While it recognizes the desirability of agreeing upon some language as
a general medium of communication between nations, the London Spectator
presents certain forcible reasons for not seeking to institute one
universal language. “Mankind,” it says, “will never adopt a universal
language, nor is it to be desired that it should. The instrument for
expressing thought must vary with the character, history, and mental
range of those who have thoughts to express, and if all men spoke
alike, ninety-nine per cent of them would be speaking stiffly--not
using, that is, a natural and self-developed vehicle of expression.
Arabic could not have grown up among Englishmen, or English among
Arabs. The seclusion of nations, too, from one another by the want of
a common tongue is by no means all loss, and we may doubt with reason
why the higher races would not be degraded if they understood without
effort all that the lower races say to one another. They would be bred,
as it were, in the servants’ hall, not to their advantage.”
* * * * *
In a recent address on The Chemistry of the Infinitely Little, M.
Grimaux referred to the fact, with which all who have thought about it
have been struck, that pathogenic microbes being diffused all through
the atmosphere, everybody must breathe and absorb all sorts of them,
including germs of typhoid fever, scarlet fever, diphtheria, etc., and
yet we are not all attacked with those diseases. Why? Because each
person has a peculiar temperament, and cells adapted, to a greater
or less extent, to resist the microbe, to destroy it when it enters
the organism, and thus constitutes, as the case may be, a good or a
bad cultural medium. Every one, we might say, is immune against some
or other of the pathogenic microbes. Like immunity belongs also to
certain animal species, and if a microbe pathogenic to man or to some
other species is injected into them they will resist it. The blood of
refractory animals probably contains principles not yet known which
oppose the development of the infectious microbe. From this fact the
idea has been suggested of injecting the blood of refractory animals
and communicating an artificial immunity to the individual to whom the
injection is applied.
* * * * *
M. J. CRÉPIN, of Paris, “an enthusiast concerning the goat,” as M.
de Parville calls him in _La Nature_, has established a model goat
dairy, and is endeavoring to diffuse a taste for goat’s milk and its
products. As a means to this end, he has sought to procure an improved
breed of goats, and has obtained a stock of very satisfactory quality
by crossing the best native goats with the Nubian buck. The latter
animal is rather awkward in form and movement, but M. Crépin hopes to
breed that out. Otherwise the Nubian is well acclimated, vigorous, and
indifferent to cold, hornless, and a most excellent milker. Goat’s milk
generally is richer in caseine than cow’s milk, and owes some of its
special qualities to this fact, and to the further circumstance that
the flecks of goat-milk cheese are smaller, softer, and more easily
broken up--consequently more digestible--than those of cow’s milk.
Further, goat’s milk is more nearly than any other common milk like in
composition to human mother’s milk; and it has the very great advantage
that, the goat being less subject to attacks of tuberculosis and other
dangerous disorders, it is comparatively free from the liability to
convey infection. A single objection to the general use of goat’s milk
is the odor which is supposed to be characteristic of it, but M. Crépin
affirms that this is not apparent when the goats are properly bred and
kept. M. Crépin is experimenting with butter from goat’s milk, and
represents that he finds it very nice.
* * * * *
The fundamental principle involved in the new form of telemeter, or
instrument for estimating the distance of visible objects without
actual measurement, invented by Herr Zeiss, of Jena, is that of
the stereoscopic effect which appears in natural vision, where the
inclination of the eyes in concentrating on the object gives the sense
of distance. The base line between the eyes is increased in the Zeiss
instrument by means of a system of prisms so as to give a widened base
of binocular vision, and of mirrors which give magnifying power. Double
images are formed, the distance between which varies in proportion
to the distance from the observer, and appliances are provided
for measuring how far apart they are. The arrangement is fairly
satisfactory for moderate distances--say of 3,000 metres, or about
10,000 feet.
* * * * *
M. Moissan believes that he has found a solution of the problem of
the manufacture of ammonia from the atmosphere, and consequently
of rendering atmospheric nitrogen available in agriculture, by the
artificial production of calcium nitride. While calcium undergoes no
change in contact with nitrogen at the ordinary temperature, it is
affected by it under the operation of heat, and finally burns in it,
absorbing it rapidly and giving rise to a bronze-colored nitride.
Thrown into water, this substance decomposes with effervescence,
producing ammonia and calcium hydrate.
* * * * *
Prof. A. E. Dolbear, of Tufts College, Massachusetts, patented an
invention for telegraphing without wires in 1886, which he claims
covers all that Marconi is doing. He has sent messages with it for as
long distances as five miles. According to his account he invented the
system and made successful experiments with it as far back as 1882.
He made an application for a patent, which was rejected by the Patent
Office with the statement that it was contrary to science and would
not work. “But as it did work, the claim was maintained in the office,
and four years later, in 1886, a patent for it was issued.” Professor
Dolbear does not wish it to be understood that his patent is on the
“art of wireless telegraphy,” but that it covers everything that has
been so far done in the art.
* * * * *
On the occasion of the visit of the French Association to the British
Association, Prof. J. J. Thomson gave an exposition of the lines of
research by which it has been concluded that the atom is not the
smallest existing quantity of matter. Electro-chemical phenomena
teach us to associate a definite amount of electricity with each atom
of matter; but these recent researches indicate that under certain
circumstances a much larger quantity of negative electricity may be
conveyed by the atom, or else that the negative electrical charge
resides on a small detachable portion of the “atom,” which alone
is concerned in the experiments. The positive charge seems to be
distributed over the whole mass of the atom.
* * * * *
The merits of two methods of clarifying sewage--by dilution and by
bacterial action--are discussed by Mr. Rudolph Hering in articles in
the Engineering Magazine. Disposal by dilution in large streams of
water is regarded as satisfactory in many places--where the water of
the stream is not to be used for drinking or cooking--provided the
flow of the stream is always copious enough to dilute and disperse the
sewage so widely as to prevent putrefaction and substitute oxidation.
For purification by bacterial action no single method is found adapted
to all conditions. The method by filtration and aëration is declared
practicable only in localities where a sufficient area of porous land
is available, upon which the crude sewage can be spread in sufficient
quantity, into which it can filter with the proper velocity, and
from which it can emerge as a thoroughly purified water. Where these
conditions are absent, other methods must be adopted, of which the
experiments in artificial filtration by tanks, as practiced at
Exeter and Sutton, England, are described. These experiments promise
to improve the present method, but perhaps not as greatly as is
anticipated by the promoters. The author regards a prior separation of
the suspended or dissolved organic matter as essential to permanent
success when the amount of land is limited.
* * * * *
By using the tuberculin test the faculty of the Ohio Agricultural
Experiment Station have learned that in cattle the tubercle bacillus
usually first obtains its foothold in some of the minor glands, that
it may exist there for months and years before any other organs are
affected, and that it is only in advanced cases that the lungs become
diseased. While the growth of the organism is limited to these minor
glands the health of the animal usually shows no sign of impairment.
During this period there is no evidence that any unwholesome effect
is being produced upon the flesh, and so long as the infection is
localized in this way in one or two organs the Government inspectors
pass the meat as sound. Tuberculosis, therefore, is a very different
complaint from such diseases as pleuropneumonia or Texas fever, in
which the whole system is saturated from the first instant with the
febrile symptoms.