The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1879-01-09


was told that he can multiply in his
mind 100 figures by the like number.
He is an hour about it, but the result is
always correct. l was told that he
could extract the square root of
one hundred given numbers in fifty-two
minutes University Magazine.
A Vital Need.
EVERY one admires the rosy cheek of
the country girl, rosy, as rule, al
though she lives in the smallest hut of
the humblest farm; and every one pities
the pallid 4int of the girl who comes
from the" crowded city lanes. Few,
however, stop to think what it is that
produces such a variation, and consid-
er the different quality of the air
breathed by each, allowing food and
other things to be equal. Yet the mere
sight of the two faces ought to tell the
whole story. The country girls blood
momently meets in her lungs the pur-
es: of affair rich in oxygen the COM
bustion is perfect, and the blue blood
becomes red. The city girl, on the
contrary, from the hour of her birth,
never has her rights in Heavens free
air; her blood meets only, at every in
halation, O. sort of yitiated gas that has
been robbed and robbed again of its
oxygen. That blood never reddens,
and the pale and haggard' countenance
attests the foulness of the atmosphere.
Moreover, the free air about the farm
house commonly kecps~a decent venti-
lation within it, while only stifled cur
rents now and then sigh through the
narrowest by-ways of the city, and the
air that has been breathed over and
over still remains to be breathed, each
time charged more heavily with the
carbonic acid gas emitted with the
breathing. The deadly effect of that
element in the air is sufficiently well
known without referring to such lessons
as that taught by the Black Hole of
Calcutta, or by the Grotto del Cane, or
by the valley in Java of which the
school-books tell us, which is one great
pool of carbonic acid, where the skele-
tons of its victims still whiten.
That must be marvelously bad man.
agement in the rural regions which al
lows any accumulation of this deadly
gas in dwellings, since the action of the
surrounding vegetation is perpetually
counteracting its existence. In the
city, however, only an occasional tree
stands as guardian of health, and one
relies on other ways of obtaining oxy-
gen, or else does without it.
A way of obtaining this oxyge n, often
but little considered, is the cultivation,
it is said, of plants in the crowded
houses. Many people frown upon the
attempt, with a notion that the intro
duction of every fresh plant is but the
introduction of another pair of lungs
where there is not room for those now
there. Perhaps they would think diff
ferently if they read from Prof. YOU
mans: "When we look upon the luxu-
RANT foliage of the tree, we cannot fail
to be impressed with its beauty, but we
hardly suspect that those leaves which
flutter so lightly in the breeze are en-
gines for the exercise of enormous
power. Yet such is the fact, for they
decompose carbonic acid. The atoms
of a pound of carbon rush into union
with those of oxygen-they fall down
the chemical precipice with force
sufficient to raise thousand weights,
each of a thousand pounds, one foot
high. This expresses the strength of
their attraction for each other, and if
they are to be separated, this amount
of force must be again expended. So
powerfully are the elements of carbonic
acid held in combination that the chem
list can only separate them by the
double action of high heat and the
most powerful affinity; even then only
the carbon is set free, the oxygen re-
manning in state of combination. But
what no chemist has ever been able to
accomplish is effected by every green
leaf and every humble blade of grass
they decompose carbonic acid at COM
mon temperatures, retaining the carbon
and setting the oxygen free" After
that it goes without saying that nothing
can be wiser than for those in the
stifled city to hang as many plants as
they can around their windows where
they will not Obstruct such air us there
is. So long as authorities themselves
differ concerning the consequences of
plants in sleeping-rooms at night, it
may be as we'll to keep sleeping rooms
free from them; but all authorities
unite in declaring that by day oxygen
is produced by the action of plants, the
more freely, according TO the more sun,
and in a ratio largely compensating for
the absence of the oxygenating country
air, giving, meanwhile, an example,
than which there are few more beauti-
full, of the way in which mutual de-
pendence exists among all the atoms of
the cosmos, and of the links that unite
the animal and the vegetable world.
Everyone who is able to have a fire is
able to have plant or two, and those
who would feel it an extravaganza to
purchase. and are ashamed to beg, had
better, it would seem, go without the
price of some portion Of a meal for a
few days, till they dare indulge in the
luxury; for, although fuel is the food
of the body, this oxygen thus given it
is the fire that converts the fuel to the
bodY's needs and uses.-Harper' Bazaar.
nioov.; I'm I'm fSno, Cho,s&,,