wound in the bite even of a healthy animal is attested by Mr. Pagin
Thornton, from a chapter in his own experience, and in the testimony
of a number of his own friends who have suffered for weeks together
from having been bitten. "And what is more surprising to me," he says,
"is that some of us may have hands crippled for some time from bites
of a man's teeth." Dog bites are always dangerous, but largely from
the size of the wound which a dog biting in earnest will inflict. With
men they usually fail to do their best. Animals recover from wounds
more easily than men do; but Lord Ebrington says that deer bitten by
the dogs in Exmoor hardly ever recover. Much of the poisoning caused
by bites is supposed to be due to the state of the animal's teeth; and
in this way the bite of a herbivorous animal, whose teeth are usually
soiled, may cause worse after effects than that of a carnivore, whose
wet mouth and wet tongue keep its teeth fairly clean. A similar
difference is observable in the effects of being clawed and bitten by
carnivora. Wounds made by the claws of leopards are poisonous, while
those caused by the teeth are rarely septic. The force with which a
bite in earnest is inflicted is an important element in its dangerous
character. "It seems," says the London Spectator, "as if for the
moment the animal threw all its force into the combination of muscular
action which we call a 'bite.' In most cases the mere shock of impact,
as the beast hurls itself on its enemy, is entirely demoralizing, or
inflicts physical injury. A muzzled mastiff will hurl a man to the
ground in the effort to fasten its teeth in his throat or shoulder.
Then, the driving and crushing force of the jaw muscles is
astonishing." Sir Samuel Baker noticed that the tiger usually seized
an Indian native by the shoulder, and with one jaw on one side and the
other on the other bit clean through chest and back. In nearly all
cases the bite penetrates to the lungs. This kind of wound is
characteristic of the bites of the _felidæ_. Hardly any bird recovers
from a cat's bite, for the same reason. The canine teeth are almost
instantly driven through the lung under the wing.
=Doulton Potteries.=--Sir Henry Doulton, head of the Lambeth
potteries, whose death, November 17, 1897, has been recorded in the
Monthly, preferred devoting himself to the factory to engaging in the
study of a learned profession for which his parents intended him, and
himself did much of the largest work produced there in the earlier
days of his connection with it. As the factory was enlarged, it made
drain pipes, vessels and appliances of stoneware for chemical and
other similar uses, for which it gained prizes at the great
exhibitions of 1851 and 1862; ale pots and mugs of traditional and
original designs; terra-cotta vases; and first exhibited articles of
higher artistic merit at Paris in 1867. It showed a magnificent
collection at Vienna in 1873, and its exhibit at Philadelphia in 1876
was one of the marked features of our Centennial. The chief styles of
its work are the ornamental salt-glazed stoneware known as Doulton
ware, and the underglaze-painted earthenware called "Lambeth faïence."
Sir George Birdwood ascribes as the great merit of Sir Henry's life
work his adherence to the two principles of making, as far as
possible, every piece intended for decoration on the wheel, and of
giving the utmost scope to the designer into whose hands the piece
fell for ornamentation. Four hundred designers, mostly women, and some
of them real artists, are engaged at the potteries, and each has her
way and signs her name to her work; so that "Sir Henry Doulton
succeeded in creating a most prolific school, or rather several
schools, of English pottery, the influence of which has been felt in
the revival of the ceramic arts in all the countries of the Old
World"--where they had been demoralized by the use of machinery; and
through the influence of his example, working since 1871, the United
Kingdom now produces "the most artistic commercial pottery of any
country in the world."
MINOR PARAGRAPHS.
A little over a year ago Professor Fraser published the results of
some researches which showed that the bile of several animals
possessed antidotal properties against serpents' venom, and against
the toxines of such diseases as diphtheria and tetanus, and that the
bile of venomous serpents is an antidote to their venom. The results
from an extension of these first experiments have been recently
published in the British Medical Journal. The most important
conclusions are as follows: The bile of venomous serpents is the most
powerful antidote to venom, and is closely followed in efficiency by
the bile of innocuous serpents. Regarding the antidotal power of bile
on the toxines of disease, Professor Fraser found that the bile of
venomous serpents had more antidotal power than that of the majority
of the other animals examined. It is curious that among the
non-venomous animals the rabbit's bile is the most powerful in
antidotal properties.
Three ways are mentioned by Prof. W. A. Herdman in which disease may
be communicated through oysters to the consumer; viz., by the presence
in the animal of inorganic, usually metallic, poison; or of organic
poison; or of a pathological organism or definite disease germ. From
experiments in the inoculation and disinfection of oysters, it was
found that all traces of these organisms could be removed by proper
washing. Good currents passing the beds are an important factor in
keeping the oyster healthy, and make it possible for the animal to
absorb large quantities of sewage and dispose of it. The effect of
this is to purify the water; but in the sifting process, while the
sewage is passing through, the animal retains disease germs, and may
pass them on to the consumer. Oysters should therefore be given an
opportunity to purify themselves, as is done in France, where they are
kept for a time in clean tanks before being sent to market. Oysters
may be effectively washed in fresh water. Sea water is unfavorable to
disease germs. Greenness in oysters is caused by food administered to
improve their quality; by the presence of copper; and in some American
oysters by an inflamed condition of the mantle. Green spots are also
produced by wandering cells getting under the epithelium. These cells
are loaded with granules which give a copper reaction.
The most interesting result of the massacre and sack of Benin, the
Saturday Review says, was the capture of a large series of brass
plaques, statuettes, box lids, pipes, etc., which have been brought to
England. The various articles are all castings, and their elaborate
ornamentation bespeaks for their makers great skill in metal working.
Most African tribes have smiths who hammer pieces of brass rod and
wire into simple ornaments; but these Benin brasses represent a stage
of metal working far more advanced than anything recorded for the
native races of Africa. Nothing like them is being made by any negro
race at present, and nothing is known that can be regarded as a
precursor of them. A statuette in the Liverpool Museum of a negro
holding a flint gun fixes their date as not earlier than about 1630.
In trying to account for them, many think they were due to the
influence of some comparatively advanced tribe that reached Benin from
the central Soudan and brought with them a knowledge of brass work
derived from early, possibly Egyptian, sources; and others attribute
the work to some prisoner or trader who lived at Benin in the
seventeenth century.
NOTES.
The Committee of the British Association on Meteorological Photography
reported that the result of their determinations of the heights of
clouds showed the existence of greater altitudes in hot weather under
thunderstorm conditions, when clouds may occur at five or six
different levels, extending as high as ninety thousand feet. A rise of
cloud takes place in hot weather, also during the morning and early
afternoons, while the lowest altitudes are found during cyclones.
M. Maige, by varying the condition of exposure of plants to light, and
keeping flowering branches in the dark, has succeeded in transforming
the latter into sterile creeping or climbing branches. Inversely, he
has been able, by means of the localized action of light, to transform
creeping or climbing into flowering branches. These results were
obtained at the vegetable biological laboratory of Fontainebleau.
F. L. Washburn, of the State University of Oregon, reports that the
condition of the Eastern oysters introduced to the Oregon coast waters
two years ago leaves nothing to be desired. The specimens have
withstood two winters successfully, and have made phenomenal growth,
"far exceeding what they would have made in the same time in their
native waters. Further, they spawned." The experiments in artificial
fertilization were not so successful. The spawn suffer from the
serious difficulties of sudden variations in the temperature and
salinity of the water resulting from the change of tide and strong
winds. It is hoped that better conditions may be found at Yaquina Bay.
The population of Egypt has been gradually increasing during the past
hundred years. It is stated to have been about two and a half million
in 1800, and is now estimated at nearly ten million. There are about
112,000 foreigners, of whom 38,000 are Greeks; the remainder being
chiefly Italians, 24,000; English, 19,000; French, 14,000; Austrians,
7,000; Russians, 3,000; and Persians and Germans, about 1,000 each.
Only about five per cent of the population can read and write, and
nearly two thirds are without any trade or profession.
Our record of deaths among men known in science includes the names of
Dr. Henriques de Castro, a Dutch archæologist of Portuguese descent,
member of many learned societies of the Netherlands; John Eliza de
Vry, of the Netherlands, one of the chief authorities on the chemistry
and pharmacy of the cinchona alkaloids, at The Hague, July 30th, in
the eighty-sixth year of his age; Dr. Eugenio Bettoni, director of the
Fisheries Station at Brescia, Italy, August 5th, aged fifty-three
years; Professor Arzruni, mineralogist in the Polytechnic Institute at
Aix; Heinrich Theodor Richter, director of the School of Mines at
Freiberg, Saxony; Dr. J. Crocq, professor of pathology in the
University of Brussels; Dr. C. G. Gibelli, professor of botany and
director of the Botanical Institute at Turin; Don Francisco Coello de
Portugal, president of the Geographical Society of Madrid, and author
of an atlas of Spain and its colonies; Dr. B. Kotula, author of
Researches on the Distribution of Plants; Surgeon Major J. E. T.
Aitchison, a distinguished botanist, particularly in the botany of
India, and author of numerous papers on the subject, September 30th,
in his sixty-fourth year; M. Thomas Frédéric Moreau, a French
archæologist, author of a collection of Gallic, Gallo-Roman, and
Merovingian antiquities, in his one hundred and first year; M. Gabriel
de Mortillet, the eminent French anthropologist, in Paris, November
4th, aged sixty-seven years; Sir George Smyth Baden Powell, political
economist, aged fifty-one years; Sir John Fowler, engineer in chief of
the Forth Bridge, aged eighty-one years; Dr. James I. Peck, assistant
professor of biology in Williams College, and assistant director of
the Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole; George Vestal, professor of
agriculture and horticulture at the New Mexico Agricultural College,
October 24th, aged forty-one years; Dr. W. Kochs, docent for
physiology at Bonn; M. J. V. Barbier, a distinguished French
geographer; M. N. J. Raffard, an eminent French mechanical engineer,
author of many valuable inventions; Latimer Clark, F. R. S., an
eminent English electrician, one of the founders and a past president
of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, whose name is associated
with the history of electric telegraphy and with many inventions, and
author of several books that are standard with the profession, at
Kensington, London, October 30th, in his seventy-sixth year; Count
Michele Stefano de Rossi, a distinguished Italian seismologist; M. de
Meritens, a French electrical engineer, inventor of one of the first
practical dynamos, and of other valuable electrical apparatus, aged
sixty-five years.
Transcriber's Notes:
Words surrounded by _ are italicized.
Words surrounded by = are bold.
Obvious printer's errors have been repaired, other inconsistent
spellings have been kept.
Illustrations were relocated to correspond to their references in the
text.