No one likes to pay exorbitantly, especially for such a necessary as water, but the system of artesian wells is hardly suitable to a crowded city. In London itself, many pumps have been closed because of the dangerous contamination of the subterranean water by sewage and proximity to graveyards, &c. As a case in point, the city of New York, instead of drawing its water-supply from a hundred miles’ distance—as London does from the hills of Gloucestershire—has to seek it underground. Lately, the cholera scare has frightened people into a sense of insecurity; and inquiry shows that leakage of sewers has rendered the New York water unsafe, and it has been condemned by the city Board of Health. This is of course hard upon those who have sunk wells at great expense; but we have all to learn the lesson that the individual must occasionally suffer for the public weal.
A clever imitation of amber, which it is difficult to distinguish from the genuine fossil gum, is made from a mixture of copal, camphor, turpentine, and other compounds. It exhibits attraction and repulsion on being rubbed, like real amber (electron), which because of the same properties has given its name to the science of electricity. It is now being largely manufactured into ornaments and mouthpieces for pipes. It will not bear the same amount of heat that genuine amber will withstand, and it softens in ether. These two tests are sufficient to distinguish it from the genuine article.
The great ship-canal between St Petersburg and the small fortified town of Cronstadt, which up to this time has been the actual port of Peter the Great’s city for all vessels drawing more than nine feet of water, has at last been opened, the work of construction having occupied about six years. The canal is nearly twenty miles long, it has an average width of about two hundred feet, and is twenty-two feet in depth. Apart from its importance commercially both to Russia and the traders of other countries, who before were subject to the cost of transhipment of goods going to St Petersburg, the canal will have a strategical value. Ships of war could now retreat up the canal if Cronstadt were attacked, and could, if required, emerge from the security of the waterway fully equipped and ready for action.
That small creature called the weevil, whose depredations were always understood to be confined to grain and biscuits, has lately developed a taste for tobacco. In America, smokers have found to their disgust that both cigarettes and cigars are riddled through and through by this pest, the creature confining his attention to the choicest brands. This discovery has had a most prejudicial effect upon the cigarette trade in New York and Philadelphia. It is said that in some factories the weevil is swarming from cellar to garret.
The chairman of the Western Railway Company of France has lately volunteered a statement respecting the behaviour of the Westinghouse brake, which has been in use on that line for rather more than four years. In this statement we find a list of accidents which have been avoided by the use of the brake, and these accidents are classified under different heads, such as Collisions, Obstacles on the Line, Rolling-stock not removed in time, and so forth. Upwards of forty disasters have been clearly avoided by the prompt use of the brake. On the other hand, the brake itself will sometimes get out of order and refuse to act at the critical moment. How many accidents, we wonder, have already occurred from this cause! We may mention in this connection, that a meeting of the friends of the killed and injured in the Peniston disaster has been held, and that it has been resolved that a test action should be brought against the Railway Company concerned, on the ground that to send out a train with an insufficient brake, after the Board of Trade have for seven years laid down certain conditions, is a wrongful act. The necessary money has been raised without difficulty.
The recent exhibition of the Photographic Society was a very interesting one, the pictures shown, a large proportion of which were by amateur photographers, indicating a very high average of excellence. The modern gelatine dry-plate system, with its ease of working and its cleanliness, has attracted a number of amateurs, who, a few years back, under the old condition of things would never have dreamt of handling a camera. Indeed, aspirants to photographic fame have become so numerous of late, that a special journal, The Amateur Photographer, has been started in their interests, and bids fair to attain a wide circulation.
The vexed question as to how long a gelatine plate can be kept between the moment of exposure and its after-development, has been partially answered in a satisfactory manner by a certain picture in the Photographic Exhibition. It was taken in July 1880, and not developed till four years afterwards. No one would guess, from looking at it, that the plate which received the light impression had been kept so long before that impression was made visible by development.
The Times correspondent at the Philadelphia Exhibition gives an interesting account of the electric lighting system in that city. The Brush Company there supply arc-lights to the streets and the shops. The charge amounts to as much as fifty pounds per light per annum; but the people are content to pay this for a brighter light than gas will afford. There are no fewer than fourteen towns in the States which are lighted in this manner; and the writer of the account thinks that the English public and the English manufacturers have perhaps been rather hasty in condemning the light on insufficient grounds. We are disposed to think that the light has had a very fair trial here. Many of our railway stations and public thoroughfares have been illuminated by electricity, and many of them have discarded it. In a word, it does not pay. With improved appliances, which are sure to appear, we may nevertheless still regard it as the light of the future.
It may interest many of our readers to know, since the ambulance classes which have been established in most of our large towns have drawn attention to the subject, that a small case or chest, containing the requisites for ready treatment of injuries, may be had for a moderate sum. This case, first introduced at the Sunderland Infirmary Bazaar by the inventor, Mr R. H. Mushens of that town, is intended for use in shipbuilding yards and large factories where accidents are likely to occur. As in many instances the life of an injured man depends on prompt and ready treatment, and as a considerable time may elapse before the appearance of a doctor, the advantage of such a handy means of assistance to employers of labour will be at once apparent. The case is twenty-one inches long, nine broad, and seven deep, and is furnished with a brass handle for carrying it about from place to place. It contains a complete set of splints; roller and Esmarch bandages for finger, hand, arm, head, and broken ribs; tourniquet for arresting bleeding; strapping-plaster; sponge, scissors, Carron oil, &c., with printed hints regarding the rendering of assistance to, and the removal of the injured. The use of such simple appliances does not do away with the necessity of the presence of a doctor, but it may save the life of the injured person, and simplify matters very much for the doctor by the time he has reached the sufferer.