TIGHTENING ARRANGEMENT—ENDLESS ROPE HAULAGE.
No. 2 system was peculiar to Wigan. A double line of rails is always used. The rope rests upon the tubs, which are attached to the rope either singly or in sets varying in number from two to twelve. The other engraving shows a mode of connection between the tubs and the rope by a rope loop as shown.
ATTACHMENT TO ENDLESS ROPE "OVER."
The tubs are placed at a regular distance apart, and the rope works slowly. Motion is given to the rope by large driving pulleys, and friction is obtained by taking the rope several times round the driving pulley.
A RELIABLE WATER FILTER.
Opinions are so firmly fixed at present that water is capable of carrying the germs of disease that, in cases of epidemics, the recommendation is made to drink natural mineral waters, or to boil ordinary water. This is a wise measure, assuredly; but mineral waters are expensive, and, moreover, many persons cannot get used to them. As for boiled water, that is a beverage which has no longer a normal composition; a portion of its salts has become precipitated, and its dissolved gases have been given off. In spite of the aeration that it is afterward made to undergo, it preserves an insipid taste, and I believe that it is not very digestible. I have thought, then, that it would be important, from a hygienic standpoint, to have a filter that should effectually rid water of all the microbes or germs that it contains, while at the same time preserving the salts or gases that it holds in solution. I have reached such a result, and, although it is always delicate to speak of things that one has himself done, I think the question is too important to allow me to hold back my opinion in regard to the apparatus. It is a question of general hygiene before which my own personality must disappear completely.
In Mr. Pasteur's laboratory, we filter the liquids in which microbes have been cultivated, so as to separate them from the medium in which they exist. For this purpose we employ a small unglazed porcelain tube that we have had especially constructed therefor. The liquid traverses the porous sides of this under the influence of atmospheric pressure, since we cause a vacuum around the tube by means of an air-pump. We collect in this way, after several hours, a few cubic inches of a liquid which is absolutely pure, since animals may be inoculated with it without danger to them, while the smallest quantity of the same liquid, when not filtered, infallibly causes death.