per mile. There are many other types, such as the ten
wheel bogie tank engines of the London, Tilbury, and Southend and
South-Western railways; the saddle tank bogie engines, working the broad
gauge trains on the Great Western Railway, west of Newton; and the
familiar class working the Metropolitan and North London traffic. But the
same principle is adopted in nearly all--a flexible wheel base to enable
them to traverse sharp curves, small driving wheels coupled for adhesion,
and wing or saddle tanks to take the water. One notable exception is,
however, the little six wheel all-coupled engines weighing only 24 tons,
which work the South London traffic, burning 24¼ lb. of coal per mile,
with an average load of eleven coaches.

Goods engines on all lines do not vary much. As a rule they are six wheel
all-coupled engines, with generally 5 ft. wheels, and cylinders varying
between 17 in. and 18 in. diameter and 24 in. to 26 in. stroke; the grate
area is about 17 square feet, and the total heating surface from 1,000 to
1,200 sq. ft.; the average weight in full working order varies from 30 to
38 tons. One noteworthy exception occurs, however, on the Great Eastern
Railway, where a type of goods engine with a pony truck in front has been
introduced. The cylinders are outside 19 in. diameter and 26 in. stroke,
there are six coupled wheels 4 ft. 10 in. diameter, and the pony truck
wheels are 2 ft. 10 in. diameter; the total wheel wheel base is 23 ft. 2
in., but there are no flanges on the driving wheels. The boiler is 11 ft.
5 in. long and 4 ft. 5 in. diameter, the boiler pressure is 140 lb., and
the tractive force per lb. of mean cylinder pressure 162 lb.; the grate
area is 18.3 square feet, and the heating surface is in the tubes, 1,334
square feet; fire-box, 122 square feet; total, 1,456 square feet.

The weight in working order is on the pony truck, 8 tons 10 cwt.; leading
coupled, 12 tons 8 cwt.; driving coupled, 13 tons 5 cwt.; trailing
coupled, 12 tons 15 cwt.; total, 47 tons.

The tender weighs 28 tons in full working order. These engines take 40
loaded coal trucks or sixty empty ones, and burn 52 lb. of coal per train
mile, the worst gradient being 1 in 176. A notice of goods engines would
not be complete without alluding to a steep gradient locomotive, and a
good example is the engine which works the Redheugh Bank on the
North-Eastern Railway. This incline is 1,040 yards long, and rises for 570
yards 1 in 33, then for 260 yards 1 in 21.7, for 200 yards 1 in 25, and
finally for 110 yards 1 in 27. The engine, which is an all-coupled six
wheel tank engine, weighs 48½ tons in working order, it has cylinders 18
in. diameter and 24 in. stroke, and 4 ft. wheels, the boiler pressure is
160 lb., and the tractive force per lb. of mean steam pressure in the
cylinders is 162 lb. This engine will take up the incline twenty-six coal
wagons, or a gross load of 218 tons, which is a very good duty indeed.

Having now passed in review the general types of engines adopted in modern
English practice, the author would briefly draw attention to some points
of design and some improvements effected in late years. And first, as to
the question of single or coupled engines, there is a great diversity of
opinion. Mr. Stirling conducts his traffic at a higher rate of speed, and
certainly with equal punctuality, with his magnificent single 8 ft.
engines, as Mr. Webb on the North-Western with coupled engines, and the
economy of fuel of the former class over the latter is very remarkable;
this is, no doubt, owing, as has been previously pointed out, to their
ample cylinder power, which permits of the steam being worked at a high
rate of expansion. There is no doubt that if single engines can take the
load they will do so more freely and at a less cost than coupled engines,
burning on the average 2 lb. of coal per mile less with similar trains.
With, regard to loads, it is a question whether any express train should
be made up with more than twenty-five coaches. The Great Northern engine
will take twenty-six and keep time, and the Brighton single engine has
taken the five P.M. express from London Bridge to Brighton, consisting of
twenty-two coaches, at a speed of forty-five miles per hour. Of course
where heavy gradients have to be surmounted, such as those on the Midland
route to Scotland, coupled engines are a necessity. Single engines are
said to slip more than coupled; thus an 8 ft. single Great Northern engine
running down the incline from Potter's Bar to Wood Green with twelve
coaches at the rate of sixty miles an hour was found to be making 242
revolutions per mile instead of 210; and in an experiment tried on the
Midland Railway it was found that a coupled engine with ten coaches at
fifty miles an hour made seventeen extra revolutions a mile, but when the
side rods were removed it made forty-three. The Great Western, Great
Northern, and Brighton mainly employ single engines for their fast
traffic; and the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire have now adopted
the single type in preference to the coupled for their express trains;
while the North-Western, Midland, South-Western, and Chatham adopted the
coupled type. One noticeable feature in modern practice is the increased
height of the center line of boiler; formerly it was the great aim to keep
this low, and numerous schemes to this effect were propounded, but now it
has become generally recognized that a high pitched engine will travel as
steadily and more safely round a curve--given a good road--than a low
pitched one; and thus while in 1850 the average height of the center line
of boilers varied between 5 ft. 3 in. and 6 ft. 3 in., now in the latest
designs it lies between 7 ft. and 7 ft. 6 in. Single frames are very
generally adopted, but double frames and outside bearings to the leading
and trailing wheels, as in the Great Western engines, give great
steadiness in running, and this class has also double bearings to the
driving wheels, thus entailing greater security in case of the facture of
a crank axle. The general adoption of cabs on the foot-plate for the men
is another improvement of late introduction, although at first not
universally appreciated by those for whose comfort it was designed--"I
felt as if I was in my coffin," said an old driver when asked how he liked
the new shelter. Mild steel fire-boxes, which have been employed in
America, are not in favor here, copper being universally used; they have
been tried on the Caledonian, Great Southern and Western, North London,
and North-Western, and were found not to succeed. Brake blocks of cast
iron have now generally superseded wood; steel is being more and more
used, especially on the North Western. There is less use of brasswork for
domes and fittings, although it is claimed for brass that it looks
brighter and can easily be kept clean. There is greater simplicity of
design generally, and the universal substitution of coal as coke for fuel,
with its consequent economy; and last, but not least, the adoption of
standard types of engines, are among the changes which have taken place in
locomotive practice during the past quarter of a century.

[Illustration: FIG. 8.--LONDON, CHATHAM, & DOVER RAILWAY.]

[Illustration: FIG. 9.--GREAT EASTERN RAILWAY.]

[Illustration: FIG. 10.--MANCHESTER, SHEFFIELD, AND LINCOLNSHIRE RAILWAY.]

Having now reviewed, as far as the limits of this paper will allow, the
locomotive practice of the present day, the author would in conclusion
draw attention to what may possibly be one course of locomotive
development in the future. Time is money, and it may be in the coming
years that a demand will arise for faster means of transit than that which
we possess at present. How can we meet it? With our railways laid out with
the curves and gradients existing, and with our national gauge, and our
present type of locomotive, no great advance in speed is very probable;
the mean speed of express trains is about fifty miles an hour, and to take
an average train of 200 tons weight at this speed over a level line
requires between 650 and 700 effective horse-power, within the compass of
the best engines of the present day. But if instead of fifty miles an hour
seventy is required, an entirely different state of things obtains. Taking
a train of 100 tons, with engine and tender weighing 75 tons, or 175 tons
gross, the first question to determine will be the train resistance, and
with reference to this we much want careful experiments on the subject,
like those which Sir Daniel Gooch made in 1848, on the Bristol and Exeter
Railway, which are even now the standard authority; the general use of oil
axle-boxes and long bogie coaches, irrespective of other improvements,
would render this course desirable. With regard to the former, they appear
to run with less friction, but are heavier to start, oil boxes in some
experiments made on the South-Western Railway giving a resistance of 2.5
lb. per ton, while grease boxes ranged from 6 lb. to 9 lb. per ton. Again,
the long and heavy bogie Pullman and other coaches have the reputation
among drivers, rightly or wrongly, of being hard to pull. The resistance
of an express train on the Great Western Railway at seventy-five miles an
hour was 42 lb. per ton, and taking 40 lb. per ton for seventy miles an
hour would give a total resistance on the level of 7,000 lb.,
corresponding to 1,400 horse-power--about double the average duty of an
express engine of the present day. The weight on the driving wheels
required would be 18¾ tons, allowing one-sixth for adhesion, about the
same as that on the driving axle of the Bristol and Exeter old bogie
engines. Allowing 2½ lb. of coal per horse-power per hour would give a
total combustion of 3,500 lb. per hour and to burn this even at the
maximum economic rate of 85 lb. per square foot of grate per hour would
require a grate area of 41 square feet, and about 2,800 square feet of
heating surface. Unless a most exceptional construction combined with
small wheels is adopted, it appears almost impossible to get this amount
on the ordinary gauge. It is true the Wootten locomotives on the
Philadelphia and Reading Railway have fire-boxes with a grate area of as
much as 76 square feet, but these boxes extend clean over the wheels, and
the heating surface in the tubes is only 982 square feet; but although
these engines run at a speed of forty-two miles an hour, they are hardly
the type to be adopted for such a service as is being considered. On the
broad gauge, however, such an engine could easily be designed on the lines
now recognized as being essential for express engines without introducing
any exceptional construction, and there appears but little doubt that were
Brunei's magnificent gauge the national one, competition would have
introduced a higher rate of speed between London and our great towns than
that which obtains at present.

The whole question of the future introduction of trunk lines, exclusively
for fast passenger traffic, is fraught with the highest interest, but it
would be foreign to the subject matter of this paper to enter more fully
on it, the author merely desiring to state his opinion that if the future
trade and wealth of our country require their construction, and if a very
high rate of speed much above our present is to be attained, their gauge
will have to be seriously considered and settled, not by the reasons which
caused the adoption of the present gauge, but by the power required to
carry on the traffic--in fact, to adapt the rail to the engine, and not,
as at present, the engine to the rail. High speed requires great power,
and great power can only be obtained by ample fire-grate area, which for a
steady running engine means a broad gauge. The Gauge Commissioners of 1846
in their report esteemed the importance of the highest speed on express
trains for the accommodation of a comparatively small number of persons,
however desirable that may be to them, as of far less moment than
affording increased convenience to the general commercial traffic of the
country. The commercial traffic of England has grown and prospered under
our present system, and if its ever increasing importance demands high
speed passenger lines, we may rest assured that the ingenuity of man, to
which it is impossible to assign limits, will satisfactorily solve the
problem.

       *       *       *       *       *



SCREW STEAM COLLIER FROSTBURG.


[Illustration: NEW STEAM COLLIER.]

Our diagram shows the screw steam collier Frostburg, built by Henry H.
Gorringe (the American Shipbuilding Co.), Philadelphia, Pa. Length, 210
ft. Beam, 33 ft. Depth, 17 ft, Register tonnage, 533. Carrying capacity on
14ft., 1,100 tons, and 100 tons coal in bunker. Cubical contents of cargo
space, 55,168 cub. ft. Carrying capacity on 16 feet draught, 1,440 tons.
Engines, compound surface condensing. High pressure 26 in. diameter, low
pressure 48 in. diameter, stroke 36 in. Two boilers, each 13 ft. diameter.
10 ft. long, and one auxiliary 5 ft. diameter and 10 ft. high. 100 lb.
working pressure. Sea speed with full cargo, 11 knots.

       *       *       *       *       *


A thirteen year old girl, who is perfect in other ways, but who has simply
little blue spots that puff out slightly where her eyes should be, is said
to be living at Amherst, Portage County, Wisconsin.

       *       *       *       *       *



DESTRUCTION OF THE TARDES VIADUCT.


The railroad from Montlucon to Eygurande, which is being constructed by
the state engineers, crosses the valley of the Tardes in the environs of
Evaux (Creuse).

At the spot selected for the establishment of the viaduct the gauge is
deep and steep. The line passes at 300 feet above the river, and the total
length of the metallic superstructure had to be 822 feet. To support this
there was built upon the right bank a pier 158 feet in height, and, upon
the left, another one of 196 feet. The superstructure had been completed,
and a portion of it had already been swung into position, when a violent,
gale occurred and blew it to the bottom of the gorge. At the time of the
accident the superstructure projected 174 feet beyond the pier on the
right bank, and had to advance but 121 feet to reach the 33 foot
scaffolding that had been established upon the other pier.

It blows often and violently in this region. For example, a gale on the
20th of February, 1879, caused great damage, and, among other things, blew
the rear cars of a hay train from the top of the Louvoux viaduct to the
Bouble.

The superstructure of the Tardes viaduct had already withstood the tempest
of the 23d and the 24th of January, 1884, and neither any alteration in
its direction nor any change in the parts that held it upon the pile could
be perceived. But on the night of January 26-27 the storm doubled in
violence, and the work was precipitated into the ravine. No one was
witness of the fall, and the noise was perceived only by the occupants of
the mill located below the viaduct.

The workmen of the enterprise, who lived about 325 feet above this mill
and about 650 feet from the south abutment, heard nothing of it, the wind
having carried the noise in an opposite direction. It was not until
morning that they learned of the destruction of their work and the extent
of the disaster.

One hundred and sixty-nine feet of the superstructure, weighing 450 tons,
had been precipitated from a height of nearly 200 feet and been broken up
on the rock at 45 feet from the axis of the pier. The breakage had
occurred upon the abutment, and the part 195 feet in length that remained
in position in the cutting was strongly wedged between walls of rock,
which had kept this portion in place and prevented its following the other
into the ravine.

Upon the pier there remained a few broken pieces and a portion of the
apparatus used in swinging the superstructure into place.

Below, in the debris of the superstructure, the up-stream girder lay upon
the down-stream one. The annexed engraving shows the state of things after
the disaster.

Several opinions have been expressed in regard to the cause of the fall.
According to one of these, the superstructure was suddenly wrenched from
its bearings upon the pier, and was horizontally displaced by an impulse
such that, when it touched the masonry, its up-stream girder struck the
center of the pier, upon which it divided, while the down-stream one was
already in space. The fall would have afterward continued without the
superstructure meeting the face of the pier.

[Illustration: DESTRUCTION OF THE TARDES VIADUCT.]

Upon taking as a basis the horizontal displacement of the superstructure,
which was 45 meters to the right of the pier, and upon combining the
horizontal stress that produced it with that of the loads, the stress
exerted upon the body may he deduced. But this hypothesis seems to us
scarcely tenable, especially by reason of the great stress that it would
have taken to lift the superstructure. On another hand, it was possible
for the latter to slide over one edge of the pier, and this explains the
horizontal distance of 45 feet by which its center of gravity was
displaced. It is probable, moreover, that the superstructure, before
going over, moved laterally upon its temporary supports.

The girders were, in fact, resting upon rollers, and the roller apparatus
themselves were renting upon wedges, and there was no anchorage to prevent
a transverse sliding.

Under the prolonged thrust of a very high wind, the superstructure, by
reason of its considerable projection, must have begun to swing like a
pendulum. These oscillations acquired sufficient amplitude to cause the
superstructure to gradually move upon its rollers until the latter no
longer bore beneath the webs. The flanges therefore finally bent upward
where they rested upon the rollers, through the action of the weight which
they had to support, and the entire superstructure slid off into space.

An examination of the bent pieces seems to give great value to this
hypothesis.--_Le Genie Civil_.

       *       *       *       *       *



JOY'S REVERSING AND EXPANSION VALVE GEAR.

[Footnote: A paper read before the Mechanical Section of the British
Association, at Montreal, August, 1884.]


Four years ago, in August, 1880, a paper was read on this subject before
the Annual Summer Meeting of the Mechanical Engineers' Society of Great
Britain, then held in Barrow-in-Furness, describing this valve motion and
its functions, which was then comparatively new. It was, however,
illustrated by its application to a large express goods (freight) engine,
built by the London and North-Western Railway Company (England) specially
to test the advantages and the endurance of the gear. This engine had
cylinders of 18 inches in diameter and 24 inch stroke, and six wheels
coupled 5 feet 1 inch diameter, and was designed by Mr. Webb, the
Company's chief engineer, for their heavy fast goods traffic on the main
line. The engine has been running this class of traffic ever since. In
January, 1884, it was passed through the repair shops for a general
overhauling, when it was found that the valve motion was in such good
condition as to be put back on the engine without any repairs.

The main object of this present paper is to deal with the advantages of
the valve gear and its application to various classes of engines both on
land and at sea, and with the results of such applications, rather than
treating it as a novelty, to give an exhaustive description of its
construction and functions, which was done in the paper above referred to.
A very short description of its action and main features will, however,
be necessary to the completeness of the paper, and as a basis from which
the improved results to be recorded should necessarily be shown to spring.

The essential feature of this valve gear is that movement for the valve is
produced by a combination of two motions at right angles to each other;
and by the various proportions in which these are combined, and by the
positions in which the moving parts are set with regard to each other, it
gives both the reversal of motion and the various degrees of expansion
required. Eccentrics are entirely dispensed with and the time-honored link
gear abandoned, the motion is taken direct from the connecting rod, and by
utilizing independently the backward and forward action of the rod, due to
the reciprocation of the piston, and combining this with the vibrating
action of the rod, a movement results which is suitable to work the valves
of engines, allowing the use of any proportions of lap and lead desired,
and giving an almost mathematically correct "cut-off" for both sides of
the piston and for all points of expansion intermediately, as well as a
much quicker action at the points of "cut-off" and "release" than is given
by a link gear.

The machinery for accomplishing this is both less costly and less
complicated than the ordinary link motion, and is shown in elevation on
cut, which is a view of the complete motion as on the first London and
North-Western locomotive. Here E is the main valve lever, pinned at D to a
link, B, one end of which is fastened to the connecting rod at A, and the
other end maintained in about the vertical by the radius rod, C, which is
fixed at the point, C¹. The center or fulcrum, F, of the lever, E,
partaking of the vibrating movement of the connecting rod at the point, A,
is carried in a curved slide, J, the radius of which is equal to the
length of the link, G, and the center of which is fixed to be concentric
with the fulcrum, F, of the lever when the piston is at either extreme end
of its stroke. From the upper end of the lever, E, the motion is carried
direct to the valve by the rod, G. It will be evident thus that by one
revolution of the crank the lower end of the lever, E, will have imparted
to it two different movements, one along the longer axis of the ellipse,
traveled by the point, A, and one through its minor axis up and down,
these movements differing as to time, and corresponding with the part of
the movement of the valve required for lap and lead, and that part
constituting the port opening for admission of steam.

[Illustration: JOY'S REVERSING AND EXPANDING VALVE GEAR.]

The former of these is constant and unalterable, the latter is
controllable by the angle at which the curved slide, J, may be set with
the vertical.

It will further be evident that if the lever, E, were pinned direct to
the connecting rod at the point, A, which passes through a practically
true ellipse, it would vibrate its fulcrum, F, unequally on either side of
the center of the curved slide, J, by the amount of the versed sine of the
arc of the lever, E, from F D; it is to correct this error that the lever,
E, is pinned at the point, D, to a parallel motion formed by the parts, B
and C. The point, D, performing a figure which is equal to an ellipse,
with the error to be eliminated added, so neutralizing its effect on the
motion of the fulcrum, F.

The "lap" and "lead" are opened by the action of the valve lever acting as
a lever, and the port opening is given by the incline of the curved slide
in which the center of that lever slides, and the amount of this opening
depends upon the angle given to that incline. When these two actions are
in unison, the motion of the valve is very rapid, and this occurs when the
steam is being admitted. Then follows a period of opposition of these
motions, during which time the valve pauses momentarily, this
corresponding to the time when the port is fully open. Further periods of
unison follow, at which time the sharp "cut-off" is obtained.

The "compression" resulting with this gear is also reduced to a minimum,
owing to the peculiar movement given to the valves (_i. e._, the series of
accelerations and retardations referred to), as, while the "lead" is
obtained later and quicker, the port is also shut for "compression" later
and quicker, doing away with the necessity for a special expansion valve,
with its complicated and expensive machinery, and allowing the main valve
to be used for expansion, as the "compression" is not of an injurious
amount, even with a "cut-off" reduced to 15 per cent., or about 1/6 of the
stroke.

Thus, so far as the distribution of the steam and its treatment in the
cylinder is concerned, a marked advantage is shown in favor of this valve
gear. But next in its favor, as before said, is that the above advantages
are not gained at the cost of added complication of parts or increased
cost of machinery, but the reverse, as this gear can be built at a less
cost than link gear, varying according to the circumstances, but reaching
as high as a saving of 25 per cent., or, if it be compared with a link
gear supplemented by the usual special expansion valve and gear as
employed on marine engines, then the total saving is fully 50 per cent.,
and an equally good result is obtained as to the distribution and
subsequent treatment of the steam.

After accuracy of result and reduction in cost may rank saving room and
the advantages arising therefrom (though for steamships perhaps this
should have come first). Taking locomotives of the inside cylinder type,
which is the general form in use in England and the continent of Europe,
by clearing away the eccentrics and valves from the middle of the engine,
much larger cylinders may be introduced and a higher rate of expansion
employed, and this is being done. Also room is left for increasing the
length and wearing surfaces of all the main bearings with even less
crowding than is now the case with engines with the smaller cylinders.

But this advantage of saving room comes much more prominently forward in
marine engines, especially in war ships, where every inch of room saved is
valuable; and in the new type of triple-cylinder engines now coming so
much into vogue in the mercantile marine, whether those engines be only
the ordinary three-cylinder engines with double expansion, or the newer,
triple expansion engine, expanding the steam consecutively through three
cylinders--the form of marine engine which promises to come into use
wherever high-class work and economy are required. On this system, by
placing all the valve chests in front of the cylinders instead of between
them, or in a line with them, sufficient room is saved to get the new-type
three-cylinder engine into the space occupied by the old form of
two-cylinder engine.

Besides these prominent advantages there are others which, though of minor
importance, are still necessary to the practical and permanent success of
any new mechanical arrangement, such as the accessibility of all the
working parts while in motion, for examination and oiling; the ease with
which any part or the whole can be stripped and cleaned, or pinned up out
of the way in case of break down or accident, or got at and dismantled for
ordinary repair; the ease with which the whole may be handled, started,
reversed, or set at any point of expansion--all these being
recommendations to enlist the care and attention of the engineers in
charge by lightening their duties and rendering the engines easy to work.

With those advantages it is perhaps not surprising that this valve gear
has been very considerably adopted for many classes of steam engines,
especially where a high result has been required, with economy of space,
and a minimum of complication.

Having crucially tested the original engine on the London and
North-Western Railway, Mr. Webb proceeded to build others similar, and on
his bringing out his Compound Express Engine--notably the most advanced
step in locomotive design of the present day--he adopted this valve gear
throughout. There are now a number of these engines running some of the
fastest trains on the London and North-Western Railway, with the most
satisfactory results.

Following these, others of the leading railways took up the system, and
prominently among these Mr. Worsdell, of the Great Eastern Railway, built
a number of large express engines for his fast and heavy traffic, and is
now building a number of others similar as to the valve gear for his
suburban traffic, which is specially heavy. Also the Lancashire and
Yorkshire and the Midland and others of the chief railways are employing
the system specially for large express engines; the Midland engines having
cylinders of 19 inches diameter by 26 inches stroke, and four coupled
wheels of 7 feet diameter. A number of the above-named engines have run
large mileages, in many cases already exceeding 100,000 miles per engine.
For other countries also a number of locomotive engines have been built or
contracted for--both of inside and outside cylinder types--making a total
of nearly 800 locomotives built and building, many of them being of
special design and large size, up to 20 inches and 21 inches diameter of
cylinder.

In all these the absence of wire-drawing may be specially noted by the
full line at the top of the diagram, showing the admission of steam--this
fullness arising from the rapid and full opening of the port for
admission.

Passing now to the other great type of engines, those covered under the
general designation of marine engines, this gear has been applied to
nearly 40,000 H.P. indicated, built and building, and to all classes and
sizes, from the launch engine with cylinders 8 inches by 9 inches, running
at 600 to 700 revolutions per minute, up to engines for the largest class
of war ships, such as her Britannic Majesty's steel cruiser Amphion, of
5,000 H.P., with cylinders in duplicate of 46 inches and 86 inches
diameter, and 3 feet 3 inches stroke, running 100 revolutions per minute.
An examination of the indicator diagrams taken from these engines shows
that no wire-drawing takes place, and that, though the expansion is
carried to a point beyond the ordinary requirements, the compression is
but slightly increased. In all the diagrams taken from this valve motion
there is seen the clear, full upper line showing an abundant admission of
steam without any wire-drawing, and also the distinctly marked points
where "cut-off" or "suppression" and where "release" takes place, showing
the rapid action of the valves at those points.

It is well known to engineers that to obtain the maximum advantage out of
compounding, it is necessary to cut off in the low pressure cylinder at a
point corresponding to the relation between the low and the high, and that
point should be unaltered, whereas the point of cut-off in the high may at
the same time be varied to suit the work to be done.

In an ordinary link motion engine (where both links are connected to the
same weigh shaft), when linking up the high pressure cylinder to cut-off
short, the same change is necessarily made in the low. By the use of the
Joy gear, cut-off valves may be fitted to both cylinders, that for the low
pressure being fixed at the constant position required by the proportion
of the cylinders, while that on the high is adjustable; of course, in this
case, the position of the quadrants must be only changed for reversing. In
arranging the independent cut-off on the Joy gear, it is only necessary to
increase the length of the vibrating link beyond the point of attachment
for the main valve spindle connection to obtain a point from which motion
may be taken to actuate the cut-off valve; even then the cost of the Joy
gear for both cylinders is but little more than for a single set of link
gear.

This arrangement gives an absolutely perfect distribution of steam for
compounding, also equalizes the power developed by both cylinders, and is
far more simple and inexpensive than any other gear in existence.

       *       *       *       *       *



THE STEAM BELL.


[Illustration: FIG. 1.]

[Illustration: FIG. 2.]

The secondary railways in rural districts in Austria having no gates or
bars at the level crossings, or guards at such points, but being open like
tramways, special precautions are required to avoid accidents, and the
public has to be warned of the approach of the train from a sufficient
distance. This is done by ringing bells preferably to sounding whistles,
as these are more likely to startle horses. The steam bell shown by our
illustrations has been adopted for this purpose on the Austrian lines, and
is a simple contrivance. It consists of a cylindrical chamber, a, ending
in a narrower tube, c, which forms the seating for a flap valve, d, to
which the hammer or clapper, e, is fixed. Steam is admitted through a
small pipe, b, at the bottom, and after a certain interval attains
sufficient pressure to lift the valve. The opening being large compared
with the pipe, b, steam escapes more rapidly than it arrives through the
small orifice; the pressure falls, and the valve drops down and causes the
hammer to strike a bell surrounding the cylinder. The valve is provided
with an internal collar as shown, so that it has to rise for the width of
this before the steam is let out, and thus determines the swing of the
clapper and the force of the blow. To intensify the latter and multiply
the number of blows, the clapper spring is prolonged over the fulcrum and
bent back so as to form a spring, which is tightened by the lifting of the
flap, and sends the clapper down on the bell with increased force. The
hinge of the flap does not require any lubrication besides what it gets
through the steam. The bell is fixed upon the roof of the driver's cab, so
that the steam does not interfere with his lookout, and fastened by three
bolts or screws. The diameter of the steam-pipe is from ¼ to ½ inch
according to the size of the bell, and the distance of the clapper from
the bell is a little less than the diameter of the corresponding cock. The
steam cock is perforated as shown by the illustration to drain the pipe
when shut, and a small hole, b¹, in the bell cylinder drains the latter.
The steam-pipe is made with a bend as usual, to allow for contraction and
expansion. The number of blows given varies according to the steam
pressure, and the opening of the steam cock; it is

With  90 lb. pressure, and cock 1/2 open, 170 blows per min.
      "  "      "          "    1/3   "   136        "
     105 "      "          "    1/2   "   240        "
      "  "      "          "    1/3   "   156        "
      "  "      "          "    1/5   "   136        "
     120 "      "          "    1/3   "   228        "
     135 "      "          "    1/5   "   200        "

To start the bell, the cock is opened full, and afterward partly closed.
The blows follow in such rapid succession that a kind of uniform sound
with louder intervals is produced, but not of the same shrill character as
by a steam whistle. The same kind of bell is used on the shunting engines
in goods yards, where roadways have to be crossed on which lurries and
handtrucks circulate, and the results as far as prevention of accidents is
concerned are stated to be very satisfactory.

       *       *       *       *       *



LIEUT. GREELY BEFORE THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION.


Lieuts. Greely and Ray were received with distinguished honors at the
meeting of the British Association in Montreal. A complimentary luncheon
was tendered him by the members of the British Association for the
Advancement of Science, at the Windsor Hotel. General Sir Henry Lefroy
presided. In response to the toast "Our Distinguished Guests," coupling
the names of Lieuts. Greely and Ray and Mrs. Greely, Lieut. Greely said:

"_Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen_: I need scarcely say that this
flattering reception from representative men of one of England's most
distinguished societies touches deeply my feelings as a soldier and as a
man. It is not alone that you represent the science and learning of
England and the world, but that you are all countrymen of those daring
seamen and explorers whose names and whose deeds have become household
words throughout the world. Hudson, Baffin, Cook, Nelson, Parry, Franklin,
and a score of others among the dead; McClintock, Nares, and Markham, and
last, but not least, the man whose name was oftenest on our lips when
praying for relief during the past terrible winter--Bedford Pim. What
those men have done the whole world knows. That you should deem aught that
I have done worthy to placed with the deeds of those illustrious men must
always be a source of pride to me. For three centuries England maintained
against the world the honors of the farthest north. Step by step every
advance was made by Englishmen. Now England's grandest colony presses to
the front; but none the less is the honor England's, for at the price of
her sons' lives and by their toil the path was cleared. But for Beaumont's
dauntless pluck and indomitable energy in 1876, Lockwood would never had
made his great northing in 1882. I have during a quarter of a century's
service, as becomes a soldier, been jealous of my honor. I have striven to
maintain it in the field, fighting and bleeding for my country, and at my
desk studying and discussing scientific data; in the Arctic Circle, when
pursuing scientific and geographical work, or later, when stranded by
adverse fate, and starving and freezing upon the barren coast. This marked
and public testimonial of your approval cannot fail to make me doubly
jealous of it in days to come."

Lieut. Ray followed, returning thanks in his own behalf.

After other speeches Sir Henry Lefroy presented Lieutenant Greely with the
following informal address:

   "Montreal, Sept. 2, 1884.

   "The undersigned, on behalf of many warm friends and admirers, and
   as representing various professional and scientific pursuits,
   desire to express to you their appreciation of the courage and
   devotion which has characterized your conduct during the trying
   circumstances of your late Arctic service. We trust that your
   health may soon be restored, and that you may long be spared to
   tender, as during your past distinguished career, those valuable
   and distinguished services to your great country which have already
   placed you among the foremost of scientific explorers of the age.

   "Yours faithfully, Rayleigh, President."

In introducing Lieut. Greely, Sir Henry Lefroy, referring to the
persistence of purpose shown by his party in bringing back the pendulum
apparatus, remarked that there was nothing nobler in the annals of
scientific heroism than the determination of these hungry men to drag the
cumbersome box along their weary way.

It was fully two minutes after rising before Lieut. Greely could speak, so
great was the outburst of enthusiasm which greeted him. He remarked that
he was surprised to learn that the ground did not thaw lower at Lieut.
Ray's station, which was ten degrees farther south than his own, where the
ground thawed to a much greater depth--namely, twenty to thirty feet. In
regard to an open polar sea, he differed from Lieut. Ray. He did not
believe there was a navigable sea at the pole, but he was of the opinion
that there was open water somewhere about.

The geographical work of the Lady Franklin Bay expedition covers nearly
three degrees of latitude and over forty degrees of longitude. Starting
from latitude 81 deg. 44 min. and longitude 84 deg. 45 min., Lieut.
Lockwood reached, May 18, 1882, on the north coast of Greenland, latitude
83 deg. 24 min. and longitude 40 deg. 46 min. From the same starting point
he reached to the southwest, in May, 1883, Greely Fiord, an inlet of the
Western Polar Ocean, latitude 80 deg. 48 min. and longitude 78 deg. 26
min. This journey to the northward resulted in the addition to our charts
of a new coast line of nearly 100 miles beyond the farthest point seen by
Lieut. Beaumont, R.N. It also carried Greenland over 400 miles northward,
giving that continent a much greater extension in that direction than it
had generally been credited with.

In a subsequent speech he took occasion to say that a fact had surprised
him. It was the discovery that when the tide was flowing from the North
Pole it was found by his observations that the water was warmer than when
flowing in the opposite direction. He took the trouble to have prepared an
elaborate set of observations showing this wonderful phenomenon, which
would eventually be published. To him these pecularities were
unexplainable, and be hoped that the observations would be studied by his
hearers, and some explanation found in regard to the thermometric
observations of the expedition. He remarked that the mean temperature for
the year of the hourly observations was 5 degrees below zero, which
justified him in saying his station was the coldest point of earth ever
reached.

       *       *       *       *       *



DIAMOND MINING IN BRAZIL.


It was in 1729 that the Portuguese government learned of the discovery of
the diamond that had been made in the rivers of the environs of Diamantina
by some adventurers who had entered this region in search of gold. Since
that epoch the exploitation of this gem, pursued under varied regimes, and
with diverse success, has never ceased. As soon as it heard of this
discovery, the Portuguese government thought it would make as much profit
out of it as possible, so it no longer authorized any other exploitation
in the Diamantina regions than that of the diamond, and it imposed upon
such exploitation a tax that was fixed at 28 francs per laborer in 1729
and 224 in 1734. From 1734 to 1739 all operations were suspended, and a
more lucrative organization for the treasury was sought for. In 1739 the
era of contracts was inaugurated. The exploitation of the diamond was
farmed out for four years to a _contratador_, who was to work a certain
territory with a number of men, fixed at 600 as a maximum, and to pay into
the treasury a sum per workman (whether working or not) that varied from
1,288 francs per year in 1734 to 1,344 francs for the last contract, that
ended in 1772. At this epoch the government took the exploitation of the
diamond in hand, and gave it in charge of a special administration, which
was submitted to the direction of the treasury of Lisbon, and which had at
its head a comptroller. This new regime lasted till 1845. In order to
render the surveillance of the treasury agents efficient, and prevent
smuggling (which can be so easily done with an object like the diamond),
it was necessary to impose a special regime over the entire region of
Diamantina, and, in fact, the latter was, up to the independence of
Brazil, submitted to Draconian regulations.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.--DAM ON THE RIBEIRAO INFERNO AT PORTATO DE FERRO.]

We only know the quantity of stones that were discovered during the period
when operations were directed by the Royale Extraccao, from 1772 to 1845,
and this was 269,870 grammes, or more than 1,300,000 carats. It should be
understood that what was taken by stealth does not enter into this total,
and it must be stated that during the latter years, when the Extraccao
existed only in name, smuggling must have been active.

[Illustration: FIG. 2.--ARRANGEMENT OF THE MACHINERY AT THE PORTATO DE
FERRO DIAMOND DEPOSITS.]

Since that epoch the exploitation has been continued by lessees of the
diamondiferous grounds. It is almost impossible to estimate what the
territory has produced. The discovery of the Cape deposits has given it a
terrible blow. Although the Brazilian diamond is much more beautiful, and
for this reason is held at a much higher price, these new exploitations,
by annually throwing large quantities of stones upon the market, have led
to a great reduction in the price, and the Diamantina exploitations, which
have become long, difficult, and costly, have received a serious set-back.
So the annual production of this region, which was estimated for the years
preceding 1870 at 3,000 oitavas (about 52,000 carats), is now scarcely
500.

The rivers in the environs of Diamantina rim at the bottom of deep and
narrow gorges that have been scooped out to depths of 300 or 400 meters
through the denuded plateau in whose center stands the city of Diamantina.
In the bed of these rivers, in places where they have not yet been worked,
there may be found, underneath a stratum of modern sand, another of rocks,
and finally a diamondiferous deposit of rounded pebbles, mixed with sand.
This gravel, which is characterized in the first place by the fact that
all its elements are rounded, and next by the presence of a large number
of minerals (among which the most important are all the oxides of
titanium, different oxides of iron, tourmaline, and a whole series of
hydrated phosphates of complex composition), is called in the language of
the country _cascalho_. It is the matrix of the diamond, and the latter is
extracted from it by washing. It is arranged in roundish masses upon the
beds of the rivers, and is met with at depths ranging from a few
decimeters up to 25 and 30 meters.

The same material, with the same name, is also found deposited at all
heights upon small terraces at the sides of the valleys through which the
rivers flow. It is coarser and less rolled, and has very likely been
deposited by risings of the rivers during the period when the valleys were
being formed. These deposits bear the name of _gupiarras_. Finally, it is
found in a still coarser state, mixed with red earth and deposited in
horizontal strata upon the upper plateau. It is then called _gorgulho_.

Of these different deposits, the most important are those of the river
beds, the material here having undergone a true mechanical preparation and
being richer. These are the deposits that have been the object of the most
important exploitations.

The year is divided into two distinct seasons--the dry, from May to
September, during which rain is exceptional, and the rainy, from October
to April. As water is necessary for all the operations, no work can be
done upon the high plateaux except through rain water stored up in large
reservoirs. These beds form what are called the "rainy season washings."
In the rivers the working of the beds requires a preliminary drying, which
is effected by diverting the river's course. Now in all this rocky and
denuded region the water that falls runs immediately to the river, and
causes terrible freshets therein; so operations capable of keeping the bed
dry would be out of proportion to the probable results of the
exploitation, whence it follows that the latter is only possible in dry
weather, and these deposits are therefore called "dry season washings."

These deposits are still worked in our day as they were in the time of the
Portuguese. In order to dry the bed a dam is constructed, and the river is
either diverted into a plank flume supported by piles, or into a canal dug
along the shore, or by means of tight walls, according to the lay of the
place. The second process, which is preferable to the first, is in fact
impossible when the river runs, as is often the case, in a narrow, abrupt,
walled channel. These works are sometimes very important. In 1881, the
Acaba Mundo flume was 140 meters in length and 5.2 m. wide, and, with a
velocity of 2.25 m., discharged 4,500 liters per second; still longer ones
might be cited that discharged as much as 8,000 liters.

In the dry part of the river the extraction of the sand, stones, and
cascalho is done solely by hand. The men carry the sand upon their heads
in small wooden bowls called _carumbés,_ which hold about 15 kilogrammes,
and throw it somewhere where the deposit will not interfere with the
exploitation. Almost all of these men are negroes, who run with their load
upon their head over the white sand, singing some song of their country.
It, is very picturesque, but it is doubtful whether it is economical.

Since the century and a half that these rivers have been dug and redug, it
may be admitted that wherever the cascalho has been easy of access it has
been removed; and that wherever it has not been, little attempt has been
made to work it. How have these attempts, which have doubtless been made
at several periods, come out? This would at present be very difficult to
ascertain. The exploitations have been too numerous to allow us now to
estimate the value of a bed from the data furnished by geology, and local
tradition is too uncertain or exaggerated to allow us to place much
confidence in it.

We can, at the very most, say that if some points still remain intact it
must be because the exploitation of them was too difficult with the
processes that were employed, and this should be a reason, were it desired
to attempt new operations, for having recourse to entirely different modes
of work.

It would seem rational, as regards this, to try to put to profit the
hydraulic power that the flumes and canals render disposable for
mechanically extracting the sand. The field to be worked being naturally
long and narrow, it would be the proper thing to employ a series of
inclined planes distributed along the banks, actuated by water wheels, and
corresponding to so many small working points. The river often flows
through a genuine canon with nearly vertical walls, where space would be
absolutely wanting for installing wheels elsewhere than at the exit of the
canal, and if may become necessary to distribute the power of these wheels
along the works. In these regions of difficult access and few resources it
is necessary to dispense with complicated apparatus, and one might in such
a case, it would seem, try electric motors, whose installation would be
easy. An exploitation in accordance with these ideas was begun for the
first time in 1883 upon the Ribeirao de Inferno at Portao de Ferro. We
shall describe it.

Once established in the country, the first thing to do is to form roads so
as to secure communications with the neighboring villages and forests, and
afterward to cut down trees for building houses. These latter are usually
constructed, for these works, of untrimmed wood and mud, with thatched
roof. There were thus constructed at Portao de Ferro a few kilometers of
roads, then some houses for the engineers and special workmen, barracks
for 200 laborers, stores, kitchens, etc., a forge, and a shop with a lathe
and a saw run by a wheel at the side. It was afterward necessary to repair
the old lateral canal which had been dug out of the rock in the times of
the Royal Extraction, but which had been torn open for a considerable
length. This necessitated the erection of tight walls of dry stone, grass,
and mud, for a length of 200 meters, and with thicknesses of from 6 to 10
meters.

In order to divert the water into this canal, it was necessary to raise
its level 5 meters. The dam, then, had to support a strong pressure, and
it could not be built upon sand. It therefore became necessary to build a
temporary dam and to turn the river into a plank flume, so as to make it
possible to dig at the location of the permanent dam in order to reach a
solid bottom at a depth of nearly 4 meters. The permanent dam thus had a
total height of 10 meters, with a thickness of 15 at the base and 7 at the
top. It was constructed of dry stone, grass, and earth, with the addition
of strong wood-work. The rocks upon which it had to be built were full of
fissures, and when it was desired to close it great leakages of water
occurred, which came near ruining it and necessitated the construction of
a second wall behind it and a talus of earth in front. The dam as shown in
Fig. 1, when finished, had a thickness of 25 meters at the base. It was
closed on the second of July, and had a storage capacity of 55,000 cubic
meters.

The principal excavation was begun at the point where the bed was deepest,
and which consequently the older miners must have had most trouble in
reaching. Here were set up two Letestu pumps that were actuated by a
four-horse wheel.

These pumps lifted 50 cubic meters per hour. All except the pump chambers
and pipes was made of wood on the spot. The water that was lifted was
carried away from the works in a flume 160 meters in length, which
likewise removed the water from the motive wheels.

For the service of the same excavation two simple acting inclined planes
were installed that were moved by a four-horse wheel. Fig. 2 gives a
general view of the arrangement.

The tracks of these planes were made of wood. Steel rails, however, had
been brought for the cars, along with the cables and the metallic parts of
the windlass; but all else was made upon the spot, including all the
wooden pulleys for transmitting motion from the wheel to the windlasses.

This excavation reached bottom at a depth of 16 meters. The second touched
bottom at about 10 meters, and gave access to a subterranean canal, which
was followed for about 20 meters. The extraction of sand was effected here
by an inclined plane moved by a Gramme machine. The generatrix had to make
1,500 revolutions, and be set in motion by an overshot wheel. As time was
wanting, it became necessary to diminish to as great a degree as possible
the number of parts to be employed in the transmission of motion, and
since there was an abundance of water, a velocity of 15 revolutions was
accepted for the wheel, which, with a total fall of 4.8 meters, had to
give a power of eight horses. A three meter pulley was placed upon the
shaft of the wheel. This was made of freshly cut wood that had been
exposed to the sun. In order to give it sufficient stability and prevent
its warping, it was placed against the wheel in such a way as to rest upon
the latter's spokes. This rendered it necessary to give up the idea of
using a belt, since it was not possible to prevent its getting wet. Cords
could not be found in the country, and so it was necessary to make use of
a too heavy chain, which was in no wise intended for such a purpose, and
which at a velocity of 15 revolutions began to swing and necessarily
absorbed much power. The large pulley drove one of 0.4 m. upon an
intermediate shaft. Upon this latter a 2.6 m. wooden pulley directly
drove, through a belt, the 0.2 m. pulley of the generatrix.

From this may be judged what the country's resources are. The motor, by
means of a belt, actuated a windlass provided with suitable checking
gearings. The distance of the two machines was 116 meters. Save the
transmission by chain, the whole worked in a satisfactory manner. The
performance could only be estimated in a lump, by comparing on the one
hand the theoretical work of the fall of water, and, on the other, that of
the vertical elevation of the car; and, further, one was obliged to
estimate the weight of the latter. If we allow 1,000 kilogrammes for the
weight of a car that received 360 liters of dry sand or 300 of wet, the
performance was 19 per cent., and appeared to be satisfactory, considering
the conditions under which the installation was made. This experiment was
at all events of such a nature as to indicate the use of these machines in
cases where the arrangement of the locality absolutely necessitates a
transmission of power.

The first workmen reached Portao de Ferro December 15, 1882, and the
material shipped from France did not arrive until April 25, 1883.
Operations were suspended about the 25th of September, since, for a
fortnight already, there had no longer been any doubt as to the manner in
which the river bed had been cleaned by former operators.

As a result of this first experiment, the proof remained that it would be
easy in future exploitations to introduce into the country methods of work
that are quicker and more economical than those now in use. In fact, all
the operations were performed with natives of the country, with the
exception of a carpenter and blacksmith from Rio Janeiro.--_La Nature._

       *       *       *       *       *



WHAT WE REALLY KNOW ABOUT ASIATIC CHOLERA.

NEW YORK, September 1, 1884.

_To the Editor of the New York Medical Journal_:


SIR: I have been exceedingly interested in Dr. Bartlett's suggestive
article in your issue of August 30. But a sufficient number of
well-established facts are known to account for all the peculiarities and
vagaries of cholera.

1. Cholera has existed in Hindostan for centuries. It was found there by
Vasco da Gama in 1496, and there is a perfectly authentic history of it
from that time down to the present.

2. It is never absent from India, from whence it has been conveyed
innumerable times to other countries. It has never become domiciled in any
other land, not even in China, parts of which lie in the same latitude;
nor in Arabia, to which country pilgrims go every year from India; nor in
Egypt, nor Persia, with which communication is so frequent; much less in
any other part of the world. Canton in China, Muscat and Mecca in Arabia,
lie nearly in the same degree of latitude as Calcutta, in which cholera is
always existent; yet these places only have cholera occasionally, and then
only after arrivals of it from Hindostan.

3. The arrival of cholera in other countries is often involved in some
easily removable obscurity, which is deepened only by the ignorance and
want of veracity of quarantine and other officials.

4. Cholera is almost always preceded by a premonitory diarrhoea, which
lasts from one or two to three or four or more days before urgent and
characteristic symptoms show themselves. Of 6,213 cases, no less than
5,786 had preceding diarrhoea. The sufferers from this sow the germs of
the disease in numerous, often distant and obscure, places, to which no
choleraic person is supposed to have come.

5. The discharges swarm with infective bacteria of various kinds, some of
which, especially Koch's comma bacilli, seem to be specific.

6. The disease has been reproduced in men and some few animals by their
swallowing the discharges.

7. The discharges, according to the experiments of Thiersch,
Burdon-Sanderson, and Macnamara, are not virulent and poisonous for the
first twenty-four hours; on the second day eleven per cent. of those who
swallow them will suffer; on the third day, thirty-six per cent.; on the
fourth day, ninety per cent.; on the fifth day, seventy-one per cent.; on
the sixth day, forty per cent.; and after that the discharges have no
effect--the bacteria die, and the poison becomes inert.

Professor Robin reproduced cholera in dogs, and the celebrated dog Juno
died of cholera in Egypt last year. Professor Botkin, of the University of
Dorpat, reproduced cholera in dogs by the subcutaneous injection of the
urine of cholera patients. Even if the comma bacilli are not found in the
urine, other bacteria are; and even Koch supposes that they secrete a
virulent poison similar to that of some insects, which may be absorbed
into the blood and escape from the kidneys.

8. Some of the manners and customs of the Hindoos are very peculiar. They
always defecate upon the open ground, and will not use privies or latrines
This is a matter of religious obligation with them. It is also obligatory
upon them to go to stool every morning; to use the left hand only in
wiping themselves; to wash their fundaments after stool; to wash their
whole persons and clothing every day; and, finally, also to rinse their
mouths with water, and this they often do after washing in foul tanks, or
still fouler pools of water. On steamships, where tubs of water were
provided for washing their fundaments after defecation, Surgeon-General De
Renzy saw many Hindoos rinse their mouth with the same water.

9. The population of Hindostan is nearly three hundred millions, and at
least one hundred million pounds of fæcal matter is deposited on the open
ground everyday, and has been for centuries.

10. Much of this foul matter is washed by rains into their tanks and pools
of water, which they use indiscriminately for washing, cooking, and
drinking purposes.

11. The poison of cholera has repeatedly been carried in soiled clothing
packed in trunks and boxes, and conveyed to great distances.

12. Articles of food, even bread and cake, as well as apples, plums, and
other fruit, handled by persons in the incipient stages of cholera, have
been known to convey the disease.

13. The number of epidemics produced by cholera discharges getting into
drinking water are almost innumerable, and those from contaminated milk
are not few.

14. The first case of cholera is generally counted from the first fatal
one, whereas this is almost always preceded by non-fatal ones, which have
escaped notice. And each subsequent fatal case is interwoven by one, or
several, or even many, non-fatal causes. If the string of a row of beads
is broken, and the beads scattered everywhere, it would be just as
improper to say that they had never been upon a string as to say that,
because all the fatal cases of cholera cannot be traced to equally fatal
ones, no connection ever existed between them.

These points are necessarily stated categorically, but every one can be
proved, if proof is called for. The numerous and very large pilgrimages of
the Hindoos must not be forgotten.

John C. Peters, M.D.

83 Madison Avenue.

       *       *       *       *       *



DR. KOCH ON THE CHOLERA.


An important and influential conference[1] upon cholera was opened in
Berlin at the Imperial Board of Health on the evening of July 26. There
were present Drs. v. Bergmann, Coler, Eulenbrg, B. Fränkel, Gaffky,
Hirsch, Koch, Leyden, S. Neumann, Pistor, Schubert, Skreczka, Struck,
Virchow, and Wollfhügel. The conference had been called at the instance of
the Berlin Medical Society, whose President, Prof. Virchow, explained that
it was thought advisable Dr. Koch should, in the first instance, give a
demonstration of his work before a smaller body than the whole society, so
that the proceedings might be fully reported in the medical press. He
mentioned that Herr Director Lucanus and President Sydow had expressed
their regret at being unable to be present, as well as many others,
including Drs. Von Lauer, Von Frerichs, Mehlhausen, and Kersaudt. Before
the meeting Dr. Koch exhibited microscopical specimens and drawings of the
cholera bacillus, and demonstrated the method of its preparation and
cultivation. The preparations included specimens of choleraic dejections
dried on covering glasses, stained with fuchsin or methyl-blue, and
examined with oil immersion, one-twelfth, and Abbe's condenser; also
sections of intestine preserved in absolute alcohol, and stained with
methyl-blue. There were also cultures in gelatin, etc.

[Footnote 1: A detailed report is published in the _Berliner Klinische
Wochenschrift_ Aug. 4.]

Dr. Koch commenced by remarking that what was required for the prevention
of cholera was a scientific basis. Many and diverse views as to its mode
of diffusion and infection prevailed, but they furnished no safe ground
for prophylaxis. On the one hand, it was held that cholera is a specific
disease originating in India; on the other, that it may arise
spontaneously in any country, and own no specific cause. One view regards
the infection to be conveyed only by the patient and his surroundings; and
the other that it is spread by merchandise, by healthy individuals, and by
atmospheric currents. There is a like discrepancy in the views on the
possibility of its diffusion by drinking water, on the influence of
conditions of soil, on the question whether the dejecta contain the poison
or not, and on the duration of the incubation period. No progress was
possible in combating the disease until these root questions of the
etiology of cholera are decided.

Hitherto the advances in knowledge upon the etiology of other infective
diseases have done little toward the etiology of cholera. These advances
have been made within the last ten years, during which time no
opportunity--at least not in Europe--has occurred to pursue researches;
and in India, where there is abundant material for such research, no one
has undertaken the task. The opportunity given by the outbreak of cholera
in Egypt last year to study the disease before it reached European soil
was taken advantage of by various governments, who sent expeditions for
the purpose. He had the honor to take part in one of these, and in
accepting it he well knew the difficulties of the task before him, for
hardly anything was known about the cholera poison, or where it should be
sought; whether it was to be found only in the intestinal canal, or in the
blood, or elsewhere. Nor was it known whether it was of bacterial nature,
or fungoid, or an animal parasite--e.g., an amoeba. But other difficulties
appeared in an unexpected direction. From the accounts given in text-books
he had imagined that the cholera intestine would show very slight changes,
and would be filled with a clear "rice-water" fluid. He had not fully
recollected the conditions met with in post-mortem examinations had
formerly made, and was therefore at first surprised to meet with quite a
different state of things. For he soon found that in a large majority of
cases remarkably severe lesions were present in the intestines. In other
cases the changes were slighter, and eventually he met with some which, to
a certain extent, corresponded with the type described in text-books. But
it was some time, and after many inspections, before he was enabled to
correctly interpret the varied changes met with. In spite of a most
careful examination of all other organs and of the Mood, nothing was found
to establish the presence of an infective material, and attention was
finally concentrated on the intestinal conditions.

There were cases in which the lower segment of the small intestine, most
marked immediately above the ileocæcal valve, extending thence upward, was
of a dark reddish-brown color, the mucous membrane being covered with
superficial hæmorrhages. In many cases the mucous membrane appeared to be
superficially necrosed, and covered with diphtheritic patches. The
intestinal contents in such cases were not colorless, but consisted of a
sanguinolent, ichorous, putrid fluid. Other cases showed a gradual
transition to a less marked change. The redness was less intense, and was
in patches, while in others the injection was limited to the margins of
the follicular and Peyerian glands, giving an appearance which is quite
peculiar to cholera. In comparatively few cases were the changes so slight
as to consist in a somewhat swollen and opaque condition of the
superficial layers of the mucous membrane, with delicate rosy-red
injection, and some prominence of the solitary follicles and Peyer's
patches. In such cases the intestinal contents were colorless, but
resembling meal-soup rather than rice-water. In only a solitary instance
were the contents watery and mucoid. Microscopical examination of the
intestine and its contents revealed, especially in the cases where the
margins of Peyer's patches were reddened, a considerable invasion of
bacteria, occurring partly within the tubular glands, partly between the
epithelium and basement membrane, and in some parts deeper still. Then he
found cases in which, besides bacteria of one definite and constant form,
there were others also accumulated within and around the tubular glands,
of various size, some short and thick, others very fine; and be soon
concluded that he had to do here with a primary invasion of pathogenic
bacilli, which, as it were, prepared the tissues for the entrance of the
non-pathogenic forms, just as he had observed, in the necrotic,
diphtheritic changes in the intestinal mucosa and in typhoid ulcers.

Passing to speak of the microscopical character of the contents of the
bowel, Dr. Koch said that owing to the sanguinolent and putrescent
character of these in the cases first examined, no conclusion was arrived
at for some time. Thus he found multitudes of bacteria of various kinds,
rendering it impossible to distinguish any special forms, and it was not
until he had examined two acute and uncomplicated cases, before hæmorrhage
had occurred, and where the evacuation had not decomposed, that he found
more abundantly the kind of organism which had been seen so richly in the
intestinal mucosa. He then proceeded to describe the characters of this
bacterium. It is smaller than the tubercle bacillus, being only about half
or at most two-thirds the size of the latter, but much more plump,
thicker, and slightly curved. As a rule, the curve is no more than that of
a comma (,) but sometimes it assumes a semicircular shape, and he has seen
it forming a double curve like an S, these two variations from the normal
being suggestive of the junction of two individual bacilli. In cultures
there always appears a remarkably free development of comma shaped
bacilli. These bacilli often grow out to form long threads, not in the
manner of anthrax bacilli, nor with a simple undulating form, but assuming
the shape of delicate long spirals, a corkscrew shape, reminding one very
forcibly of the spirochaete of relapsing fever. Indeed, it would be
difficult to distinguish the two if placed side by side. On account of
this developmental change, he doubted if the cholera organism should be
ranked with bacilli; it is rather a transitional form between the bacillus
and the spirillum. Possibly it is a true spirillum, portions of which
appear in the comma shape, much as in other spirilla--_e. g_., spirilla
undula, which do not always form complete spirals, but consist only of
more or less curved rods. The comma bacilli thrive well in meat infusion,
growing in it with great rapidity. By examining, microscopically, a drop
of this broth culture the baccilli are seen in active movement, swarming
at the margins of the drop, interspersed with the spiral threads, which
are also apparently mobile. They grow also in other fluids--_e. g_., very
abundantly in milk, without coagulating it or changing its appearance.
Also in blood serum they grow very richly.

Another good nutrient medium is gelatine, wherein the comma bacilli form
colonies of a perfectly characteristic kind, different from those of any
other form of bacteria. The colony when very young appears as a pale and
small spot, not completely spherical as other bacterial colonies in
gelatine are wont to be, but with a more or less irregular, protruding, or
jagged contour. It also very soon takes on a somewhat granular appearance.
As the colony increases, the granular character becomes more marked, until
it seems to be made up of highly refractile granules, like a mass of
particles of glass. In its further growth the gelatine is liquefied in the
vicinity of the colony, which at the same time sinks down deeper into the
gelatine mass, and makes a small thread-like excavation in the gelatine,
in the center of which the colony appears as a small white point. This
again is peculiar; it is never seen, at least so marked, with any other
bacterium. And a similar appearance is produced when gelatine is
inoculated with a pure culture of this bacillus, the gelatine liquefying
at the seat of inoculation, and the small colony continually enlarging;
but above it there occurs the excavated spot, like a bubble of air
floating over the bacillary colony. It gives the impression that the
bacillus growth not only liquefies the gelatine, but causes a rapid
evaporation of the fluid so formed. Many bacteria also have the power of
so liquefying gelatine with which they are inoculated, but never do they
produce such an excavation with the bladder-like cavity on the surface.

Another peculiarity was the slowness with which the gelatine liquefied,
and the narrow limits of this liquefaction in the case of a gelatine disk.
Cultures of the comma bacillus were also made in agar-agar jelly, which is
not liquefied by them. On potato these bacilli grow like those of
glanders, forming a grayish-brown layer on the surface. The comma bacilli
thrive best at temperatures between 30° and 40° C., but they are not very
sensitive to low temperatures, their growth not being prevented until 17°
or 16° C. is reached. In this respect they agree with anthrax bacilli.
Koch made an experiment to ascertain whether a very low temperature not
merely checked development but killed them, and subjected the comma
bacilli to a temperature of 10° C. They were then completely frozen, but
yet retained vitality, growing in gelatine afterward. Other experiments,
by excluding air from the gelatine cultures, or placing them under an
exhausted bell jar, or in an atmosphere of carbonic acid, went to prove
that they required air and oxygen for their growth; but the deprivation
did not kill them, since on removing them from these conditions they again
began to grow.

The growth of these bacilli is exceptionally rapid, quickly attaining its
height, and after a brief stationary period as quickly terminating. The
dying bacilli lose their shape, sometimes appearing shriveled, sometimes
swollen, and then staining very slightly or not at all. The special
features of their vegetation are best seen when substances which also
contain other forms of bacteria are taken--_e. g_., the intestinal
contents or choleraic evacuations mixed with moistened earth or linen and
kept damp. The comma bacilli in these conditions multiply with great
rapidity so as to far outnumber the other forms of bacteria, which at
first might have been in far greater abundance. This state of affairs does
not last long; in two or three days the comma bacilli began to die off,
and the other bacteria began to multiply. Precisely the same thing takes
place in the intestine, where, after the rapid initial vegetation is over,
and when exudation of blood occurs in the bowel, the comma bacilli
disappear and putrefactive bacteria predominate. Whether the occurrence of
putrefaction is inimical to the comma bacilli has not been proved, but
from analogy it is very probable. At any rate, it is important to know
this for certain, for if it be so, then the comma bacilli will not thrive
in a cesspit, and then further disinfection would be unnecessary. These
bacilli thrive best in fluids containing a certain amount of nutriment.
Experiments have not yet shown the limits in this respect, but Koch has
found them capable of growing in meat broth diluted ten times.

Again, if the nutrient medium become acid in reaction their growth is
checked, at least in gelatine and meat infusion; but singularly enough,
they continue to grow on the surface of a boiled potato which has become
acid, showing that all acids are not equally obnoxious to them. But here,
as with other substances which hinder their growth, they do not kill the
bacilli. Davaine has shown that iodine is a strong bactericide. He
experimented with anthrax bacilli in water to which iodine was added, and
the bacilli were destroyed. But practically the organisms have to be dealt
with in the alkaline contents of the bowel, or in the blood or fluids of
the tissues, where iodine cannot remain in the free state. Koch found that
the addition of an aqueous solution of iodine (1 in 4,000) to meat
infusion, in the proportion of 1 in 10, did not in the least interfere
with the growth of the bacilli in that medium. He did not pursue this line
of inquiry, seeing that in practice larger quantities of iodine than that
could not be given. Alcohol first checks the development of the comma
bacilli when it is mixed with the nutrient fluid in the proportion of 1 in
10, a degree of concentration which renders it impracticable for
treatment. Common salt was added to the extent of 2 per cent. without
influencing the growth of the bacilli. Sulphate of iron, in the proportion
of 2 per cent., checks this growth, probably by precipitating albumimites
from the fluids, and possibly also by its acid reaction; certainly it does
not seem to have any specific disinfecting action--i.e., in destroying the
bacilli. Indeed, Koch thinks that the admixture of sulphate of iron with
fæcal matter may arrest putrefaction, and really remove what may be the
most destructive process to the comma bacilli. Hence he would distinguish
between substances which merely arrest putrefaction and those which are
bactericidal; for the former may simply serve the purpose of preserving
the infective virus. Among other substances which prevent the growth of
the comma bacilli may be mentioned alum, in solutions of the strength of 1
in 100; camphor, 1 in 300; carbolic acid, 1 in 400; oil of peppermint, 1
in 2,000; sulphate of copper, 1 in 2,500 (a remedy much employed, but how
much would really be needed merely to hinder the growth of the bacilli in
the intestine!); quinine, 1 in 5,000; and sublimate, 1 in 100,000. In
contrast with the foregoing measures for preventing the growth of these
bacilli is the striking fact that they are readily killed by drying. This
fact is proved by merely drying a small drop of material containing the
bacilli on a cover-glass, and then placing this over some of the fluid on
a glass slide. With anthrax bacilli vitality is retained for nearly a
week; whereas, the comma bacillus appears to be killed in a very short
time. Thus it was found that although vitality was retained--depending
largely upon the number of bacilli--for a short time, yet withdrawal of
the nutrient fluid for an hour or even less often sufficed; and it never
happened that the bacilli retained vitality after a deprivation lasting
twenty-four hours. These results would seem to point to the fact that the
comma bacillus does not, like the organisms of anthrax and vaccinia, pass
into the resting state (Daner-zustande) by drying; and if so, it is one of
the most important facts in the etiology of cholera. Much, however,
remains to be done, especially with regard to the soiled linen of cholera
patients being kept in a damp state. He found that in soiled articles,
when dried for a time, varying from twenty-four hours and upward, the
comma bacilli were quite destroyed. Nor was the destruction delayed by
placing choleraic excreta in or upon earth, dry or moist, or mixed with
stagnant water. In gelatine cultures the comma bacilli can be cultivated
for six weeks, and also in blood serum, milk, and potato, where anthrax
bacilli rapidly form spores. But a resting state of the comma bacilli has
never been met with--a very exceptional thing in the case of bacilli, and
another reason why the organism must be regarded rather as a spirillum
than a bacillus, for the spirilla require only a fluid medium, and do not,
like the anthrax bacilli, thrive in a dry state. It is quite unlikely that
a resting state of the comma bacillus will ever be discovered; and,
moreover, its absence harmonizes with our knowledge of cholera
etiology.--_The Lancet_.

       *       *       *       *       *

[THE MEDICAL RECORD.]



MALARIA.--THE NATURAL PRODUCTION OF MALARIA, AND THE MEANS OF MAKING
MALARIAL COUNTRIES HEALTHIER.

[Footnote: An Address delivered at the Eighth Session of the International
Medical Congress, Copenhagen, August 12, 1884.]

By Conrad Tommasi Crudeli, M.D., Professor of Hygiene, University of Rome,
Italy.


Before entering upon my subject, I must crave the indulgence of those of
my colleagues whose language I have borrowed for any italicisms that I may
use, as well as for the foreign accent which must strike their ears more
or less disagreeably. Desiring to respond as well as lay in my power to
the invitation with which I have been honored to discuss the hygienic
questions relating to malaria, I have chosen the French language as being
the one in which, apart from my mother tongue, I could express myself with
the greatest ease and precision.

I shall be pardoned also, I hope, for having employed the terms "malaria"
and "malarial districts" in place of the more commonly used expressions
"paludal miasm" (_miasme paludeen_) and "marshy regions" (_contrées
marécageuses_). The substitution is not a happy one from a literary point
of view, but I have made it deliberately and for the following reason: The
idea that intermittent and pernicious fevers are engendered by putrid
emanations from swamps and marshes is one of those semi-scientific
assumptions which have contributed most to lead astray the investigations
of scientists and the work of public administrations. This idea, so
widespread and so well established by the traditions of the school, is
radically false. The specific ferment which engenders those fevers by its
accumulation in the atmosphere which we breathe is not exclusively of
paludal origin, and still less is it a product of putrefaction. Indeed, in
every region of the globe between the two Arctic circles there are swamps
and marshes, steeping-tanks of hemp and flax, large deltas where salt and
fresh waters mix, and yet there is no malaria there, although putrid
decomposition is on every side. On the other hand, in the same parts of
the globe there are places which are not and never were marshy, and in
which there is not the least trace of putrefaction, but which,
nevertheless, produce malaria in abundance. I reject, therefore, wholly
the paludal assumption, and in order to express this view in the title of
my paper, have been forced to employ terms which to my hearers may sound
like italicisms.

The Italians generally have not this paludal notion, for experience taught
them long ago that malaria is produced nearly everywhere--in marshy
districts as well as in those which might almost be called arid; in a
volcanic soil as well as in the deposits of the Miocene and Pliocene
periods and the ancient and modern alluvia; in a soil rich in organic
matters as well as in one containing almost none; in the plains as well as
on the hills or mountains. The word malaria (bad air), which it is the sad
privilege of Italy to have lent to all languages to express the cause of
intermittent and pernicious fevers, represents, then, among the majority
of our rural populations, the idea of an agent which may infect any sort
of country, whatever may be its hydraulic and topographical conditions,
and whatever may be its geological formation. This word, therefore, is the
one best suited to designate this specific ferment in question, and I have
on this account, employed it and its adjectival derivatives in order not
to resuscitate the idea of the exclusively paludal origin of the morbific
agent.

I shall not tarry long to speak of the nature of this ferment, for the
studies bearing upon that point, although far advanced, are not yet
completed. I may remark, however, that the idea that the ferment is formed
of living organisms is a very old one, and has not arisen suddenly because
of the modern theories of the parasitic nature of disease. From the time
of Varrar (who believed that malaria was made up of invisible mites
suspended in the atmosphere) to our own day this theory has been several
times advanced by hygienists. Independently of the general considerations
which led Rasori, and later Henle, to formulate the doctrine of the
_contagium vivum_ of infection (long before the progress of microscopical
science had revealed the existence of living ferments), there were
peculiar circumstances as regards malaria which should have impelled minds
to look in that direction, even in times long past.

Some of these circumstances are of a nature to strike every serious
observer, and deserve a few moments' attention. How could one maintain,
for example, that this ferment is a product of chemical reactions taking
place in the ground, when it is seen to remain constantly the same
whatever may be the composition of the soil from which it emanates! As
long as the paludal theory held sway, the chemical interpretation of this
identity of the product in every latitude was easy. Rica does not hesitate
to admit that when a swampy tract is heated by the sun's rays to the
necessary point for the putrid decomposition of the organic matters
contained in it, the "chemical ferment," or rather the "mephitic gases,"
to which is attributed the morbific action, are developed, whatever may be
the distance from the equator at which this marshy region lies. But since
it has been ascertained that malaria is produced in soils of the most
varied chemical composition, _the persistent identity of this product_ has
become chemically inexplicable; while it is however readily conceivable,
if one admits that malaria is an organized ferment which easily finds the
necessary conditions for its life and multiplication in the most varied
soils, as is the case with millions of other organisms vastly superior to
the rudimentary vegetables which constitute the living ferments.

The same thing may be said of _the progressive intensity of the morbific
production in abandoned malarious districts_. This fact has been
historically proved in several parts of the earth, and especially in
Italy. A large number of Grecian, Etruscan, and Latin cities, even Rome
itself, sprang up in malarious territories and attained a high state of
prosperity. First among the reasons for this success must be placed the
works undertaken with a view of rendering these places more salubrious,
and which lessened the evil production, _but almost never extinguished it
completely_. After the abandonment of these localities, the production of
malaria recommenced in a degree which went on increasing from age to age,
and which has rendered some of these places actually uninhabitable. This
was seen, in the time of the ancient Romans, in Etruria, when it was
conquered and laid waste, and in several parts of Magna Græcia, and of
Sicily. From the fall of Rome even to the present day, this phenomenon has
been manifested in a very evident manner in the Roman Campagna, in certain
parts of which, even up to the time of the Renaissance, it was possible to
maintain pleasure houses, but which are now unhabitable during the hot
season. In many cases the physical conditions of the soil have undergone
no appreciable change during centuries, so that it is impossible to
attribute so enormous an augmentation of malaria to an increase in its
annual production, itself increased by a progressive alteration of the
chemical composition of the soil. But if, on the contrary, it be admitted
that malaria is caused by a living organism whose successive generations
accumulate in the soil, the interpretation of this fact becomes very
simple.

There are, finally, _peculiarities in the local charging of the atmosphere
with malaria_ which can be explained only in this manner. If the malarial
miasm were composed of gaseous bodies emanating from the soil, or rather
of chemical ferments formed beneath the ground and raised into the air by
gases or watery vapor, the charging of the atmosphere with the specific
poison ought to arrive at its maximum during the hottest part of the day,
when the ground is heated the most by the sun's rays, and when the
evaporation of water and all chemical actions attain their maximum
intensity. But this is very different from what actually occurs. The local
charging of the atmosphere is always less strong during the meridian hours
than at the beginning and the end of the day, that is to say, after the
rising, and especially after the setting, of the sun. Now it is precisely
at these hours that the difference between the temperature of the lower
layers of the atmosphere and that of the surface of the ground is the
greatest, and that the ascending currents of air starting from the ground
are the strongest. If malaria consists of solid particles contained in the
soil, one may readily understand how their elevation _en masse_ into the
atmosphere should take place especially at these two periods of the day.

All these facts, which can be easily verified if the subject of malaria be
studied on the spot and without any preconceived notions, explain the
tendency which has always been manifested to attribute this specific
poisoning of the air to a living organism which is multiplied in the soil;
and they also explain the ardor with which hygienists have applied
themselves to the production of the scientific proof.

Unfortunately the investigations undertaken for this end have for a long
time been fruitless, for the preconceived paludal theory has led
investigators to occupy themselves exclusively with the inferior organisms
inhabiting marshes. Among these organisms they studied especially the
_hyphomycetes,_ which had already acquired so great an importance in
dermatology; and their entire attention was concentrated upon the aquatic
algae, without even taking the precaution to determine whether the
varieties which they thought to be malarial were found in all malarious
swamps, or whether they were capable of living within the human organism.
It has thus happened that each observer has indicated as the cause of
malaria a different variety of alga, whichever he found to be most
abundant in the swampy ground that he had to examine. Thus Salisbury has
indicated the _palmella gemiasma,_ which is found with us in places
perfectly free from malaria, while it is often wanting in malarious
marshes in the center of Italy; Balestra, a species of alga which is as
yet indeterminate; Bargellini, the _palmogloea micrococca;_ Safford and
Bartlett, the _hydrogastrum granulatum;_ and Archer, the _chitonoblastus
oeruginosus_. There is not a single one of these species the parasitic
nature of which has been demonstrated; and as regards the two last named
varieties, it can be positively denied that they are capable of producing
a general infection, for the diameter of their spores and filaments is
greater than that of the capillary blood vessels.

It was only in 1879 that Klebs and myself, after having been thoroughly
freed, by a long series of preparatory studies, from the unfortunate
paludal idea, undertook together some investigations in malarious
districts of the most varied character, marshy and not marshy. We employed
the system of fractional cultivation, making experiments on animals with
the final products thus obtained. We felt ourselves justified in
recognizing the malarial ferment in the _schizomycete bacillus_. The
numerous researches made subsequently by us, and by many other observers,
in the soil and in the air of several malarious localities, as well as in
the blood and in the organs of men and animals specifically infected, have
put it henceforth almost beyond doubt that we really have to do with a
schizomycete. Very recently, MM. Marchiafava and Celli have succeeded in
demonstrating that the germs of this schizomycete attack directly the red
blood-globules, and destroy them, causing them to undergo a series of very
characteristic changes which admit of easy verification, and which render
certain the existence of a malarial infection.

Several observations made recently in Rome tend to demonstrate that the
schizomycete of malaria does not always assume the complete bacillary form
described by Klebs and myself; but this morphological question possesses
no further interest for the hygienist. For him the essential thing is to
know that he has to deal with a living ferment which can flourish in soils
of very varied composition, and without the presence of which neither
marshes nor stagnant pools of water are capable of producing malaria.

We must not think, however, that all earth containing this ferment is
capable of poisoning the superjacent atmosphere. Popular experience,
certain modern scientific investigation, and the facts which one can often
verify when the soil, which was malarious in ancient times and which has
since ceased to be so, is turned up to a great depth, all agree in proving
that the ground remains inoffensive as long as it is not placed in certain
conditions indispensable for the multiplication of this specific ferment.
Up to this point the organism lives, so to speak, in an inert state, and
may remain so during centuries without losing any of its deleterious
power. There is nothing in this fact that ought to surprise us, since we
know that the life and the power of evolution belonging to the seeds of
plants of a much higher order than these vegetable organisms constituting
ferments, may remain latent for centuries, and may then revive at once
when these grains are placed in the conditions suitable for their
germination.

Among the conditions favorable to the multiplication of the malarial
ferment contained in the soil, and to its dispersion through the
superjacent atmosphere, there are three which are absolutely essential,
and the concurrence of which is indispensable for the production of bad
air (malaria). First, a temperature which does not fall below 20°C.
(67.5°F.); next, a very moderate degree of permanent humidity of the soil;
and finally, the direct action of the oxygen of the air upon the strata of
earth which contain the ferment. If a single one of these three conditions
be wanting, the development of malaria becomes impossible. This is a point
of prime importance in the natural history of malaria, and it gives us the
key to most of the methods of sanitary improvement attempted by man.

Let us see first what can be done in this direction without the labor of
man. For nature herself makes localities salubrious by _suspending_ for a
greater or less time the production of malaria. It is thus that winter
brings about in every country a freedom from malaria which is _purely
thermic_, for it is due simply and entirely to a sinking of the
temperature below the required minimum. Indeed, if the temperature in
winter rises above this minimum, there are often sudden outbreaks of
malaria. Sometimes, during very warm and dry summers, the heat extracts
all the humidity from the malarious soil, and thus procures for us a
freedom from the disease which is _purely hydraulic_. This may continue
for a long time (as happened in the Roman Campagna during the years 1881
and 1882), but may also be completely destroyed by a single shower. Nature
also sometimes renders a district healthy in a manner _purely
atmospheric_, by covering a malarious soil with earth which does not
contain the malarial ferment, or with a matting formed of earth and the
roots of grasses growing closely together in a natural meadow.

In the attempts of purification by suspending the malarial action, which
have been devised by man, the same thing has been done; that is to say, it
has been sought, to eliminate at least one of the three conditions
essential to the development of the specific ferment contained in the
infected soil. Naturally, they have not thought of bringing about a
thermic purification, such as nature produces in winter, because of the
impossibility of moderating the action of the sun; but they have tried
from all time to procure hydraulic or atmospheric purifications, and
sometimes to combine these together in a very happy way.

The hydraulic systems are very numerous, for the problem which is
presented, namely, that of depriving the ground of its humidity during the
hot season, necessitates different solutions according to the nature and
the bearing of the soil. Sometimes this is done by digging open or closing
ditches intended to draw away large bodies of water. At other limes a
system of drainage is established, by means of which the water is drawn
out of the earth and its level is depressed, so that the upper malarious
strata, exposed to the direct action of the air, are deprived of moisture
during the hot season. This system of drainage is not a modern invention;
the Italian monks understood it as well as, and even better than, we do.
In deep and loose soils they used sometimes, just as we do now, porous
clay pipes; but when the subsoil was formed of compact and nearly
impermeable matters, they employed a system of drainage, the extent and
grandeur of which astonishes us. It is that of drainage by cavities,
applied by the Etruscans, Latins, and Volsci to all the Roman hills formed
of volcanic tufa, the tradition of which I have found still preserved in
some countries of the Abruzzi.

We may sometimes establish a double drainage, from below and from above;
that is to say, to drain the subsoil, and at the same time increase the
evaporation of water from the surface of the ground. It is well known that
clearing off the forests of malarious countries has often proved an
excellent means of making lands salubrious which were before too damp;
for, by removing every obstacle to the direct action of the sun's rays
upon the ground, we cause an increase of evaporation from its surface, and
may thus be enabled to exhaust the superficial strata completely of their
water during the hot season. In very moist lands, which lend themselves
readily to deep drainage, the combination of the latter with a clearing
of the surface has, in almost every quarter of the globe, rendered
possible a very widespread and sometimes a quite lasting freedom from
malaria. But, although a nearly universal experience proclaims this fact,
there is a school which, following in the footsteps of Lancisi, maintains
the contrary opinion, that it is necessary to preserve the forests in
malarious districts, and even to increase their extent, since the trees
filter the infected atmosphere and arrest the malaria in their foliage.
This strange theory was formulated by Lancisi in 1714, on the occasion of
the proposed clearing of a forest belonging to the Caetani family, and
lying between the Pontine Marshes and the district of Cistema. Lancisi was
completely imbued with the paludal notion, and consequently believed that
the very severe malaria of Cistema was brought by the winds from the coast
marshes, instead of being produced in the soil surrounding the district,
which was then covered by this forest. He believed then that the forest
acted as a protective rampart, and he prevented its being cut down. But
toward the middle of the present century the Caetani had the woods cleared
off from the entire belt of land surrounding Cistema. Twenty years later I
was able to show that Cistema had gained greatly in salubrity. I published
my observation in 1879, and, naturally, was taken to task rather sharply
in the name of the sacred tradition. Happily these recriminations led our
Minister of Agriculture to have the question studied by a special
commission. This commission, after a conscientious examination extending
over three years of all the malarious localities in the province of Rome,
has just published its report,[1] the conclusions of which are entirely in
accord with the facts of universal experience. They were not able to
verify a single fact in support of Lancisi's theory, while they found many
of the same nature as that of Cistema, and which have resulted in
overturning the theory entirely.

[Footnote 1: Della influenza dei boshi sulla malaria dominante nella
regiona marittima della provincia di Roma. Annali di Agricoltura, No. 77,
1884. Roma: Eredi Botta.]

It has also been thought possible to practice drainage from above by means
of plantations of certain trees which would draw considerable moisture
from the earth, a method which might really be serviceable in some
malarious districts. But in accordance with the idea that malaria is a
product of paludal decomposition, the trees selected have almost always
been the _eucalyptus_. It has been maintained that trees of so rapid a
growth ought to drain the soil very actively, and also that the aroma of
their foliage ought to destroy the miasmatic emanations. I have hitherto
been unable to verify a single instance of the destruction of malaria by
eucalyptus plantations, but I do not consider myself justified in denying
the facts which have been stated by others. There is nothing to oppose the
admission that these plantations, when properly made, may sometimes have
been of great utility. I maintain frankly, however, that they have not
always been so, and that it is necessary to guard against the
exaggerations into which some have allowed themselves to fall in recent
times. Such exaggerations might have been avoided if, instead of talking
about these plantations on the basis of a theoretical assumption, the
results only had been studied in places where the eucalyptus abounds. It
would then have been known that even in the southern hemisphere, the
original home of the eucalyptus, there are eucalyptus forests which are
very malarious. This fact has been demonstrated by Mr. Liversige,
professor in the University of Sydney, Australia. Among us also, although
everybody was convinced by the statements of the press that the locality
of the Tre Fontaine, near Rome, had been freed from malaria by means of
the eucalyptus, people were disagreeably surprised by an outbreak of very
grave fever occurring throughout the whole of this colony in 1882, a year
in which all the rest of the Roman Campagna enjoyed an exceptional
salubrity. If, alongside of these hygienic uncertainties, we place the
agricultural uncertainties, we must conclude that it is necessary to
contend strongly against this fanatical prejudice in favor of the
eucalyptus tree. These plants are, in fact, very capricious in their
growth. In full vegetation during the winter in our climate, they are
often killed instantly by a sharp winter frost, by damp cold, by the
frosts of spring, or by other causes which the botanists have not yet been
able to determine. At other times, if the winters are very mild, these
plants grow too rapidly in height, and then are broken short off by
moderately strong winds. It should further be mentioned that these
plantations are sometimes very expensive. In fact, if the earth contains
too much water, it must be drained under penalty of seeing the roots of
the eucalyptus rot. Then again, if the subsoil is compact, it is necessary
to dig deep trenches in order to give room to the long roots of these
trees, and often indeed these trenches must also be drained, as is done
for olive trees. The conclusion evidently is that it is better to confine
ourselves to hydraulic methods of promoting the health fulness of a
locality, the immediate effects of which are less uncertain. And then,
when the local conditions are such as to make it desirable to try the
effects of plants possessed of strongly absorbing powers, it is better to
choose them from among the flora of our own hemisphere. This is more sure,
and will cost less.

Simple hydraulic methods of purification, even the most perfect, do not,
however, produce permanent hygienic effects, since the moisture necessary
for the multiplication of the malaria in the soil is so slight that these
effects may be compromised by anything whatever that is capable of
restoring a moderate degree of humidity to the ground during the hot
season. It has often been thought that a suspension of malarial production
would be better assured by suppressing at the same time the humidity of
the soil and the direct action of the oxygen of the air upon the
superficial strata of earth which contain the ferment. This has been
successfully accomplished by the system of overlaying (_comblées_). This
consists in covering the infected soil by thick layers of uninfected
earth, carried there either by the muddy waters of rivers or by the hand
of man. At the same time the steady drainage of the surface and
underground water is provided for. Last year I advised our Minister of War
to undertake in another form a hydraulico-atmospheric purification of the
district of the Janiculum surrounding the Salviati Palace on the Via della
Longara, by draining the soil carefully and covering with a layer of very
close turf all the parts of the surface which could not be macadamized. It
would seem as if this system had been rather successful, since there has
not been this year a single case of fever in the _personnel_ of the new
military college, established in the Salviati Palace; while in the Corsimi
Palace, which is situated on the same side of the Via della Longara, but
which looks out upon that part of the Janiculum which is still uncovered,
there have been some fatal cases of fever.

Furthermore, we have had in Rome, during the past few years, some very
evident proofs of the efficacy of atmospheric methods of purification. I
will confine myself to the relation here only of the most striking
instance, one which has been furnished us in the building up of new
quarters of the city. There was much discussion at first as to whether the
improvements should be undertaken in the parts where they now are or in
the valley of the Tiber, for the uncovered lands of the Esquiline and of
the Quirinal were malarious, and, as nearly everybody then thought that
the malaria of Rome was carried into the city from the coast marshes, it
was supposed that this state of things was irremediable. We opposed to
this view the fact of the salubrity of the Viminal, which is situated
between the Esquiline and the Quirinal, and which ought to be as unhealthy
as the two other hills were the malaria of the latter imported into the
city instead of being indigenous. Believing it to be indigenous, we hoped
that by shielding the surface of these hills from the direct action of the
air (by building houses and paving the streets), the malaria would cease
to be produced there. That is precisely what has happened, for the new
quarters are very healthy. But the malaria is only held in abeyance, and
is not definitely overcome; for if an extensive excavation is made in
these hills, and the contact of the air with the malarious soil is thus
re-established, during a hot and damp season, the production of malaria
commences anew. A complete atmospheric purification is nevertheless the
most stable of all the methods of obtaining a suspension of malarial
production, but unfortunately its realization is very limited, for it is
restricted to inhabited localities and to sodded surfaces.

The ideal method of insuring freedom from malaria should be to obtain a
permanent immunity, that is, to be able to modify the composition of the
infected soil in such a way as to make it sterile as regards malaria,
without taking from it the power of furnishing products useful for the
social economy. But all the elements indispensable for obtaining such a
result fail us utterly just here. We do not yet know what ought to be, in
general terms, the composition of a soil incapable of producing malaria,
yet retaining those properties which are suitable for vegetation. When we
shall have arrived at this first stage, there will still be a long road to
travel; and the most difficult part will be to discover a practical means
of imparting this salutary composition to all the numerous varieties of
malarious soils.

Scientifically, then, in the present state of our knowledge we are unable
to affirm anything on this point. Practically, we are not much further
advanced. It is very probable that the combination of hydraulic
purification with a forced cultivation of the soil has sometimes
determined changes in its composition by which it has been rendered
sterile as regards malaria. If that has happened, it has happened by
chance, and we are unable to reproduce the result at will; for we have not
all the data which might enable us to understand how it has come about.
Most of the purifications obtained in ancient times, by means of forced
cultivation, continued during centuries, have not been definite at all,
but the production of malaria has been simply suspended. Hardly was the
regular cultivation of the fields interrupted than the production of
malaria recommenced. Among the numerous examples that I might cite in this
connection, I will limit myself to that of the Roman Campagna. This seemed
to have been made permanently healthy under the Antonii, but after the
fall of the empire it began again to produce malaria, as if the forced
cultivation through so many centuries had never been.

One might, strictly speaking, be content with such a result, and boldly
undertake forced cultivation of all malarious districts, without stopping
to ascertain whether the freedom from malaria so obtained would be
definite, or whether the production of the poison were only suspended.
Unfortunately, one is never sure of arriving at such a result, and no one
can say, _à priori_, whether the forced cultivation of a given malarious
tract will render it healthful. It must always be remembered that the
first effect of forced cultivation, which requires an overturning of the
soil by means of the plow, the spade, and the pick, is an unfortunate one,
from a hygienic point of view, whenever we have to deal with a malarious
country. Experience has shown, especially in Italy and America, that this
overturning of the soil almost invariably increases the local production
of malaria. And this can be readily understood, since the plowing and the
digging in a soil containing the specific ferment increase the extent of
surface of the ground in immediate contact with the atmosphere. This first
mischievous effect is often gradually weakened by the continued
cultivation, and may end by disappearing. At other times, on the contrary,
it persists obstinately, and one is often forced in desperation to the
resolve to level the ground again and to varnish it, so to speak, with a
thick sowing of grass, if he wishes to suspend or weaken the malarial
production.

However, when the local conditions will permit, it is well to try whether,
by means of forced cultivation of the soil, it may not be possible to
increase the efficacy of the hydraulic method of procuring immunity from
malaria, or of the hydraulico-atmospheric method of "overlaying." The
moment that it is known that this cultivation has frequently been
advantageous, there comes forward a crowd of social reasons which induce
us to attempt it, even though we be persuaded that we are about to engage
in a game of chance. But to dare to attempt it is not all that is
necessary; we need also the possibility of so doing, and just here we find
ourselves in a vicious circle from which it is not easy to emerge. Forced
cultivation cannot be accomplished without the presence of agriculturists
in the region during the entire year; and the agriculturists cannot remain
in the region during the fever season, for they run thereby too great a
risk. For the solution of this question there is but one means: _try to
increase the power of resistance of the human organism to the attacks of
the malaria_. It is to a search after the means of accomplishing this
result that I have devoted myself during the past few years.

There is nothing to hope for, as regards malaria, in acclimation.
_Individual acclimation_ is, and always has been, impossible. The malarial
infection is not one of those a first attack of which confers immunity
from other attacks. It is, on the contrary, a progressive infection, the
duration of which is indeterminate, and which is of such a nature that a
single attack may suffice to ruin the constitution for life. Collective or
_racial acclimation_ certainly existed in the past, at a time when
specific remedies for pernicious malaria were unknown; and even later,
when the employment of these remedies was very limited. The acclimation
was due to a natural selection made by the malaria upon successive
generations, from which it took away, almost without opposition, all those
who possessed but a feeble individual power of resistance to the specific
poison, while it spared those who possessed this power of resistance in an
extraordinary degree. The first were, according to the Grecian myth, _the
human victims destined to appease the monster or demon who opposed the
violation of the territory over which he had up to that time exercised an
absolute sovereignty_. The second became the founders of the race, and
through them, from generation to generation, the collective power of
resistance to the malaria was progressively increased. In our own days a
like selection may take place among barbarous races, as it does among the
cattle and the horses in a malarious region, but it has become an
impossibility among civilized nations. By means of the specific remedies
which we possess, the use of which is now so general, the lives of a large
number of individuals whose resisting powers are very feeble are
preserved; and these individuals beget others whose power of resistance to
the action of the specific poison is still more feeble. This results after
a number of generations in the physical degradation of that part of the
human race which inhabits malarious countries.

We cannot, therefore, in the future, count upon the assistance of external
natural forces to increase the power of resistance of human society
against the assaults of malaria. Such an object can be obtained only by
artificial means. It has been sought to attain this end by the daily
administration of the salts of quinine, of the salicylates, and of the
tincture of eucalyptus, each and every one tried in turn. But the salts of
quinine are dear, exercise a prompt, though very transient anti-malarial
action, and, when administered for a long time, disturb rather seriously
the functions of the digestive and nervous systems. The salicylates, when
well prepared, are rather dear, and there is as yet no proof that they
possess prophylactic powers against malaria. The alcoholic tincture of
eucalyptus is useful in malarious regions (as are all the alcoholics,
beginning with wine) in quickening the circulation of the blood; may it,
perhaps, also act as a preservative against light attacks of malaria?
Possibly. But it is very certain that it possesses no efficacy in places
where malaria is severe. It will suffice to prove this to recall the two
epidemics of fever which afflicted the colony of the Tre Fontaine, near
Rome, in 1880 and 1882. Everybody was attacked, and there were several
cases of pernicious fever, although a good preparation of eucalyptus is
manufactured in the place and is distributed largely to the colonists
during the dangerous season of the year.


ARSENIC FOR MALARIA.

Having several times had occasion to observe, in malarious regions, that
when recourse was had to arsenic in order to subdue fevers over which
quinine had exerted almost no effect, relapses occurred but rarely; and
having been able to satisfy myself that the arsenical treatment sometimes
procured a permanent, immunity in individuals who are subject to frequent
attacks of malaria, I began in 1880 to employ arsenic (arsenious acid) as
a prophylactic in certain portions of the Roman Campagna. This remedy was
indicated in an experiment of this sort, not only by reason of its durable
anti-malarialæ effects, but also by its low price, by the beneficial
influence it exerts upon all the nutritive functions, and because it has
no disagreeable taste and may therefore be given to everybody, even to
children. My first trials in 1880 were rather encouraging, and I felt
myself justified in engaging some proprietors and the association of our
southern railroads to repeat the experiments on a large scale the
following year, recommending them, however, to use arsenic in a solid form
as offering an easy and certain dosage. This extensive prophylactic
experiment began in 1881, and acquired constantly increasing proportions
in 1882 and 1883, which have become still larger this year. An experiment
of this kind is not easy to conduct in the beginning. The name, arsenic,
frightens not only those whom we desire to submit to its action, but also
the physicians, whose exaggerated fears have sometimes rendered the
experiments of no avail, since they were conducted too timidly and the
doses of arsenic employed were altogether insufficient. But some
intelligent men, especially M. Ricchi, physician in chief to the southern
railroads, were able speedily to triumph over these obstacles, and to
place the experiment on a firm basis. The general testimony of all the
facts which they have collected tends really to prove that when the
administration of arsenic is begun some weeks before the presumed season
for the appearance of the fever, and when it is continued regularly
throughout the whole of this season, the power of resistance of the human
organism to malaria is increased. Many individuals gained thereby a
complete immunity, others a partial immunity, that is to say, they were
sometimes attacked by the fever, but it never, even in very malarious
districts, assumed a pernicious form, and was easily subdued by very
moderate doses of quinine. Last year, for example, in the district of
Borino, where the malaria is very severe, M. Ricchi experimented upon
seventy-eight employes of the southern railroads, dividing them into two
equal divisions, one of which received no prophylactic treatment, while
the other was submitted to a systematic arsenical treatment. At the end of
the fever season it was found that several employes among the first half
had been attacked by fevers of a severe type; while thirty-six of those in
the second division had enjoyed a complete immunity, the three others
having been attacked, but so lightly that they cured themselves by quinine
without seeking medical aid.

Facts of this sort are very encouraging, and the more so as the general
health of those submitted to the prophylactic treatment was much improved.
It was found almost invariably, upon the termination of the experiment,
that there had been an increase in bodily weight and an amelioration of
the anæmia which is so common in milarious districts. But, in order to
arrive at such results, it is necessary to be at once bold and prudent. On
the one hand, it is necessary to graduate very carefully the daily dose,
never exceeding at the commencement the dose of two milligrammes (3/100
grain per diem) for adults, and never giving the arsenic upon an empty
stomach. On the other hand, it is necessary to gradually push the dose up
to ten or twelve milligrammes (15/100 or 18/100) a day for adults, in
districts where the malaria is very severe, giving the arsenic in such a
way that there is never an accumulation of the drug in the stomach. Most
of the experiments which have been undertaken this year are being
conducted on this plan, and there is reason to hope that they will give
satisfactory results.

We must not, however, rest here if we wish to attain promptly the end
proposed, namely, that of planting colonies in malarious districts without
exposing the colonists to grave danger. Even if we realize perfectly the
hope which I conceived in 1880, and if we are enabled to prove that
arsenic increases man's power of resistance to the assaults of malaria, we
must not imagine that everything is accomplished. It will take a long time
before the use of a preservative method of this kind becomes generalized;
we have first to contend against the fear which nearly every one
experiences when arsenic is mentioned, and then there will also be
difficulty in establishing everywhere a proper control over its
administration. In every attempt at the colonization of malarious regions
it will be necessary to combat for a long time the diseases caused by
malaria, and we must seek for a method of combating them by a means which
is in the possession of everybody, and which shall not be dangerous to the
general economy of the human organism. Those who do not know from actual
experience the miseries of a malarious country, think only of combating
the acute forms of infection, which often place the patient in danger of
death. But this danger, though great, is for the most part imaginary,
provided that assistance be obtained in time. But that which desolates
families, and which causes a physical degradation of the human race
exposed to the attacks of malaria, is the chronic poisoning, which
undermines the springs of life and produces a slow but progressive anæmia.
This infection often resists all human therapeutic measures, and is even
aggravated by the use of quinine, which is given during the recurrent
paroxysms of fever. Quinine is, when given for a long period of time, a
true poison to the vaso-motor nerves. The question, then, is to replace
quinine, and the alkaloids which possess an analogous physiological
action, by an agent the efficacy of which against, chronic malarial
poisoning may be greater and the dangers of its employment less.


THE LEMON FOR MALARIA.

A happy chance has led Dr. Magliori to the discovery of an agent of this
sort which was traditionally in use by certain Italian families. It is an
exceedingly simple thing--merely a decoction of lemon. It is prepared by
cutting up one lemon, peel and all, into thin slices, which are then put
into three glassfuls of water and the whole boiled down to one glassful.
It is then strained through linen, squeezing the remains of the boiled
lemon, and set aside for some hours to cool. The whole amount of the
liquid is then taken fasting. It is well known that in Italy, Greece, and
North Africa, they often use lemon juice or a decoction of lemon seeds, as
a remedy in malarial fevers of moderate intensity; and in Guadaloupe they
use for the same purpose a decoction of the bark of the roots of the lemon
tree. All these popular practices tend to show that the lemon tree
produces a febrifuge substance, which resides in all parts of the plant,
but which would seem to be most abundant in the fruit. In fact, among the
popular remedies employed against malarial infection, that which I have
just described is the most efficacious, for it can be employed with good
effects in acute fevers. But it is especially advantageous in combating
the chronic infection, which is rebellious to the action of quinine, and
in removing or moderating its deplorable effects.

Hardly had I learned of this method of medication, when I hastened to
induce some proprietors in the Roman Campagna to try it with their farm
hands; and, after witnessing the good results there, I endeavored to
persuade practitioners to make a trial of the same treatment. I was
ridiculed a little at first, for they thought it rather singular that a
professor should be trying to popularize on old woman's remedy. In reply
to that I answered that practical medicine would not have existed, had it
not known how to treasure up from age to age the facts of popular
experience; and I ventured to remark that, had the Countess de Chinchon
waited until methodical researches had been made into the physiological
action of cinchona bark, before popularizing the remedy, the use of which
she had learned from the semi-barbarous Peruvians, in all probability
humanity would still, as regards malaria, be dependent upon the medication
practiced in the middle ages. Happily these arguments had the desired
effect upon certain distinguished practitioners, some of whom, especially
in Sicily and Tuscany, have already collected together a tolerably large
number of very encouraging observations. One of them, Dr. Mascagni, of
Avezzo, tried the remedy in his own person, and succeeded in promptly
curing an obstinate malarial fever which had resisted the action of
quinine.

Gentlemen, in dealing with malaria we ought always to hold popular
experience in high esteem, for we owe much to it. We owe to it the fact
that we have been liberated from the paludal idea, and furthermore, that
we have learned that it is often better, instead of trying to prevent the
importation, for the most part imaginary, of malaria from distant marshes,
to suppress its production in the soil under our feet or in that
immediately surrounding us. We owe to it the knowledge, which we now have,
that malaria rises up into the atmosphere only to a limited height, so
that by placing ourselves a little above this limit in order to eliminate
the possibility of the malaria being carried up to us by oblique
atmospheric currents, we are enabled to breathe an air which does not
contain this ferment, or which contains it only in insignificant amounts;
thus one may even sleep in the open air during the night in very unhealthy
districts without running any risks. The knowledge of this fact has led
some peoples of Greece, and the inhabitants of the Pontine Marshes, to
sleep in the open air on platforms raised on poles four or five meters
(twelve to fifteen feet) in height. Some people in the Roman Campagna have
built houses for themselves on top of the ancient tombs, the walls of
which are perpendicular; the American Indians fasten their hammocks as
high up as possible to the trees of the malarious forests; and very
recently, the engineers of the Panama Railroad had little wooden huts
built in the trees in order to procure safety against the terrible
outbreak of malaria which occurred during the construction of that iron
way. We owe, finally, to this popular experience the discovery of the
specific action of quinine, and the consequent preservation of thousands
and thousands of human lives. Why should we reject _a priori_ and without
investigation other useful data which it may yet present to our
consideration? If we wish to make progress in this question of rendering
malarious countries healthy, we must always hold before our eyes a double
object--to find a means of prophylaxis which may be accessible to
everybody; and, at the same time, to find a means equally within
everybody's reach, to overcome chronic malarial poisoning and its evil
consequences. Science is still too far behind to permit us to hope that we
shall soon succeed in discovering this second means by purely scientific
researches. We ought, therefore, to gather together with great care all
the facts which point to the possibility of a solution of this problem,
and if the measures to which these facts point seem to be incapable of
doing harm, we ought to try them boldly, and not be restrained by a false
idea of the dignity of science. The social importance of the problem is
too great to allow of its solution being retarded by the fear that
scientific men may be accused of having been outrun by the ignorant. True
science has none of these puerile susceptibilities; on the contrary, it
deems it an honor to be able to seize all the observations of fact,
whoever may have been their first recorder, to put them to the crucial
test of methodical experiment, and to convert them into a new stepping
stone on the march of human progress.

       *       *       *       *       *



HALESIA HISPIDA.


[Illustration: HALESIA HISPIDA: HARDY SHRUB: FLOWERS WHITE.]

This fine hardy shrub is perhaps best known under the name of Pterostyrax,
but we think gardeners will, quite independently of botanical grounds, be
inclined to thank Messrs. Bentham and Hooker for reducing the genus to the
more easily remembered name of Halesia. Halesia hispida is a hardy
Japanese shrub of recent introduction, with numerous white Deutzia-like
flowers in long terminal racemes. A peculiar appearance is produced by the
arrangement of the flowers on one side only of the branchlets of the
inflorescence. The botanical history of the plant is well known, and our
illustration is sufficient to show the general appearance of the plant. It
is decidedly one of the best recent additions to the number of hardy
deciduous flowering shrubs. For the specimen whence our figure was taken
we are indebted to W.E. Gumbleton, Esq.--_The Gardeners' Chronicle_.

       *       *       *       *       *



WINDFLOWERS.


[Illustration: FLOWERS OF ANEMONE DECAPETALA (Natural Size).]

The genus Anemone has a great future. Even at present its popularity is
only a little less than that of roses and daffodils, but when we trust to
seeds as a means of reproducing the best of windflowers instead of buying
dried roots from the shops, then, and then only, will "coy anemone" become
a garden queen. A. coronaria, if treated as an annual, furnishes glowing
blossoms from October until June, after which A. dichotoma and A. japonica
in all its forms--white and rosy--carry on the supply and complete the
cycle of a year's blossoming. By sowing good, newly-saved seed in
succession from February until May in prepared beds out of doors, the
common crown anemone may in many sunny, sheltered gardens be had in bloom
all the year round. This is saying a great deal, but it is true; indeed,
it is questionable if we have any other popular garden flower which is at
once so showy, so hardy, and so continuous in its blossoming. A friend
beside me says: "Ah! but what of violas?" To which I reply: "Grow both in
quantity, since both are as variable as they are beautiful." But when
viola shrinks in foggy November from the frost demon, anemone rises
Phoenix-like responsive to the first ray of sunshine. Besides, fair Viola,
richly as she dresses in velvet purple or in golden sheen, has not yet
donned that vivid scarlet robe which Queen Anemone weareth, nor are her
wrappers of celestial azure so pure; and blue is, as we all know, the
highest note of coloring in floral music. But comparisons are not
required, Anemones are variable and beautiful enough to be grown for
themselves alone. No matter whether we look at a waving mass of sparkling
windflowers in a vineyard or cornfield by the Mediterranean, or walk knee
deep among the silvery stars of A. nemorosa in an English wood--"silvery
stars in a sea of bluebells"--they are alike satisfying. I believe that
there is any amount of raw material in the genus Anemone--hardihood, good
form and habit, and coloring alike delicate and brilliant; and what we now
want is that amateurs should grow them with the attention and care that
have been lavished upon roses and lilies and daffodils. But, alas! we have
some capricious beauties in this group. A. coronaria and some other
species succeed well treated as seedling hardy annuals, and others, as A.
apennina, A. Robinsoni, A. Pulsatilla, A. dichotoma, and A. japonica, may
be multiplied _ad infinitum_ by cuttings of the root. It is when we come
to the aristocratic Alpine forms, to A. alpina, A. sulphurea, A.
narcissiflora, etc., that difficulties alike of propagation and of culture
test our skill to the uttermost. Tourists fond of gardens walk over these
plants in bloom every year; they dig up roots and send them home; but they
are as yet very rare in even the best of gardens. Nor is it easy to rear
them from seeds. A year ago I sowed seed by the ounce each of A. alpina
and of A. sulphurea, but as yet not a single plantlet has rewarded me for
my trouble. Even freshly gathered seeds of A. narcissiflora will not
germinate with me, but I live in hopes of surmounting little difficulties
of this kind, and in the mean time, perhaps, others more fortunate will
tell us how to amend our unsuccessful ways. One of the prettiest species
which is now in flower in our gardens is the pure white A. dichotoma,
which carries on the succession after the Snowdrop anemone (A. sylvestris)
has passed away. Then we have dreams, and lend willing ears to the oral
traditions of Anemone alba. Is this species in cultivation, or where may
a figure of it be seen? It is said to be of neat habit, 12 inches high,
with erect, saucer-shaped, white blossoms 3 inches in diameter. The
species we now figure is well worth a place, being easily raised from
seeds. It is called Anemone decapetala, and if not by any means a showy
species, tufts of it three years from seed have this season been very
pretty. It grows less than a foot in height, and bears pale creamy yellow
flowers the size of a shilling on branched flowering stems; each blossom
has eight or nine sepals around a yellowish green center. Some of our
clumps had from a dozen to twenty flowers open at the same time, and the
general effect in the early morning sunshine is a very pretty one. We have
another species similar in habit which is just now a mass of rosy buds,
and if you blow open its sepals, they are of a bright magenta color
inside, but I never yet saw a flower open naturally on this plant. Just as
the sepals open at the tips, and you think they are about to expand, they
shrivel and fall away, leaving a tuft of greenish yellow stamens in the
center. Is it A. Hudsoni? Another species not often seen, but well worth
culture, is A. coerulea, a kind with finely cut leaves and purplish blue
flowers. Then A. coronaria, The Bride, a pure creamy white kind, with
flowers 3 inches across, raised by Van Velsen, of Haarlem, is really a
good addition to these dainty blossoms, and affords a vivid contrast to
the fiery A. fulgens. I have received this year some roots of anemones,
iris, and other hardy flowers from the site of ancient Troy, and trust
that some of these, if not new, will be beautiful additions to our
gardens. The true A. vitifolia from northern India does well in mild
localities; but best of all of this perennial large-leaved race is A.
japonica alba, the queen of all autumnal kinds, rivaling the best of all
hardy border flowers in purity and freedom of blossoming. Taken as a
class, windflowers are so beautiful that we cannot grow them too
plentifully, and but few other genera will so well repay cultural
attention at all seasons.--_F.W.B., in The Garden_.

       *       *       *       *       *



STORY OF LIEUT. GREELY'S RECOVERY.


The story of Lieut. Greely's recovery after his rescue from Cape Sabine is
given by Passed Assistant Surgeon Edward H. Green, U.S.N, of the relief
ship Thetis, in a communication to the _Medical Record_. The cases of
Greely's six fellow survivors, it is remarked, were very similar to his.
The condition of all was so desperate that a delay of two hours in the
camp was necessary before they could be removed to the relief vessels.
Brandy, milk, and beef essence were administered.

Lieut. Greely's disease is called by the surgeon asthenia, a diminution of
the vital forces. Greely fainted after being carried to the wardroom of
the Thetis. When he was brought to, a teaspoonful of minced raw fresh beef
was given to him. His clothes were carefully cut off of him, and heavy red
flannels, previously warmed, were-substituted. He was excessively enacted,
and his body emitted an offensive odor. His skin hung from his limbs in
flaps. His face, hands, and scalp were black with a thick crust of soot
and dirt. He had not washed himself or changed his clothing for ten
months. He had lived a long time at a temperature inside the hut of from
five to ten degrees above zero. He was nervous and irritable, at times
almost irrational, and his eyes were wild and staring. He insisted on
talking, craving news, and demanding food, but he complained of no pain.

His tongue was dry and cracked, and coated a brownish black. He was
ravenously hungry. His pulse was 52, and soft or compressible. His skin
was cold, clammy, shriveled, and sallow. His temperature under the tongue
was 97.2 deg. There was great muscular waste, and he was unable to move or
to stand without support. Before leaving Fort Conger in August, 1883, he
weighed 168 pounds. He now weighed 120 pounds. He was carried aboard the
Thetis about 11 P.M. on June 22, it being then broad daylight in that
region, and his treatment from that hour until 8 o'clock the next morning
was a teaspoonful of minced raw beef, alternated every half hour with a
teaspoonful of milk punch. Strict quiet was enjoined.

On June 23 Surgeon Green was compelled to allow him to read some letters
from home, after which he seemed less restless. He talked rationally, but
showed a loss of memory in often repeating what he had previously said. He
had not closed his eyes in sleep since his rescue. There was excessive
constipation. The treatment was the same as during the night, except that
finely cut raw onion was added to the minced beef, and half an ounce of
milk punch was given every two hours.

On the next day, June 24, although he had yet had no sleep, and he showed
a great desire to talk and read, there were signs of improvement. He was
less persistent in demanding food, his tongue presented a moister
appearance, he began to complain of soreness in his limbs, and his heart
sounded stronger. Surgeon Green had him sponged with tepid water, and
briskly rubbed with flannels. He gave him a small quantity of oatmeal
thoroughly boiled, beef essence, and scraped beef and onion.

On the next day, June 25, Lieut. Greely slept for the first time. He awoke
after two or three hours, much refreshed. He talked without excitement,
and his tongue and skin began to look more natural. His muscles felt sore,
and his ankles were puffed.

On the next day, June 26, his mind was tranquil, but there was a loss of
memory of words. He was allowed to sit up in bed and read a little. He
slept six hours. For the first time since his rescue medicine was given
him--some muriate of iron.

On the next morning he got eight ounces of broiled steak and on the
following day, June 28, he dressed himself and sat up for two hours. His
food was now gradually increased from day to day, and he continued
steadily to improve. On July 1 he was well bundled up, and allowed to sit
on deck for an hour in the sunshine. On July 17, the Thetis arrived at St.
Johns.

Lieut. Greely's muscles were now filling out rapidly, and he was allowed
to go on shore and take exercise. Here, Surgeon Green says, the lieutenant
committed an error in diet at the American Consul's table, and suffered
for two days with a slight attack of intestinal indigestion. On July 25,
for the first time, he was allowed to eat three square meals. Six weeks
after his rescue he had gained 49 pounds. He gained 9½ pounds the first
week, 15 pounds the second week, 8 pounds the third week, 7 pounds the
fourth week, 5½ pounds the fifth week, and 4 pounds the sixth week.
Surgeon Green adds, under the head of "remarks":

"Vital depression, as exhibited by the temperature, not marked; digestion
fairly good all the time; nervous system soon calmed. Microscopic
examination of blood disappointing; exhibiting no unhealthy character of
red blood globules. Liver not secreting. Large gain in weight, due to
rapid assimilation of food, owing to a great muscular waste."

       *       *       *       *       *



THE CAY MONUMENT AT UXMAL.

DISCOVERED BY DR. LE PLONGEON ON JUNE 1, 1881.


In 1881, we went for the second time to the ancient ruined city of Uxmal,
Yucatan, and lived there four months, making moulds of every ornament and
inscription, from which moulds perfect facsimiles of those grand old
palaces can be produced in plaster, and placed in any exposition or
museum.

During our stay there, on June 1, Dr. Le Plongeon had the great
satisfaction of discovering a monument, a splendid work of art in all its
pristine beauty, fresh as when the artist put the finishing touch to it,
without blemish, unharmed by time, and not even looked upon by man since
it was concealed, ages ago, where Dr. Le Plongeon discovered it through
his interpretations of certain inscriptions. It was probably hidden to
save it from destruction, between the sixth and seventh centuries of the
Christian era, when the Naualts invaded and overran the country,
demolishing many art treasures of the Mayas.

[Illustration]

The monument represents a mastodon head, with various ornaments above and
below it, the whole measuring 3.50 m. (11 feet 4½ inches) in height, and
in width 1.25 m. (4 feet 1 inch). Above the mastodon head there is a
chain, nearly 10 inches deep; the stones forming the links are sculptured
and fitted into each other just like the rattles of a rattlesnake; and yet
higher another row of stones resembling knots. The uppermost part is
composed of stones that incline outward from above; they are flat,
measuring 0.55 by 0.45 centimeters (21 inches by 17 inches), and are
covered with various signs pertaining to certain mysteries.

On the sides of the mastodon's trunk are these signs

[Illustration: (an "x" and a "circle with a dot in the middle")]

which read _Tza_, and means _that which is necessary_. Beneath the trunk
and the upper jaw is what is meant to represent the distended jaws of a
serpent; on it is inscribed the family name, | | | |, _Can_, the mouth
(_chi_) of the serpent giving the second part of the name. _Canchi_ means
"serpent's mouth," and was the name of the royal family that ruled over
the Mayas when their civilization was at its height.

Within the serpent's jaws is the greatest gem of American sculpture yet
discovered. It is a head and throat, sculptured in the round, of Cay
Canchi, the high priest and elder brother of the warrior Chaacmol, whose
statue we exhumed from 8 meters below the soil in Chichen Itza, during the
year 1876; which statue was afterward robbed from us by the Mexican
government, and is now in the museum at Mexico city. The stone out of
which the beautiful head is cut is not polished, but wrought so finely as
to almost imitate the texture of the skin. It is decidedly a good looking
face. The nostrils are most delicately chiseled, and the cartilage
pierced; the eyes are open, and clearly marked. On the right cheek is his
totem, a fish traced in exceedingly small cross bars. The forehead is well
formed, not retreating, and incircled by a diadem composed of small disks,
from the front of which projects a perfect fish's head. The hair is short
in front, and hangs like a fringe on the upper part of the forehead, but
is longer at the sides, hanging in straight locks.

On the wall against which this monument is built, feathers are
sculptured, forming a canopy. Such a superb _chef d'oeuvre_ proves beyond
doubt that the Maya artists were in no way inferior to those of Assyria
and Egypt.

Having been so unjustly deprived of Chaacmol without any remuneration for
our time, labor, and expenditure, we decided to save the Cay monument from
destruction at any cost, for should any ignorant persons attempt to move
it, they would break it in so doing; so, after making a mould of it, we
guarded it most securely, as we considered best, afterward inclosing it
with planks, then built it up and left it as we had found it.

Sr. Don Romero Ancona, then Governor of Yucatan, was very much provoked
because we would not reveal the whereabouts of our find, but gained
nothing by it, and the beautiful monument is still safe.

ALICE D. LE PLONGEON.

       *       *       *       *       *


Rolled gold is made by casting an ingot of brass, and while this is still
hot pouring upon it a thin layer of gold alloy. The ingot when cold is
forced between steel rollers until a long, thin ribbon is produced, of
which the proportion of gold and brass is the same as of the ingot. The
percentage of gold is reduced as low as two and three per cent. This
rolled gold is used in making cheap bracelets and watch chains. It wears
from one to ten years.


A CATALOGUE, containing brief notices of many important scientific papers
heretofore published in the SUPPLEMENT, may be had gratis at this office.

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MUNN & CO., 261 BROADWAY, NEW YORK.

Branch Office, cor. F and 7th Sts., Washington, D.C.





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884" ***

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