SCIENCE NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2059, 10 August 1893, Page 48

SCIENCE NOTES.

— Dr Lauciani, in his work on ancient Borne, says that while a system of garbage collection existed under Koman rule, the disposal of refuse was as crude as ie is in many modern towns and cities. That this disposal method was regarded as a nuisance at a .very early period is made evident by the fact that sanitary laws were passed 2000 years ago that were intended to at least mitigate the trouble. Some of these laws, graven on stone, were unearthed by Dr Lauciani in his excavations, and the text of one of them reads: "0. Oentius, son of Caius the Praetor, by- order of the Senate, has set up this line of terminal stones to mark the extent of ground that must be kept ■ absolutely free from dirt, and from carcases, ! and from corpses. Here also the burning of corpses is striotly forbidden." On the bottom i of this stone, in red letters, some probably near resident had written : "Do carry the dirt a little farther; otherwise you will be fined." But this bounding line, beyond which any foul matter might be cast to putiify under a Koman 3un, was only 400 ft from the city walls, as erected by Servius Tullius. When Dr Lauciani dug up these stones (on Juns 25, 1884, and about 2000 years after the use of this area for refuse disposal) the soil was still so polluted and the ttench arising from it so horrible that even his workmen, inured to such work as they were, found it absolutely unbearable and had to be relieved at frequent intervals. The dumping ground near the Esquiline cemetery, including the present cemetery itself, was the greatest of these nuisances, and so long ago as ths beginning of our Christian eta the Roman rulers found it necessary to cover this area with 25ft of soil and to convert it into a garden. — The long and active survival of disease germs in soil was also claimed in excavations made inside a cofferdam uncovering the bed of the Tiber alongside the bridge leading to the Castle of St. Anglo, in Kome. Here in successive strata were found coin and other relics, fixing the age of the deposit down to the fourth century AD. The soil as it was slowly removed was piled upon an adjoining wharf and then taken away. When the very lowest and oldest of all the strata disturbed was so disposed of, an epidemic of typhoid fever broke out among the workmen and those living in the immediate vicinity. The result of careful examination is said to have shown that the trouble came from this lowest strata, and that disease germs that had been lying dormant at the bottom of the Tiber for nearly 1500 years' were still active fox evil and proved their vitality. This statement, as far as the survival of the germs of typhoid is concerned, has been disputed. Considering the difficulty of deteoting these germs in refuse recently deposited, there is ample room for doubt as to the exact point in the strata that caused the trouble observed. — Some extraordinary inventions for expediting ocean navigation have emanated from Lieutenant Apostolow, of the Russian navy. He recently exhibited to some naval officers in Odessa a new style of ship, without screw or paddle, but which had instead " a kind of running electrical gear round the vessel's huil under the water-line, and a revolving mechanism which will propel the ship from Liverpool to New York in 28 hours." He offers the alternative of a submarine passage "without rock, roll, or vibration, and with a good supply of oxygen and hydrogen during the short voyage 1 " — A German process for depositing upon cotton cloth a brilliant and flexible coating of metallic tin is described as follows : — Powdered zinc is made into a paste with white of egg, ard is brushed into the surface of the cloth, the albumen being afterwards coagulated by a current of super- heated steam. The cloth is next immeised in a bath of perchloride of tin, when the metal deposits in a finely divided condition upon the cloth, which is afterwards dried, and passed through a calendering machine. Very fine designs can be transferred to cloth in this way, acd the invention is likely to meet with maoy applications. — The former existence oE a great Antarctic cocticent is a subject that comes up for consideration periodically amongst those who interest themselves in the natural history of the Southern Hemisphere. The latest writer on the subject is Forbes, the explorer, in connection with the discovery of remains of wingless birds, similar to those of New Zealand, in the small Chatham Islands to the epst of New Zealand. He tbinks their presence there can be accounted.f or satisfac-, torily only on the grounds of continuity of dry land, which leads back to the old idea of the Antarctic continent originally raised in connection with certain peculiar cases of identity in the plants of the southern continents, which could be explained if the continents were the isolated alterations of peninsulas that uEed to run north from the Antarctic continent. It is not necessary that they should al]J have been connected with the southern continent at one and the same time. — Herr Jiiger furnishes in the Zeitschrift fiir Hygiene a report of his researches ioto the etiology of the infectious fever know as the Weil'sche Krackheit, which has been

puzzling tbe German doctors. The source of the mischief seems to be in many oases bathing in polluted water. Investigating many cases of typhoid which arose in Ulm among the soldiers, Herr Jiiger found that the military bathing place was situated just below the point where the Danube is joined by the highly-polluted river Blau. This Btream is described as practically an open sewer, „ and 'even before it reaches Ulm is grossly contaminated, ia its flow through the small village of Soflingen. He farther ascertained that in this village a mysterious disease had been rife among the- ducks and geeße, while fowls were also occasionally attacked, and that, moreover, it was a common custom to throw the dead oarcases of these animals into the Blau as the readiest means of getting rid of them, A careful examination of the birds which had sneoumbed to this disease revealed the constant > presence of a micro-organism, which Jiiger asserts to be identical wich that found by him repeatedly, and isolated in the cases of typhoid investigated at Ulm. Mixing some of the polluted Blau water at Soflingen with, sterile. broth, and inoculating white mice. with it, they were killed in 16 minutes, and organisms were found abundantly present in various parts of their bodies, ' which were identical with those found in the birds and in the Ulm cases. It is not necessary to suppose that the germ was communicated through the pores of the skin while bathing, since few persons swim or dive without swallowing a certain amount of water, and even a few drops would be sufficient. — Recently, powdered metallic arsenic which, in the process of powdering, had been moistened with water to prevent dusting, is recorded by B. Hirschsohn as capable of spontaneous combustion. A quantity of powdered arsenic in a double paper bag had been received late in the evening, -and set aside overnight in a basket containing other articles packed in straw and sawdust. The next morning, upon opening the store, the peculiar garlic-like odour attracted attention to the basket containing the powdered arsenic. An examination disclosed that the arsenic had agglutinated to a solid glowing mass; that the paper containers had been charred, and that a portion of the straw was scorched. A number' of bottles in the basket had also burst, owing to the hsgh heat, and upon tbe charred paper bag were sublimed some beautiful crystals of arsenious oxide. A fire, which would have been attributed to some other cause, was in this case averted. — As illustrating how waste material may be gathered together, and by modern manufacturing processes, again transformed into some useful article, it will interest my readers to learn a little regarding the works of Messrs Edwin Butterworth and C0.,-Man-chester, who are the largest manufacturers of engine-cleaning waste and importers of all kinds of waste and other material for paper-makers' requirements in the country. The cotton 'waste is bought up from mills throughout Lancashire, America, India, and in fact all parts of the globe, the firm having their, own houses for this purpose in the United States and Calcutta. After being sorted and graded in their mill?, this waste is dealt with by a process of their own in spec!ally : designed machines, by which it is cleaned, carded and combed, and turned out in different qualities at the rate of 10 tons per week from each machine, for the supply of English, colonial, and foreign Governments, many of the steamship and railway companies, and for engineering and machine requirements generally. Some of the waste, and especially that coming from the American mills, is of sufficiently good quality to be dealt with for respinning, and although it would not be used in the English mills, large quantities are supplied to the Continental spinner?.

— If a body meet a body comicg through the rye. Can't a body kiss a body for fear of bacilli ? — May : " Don't you think your landlady's little boy is an angel 1 " Frank : " Not yet ; but I have hopes."