Our subscription price remains at one dollar per annum in advance. Vol. I begins with November, 1885. Subscriptions can begin at any time.
Remittances when made by postal order or registered letter, are at the risk of the publishers.
THE FASHIONABLE HOBBY.
It is reported that a Dr. Sax, of France, has discovered in all forms of beverages containing alcohol a “bacillus potumaniæ;” and it is claimed that this bacillus multiplies in the system of the drinker and circulates in his blood, and that when he gets delirium tremens he is not the subject of hallucinations but sees the reptilian forms that are inhabiting his own brain and optic apparatus.
While the microscopists and various ologists are discussing this, we will tell a story of a certain worthy practitioner of our acquaintance. The doctor's hobby was malaria. If a person came in with a headache it was “malarial headache;” backache, “malarial backache;” legs ache, “malaria.” One day a man came in with his arm hanging helpless. Our friend promptly began about malaria. The man said he had heard of break-bone fever, but that he had fallen off a street car and didn't think this was a malarial fracture.
Some of the best fellows we know ride hobbies, but let those who now bestride the bacillus beware where the creature carries them.
OLEOMARGARINE.
The subject of artificial butter continues to agitate the public mind and stomach. There are involved a few plain principles which, if applied, will elucidate the whole matter.
Good glycerine can be made from dogs or horse fat, sugar from rags; sea water or the most impure lake or river water can be changed to azua pura by distillation; good suet or tallow can be so treated as to make a nutritious and harmless article of diet. Now, if old grease can be so manipulated and modified as to give a pure and edible result, cheaper than old-fashioned butter, the latter will have to go out of fashion.
In that case, wrong would lie only in selling the article for what it is not, and not in the fact of its being also injurious to the user. Just as in many synthetically manufactured wines and cigars, which are not chemically essentially different from the article they imitate, but are fraudulent because they are sold as imported or genuine, which they are not.