The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1879-09-03
TIMELY TOPICS.

The tea sellers and crockery dealers of
New York city have been at swords
point. The various tea dealers in that
city have been engaged in giving away
various articles of crockery and glass
ware to their customers, rs an extra in
ducement to purchase tea. Pretty soon
the crockery sellers found their sales
were decreasing on account Of this action
of the tea sellers and they demonstrated,
but without effect. Thereupon the
crockery dealers held meeting and re-
solved to sell tea and coffee from their
stores at strictly wholesale prices
Irish bids fair to be put upon the list
with the dead" languages. In a paper
recently read before the London Statisti-
cal Society, it was stated that in 1871
the area in which Irish was spoken had
decreased from 10000 square miles in
1851 to 5000, while the number of peo-'
pie speaking it had decreased during the
same twenty years from ], 500, 900 to 600,-
600, of whom less than 400,0 spoke
Irish only. tits also said that through
out Ireland there arc now probably not
5000 pers sons who can read an Irish book,
and not single Irish paper is being
published in the country.
NJ. Lacerdo has given much attention
to the character and effect of the venom
of the rattlesnake. The poison seems to
be of the nature of a ferment. The red
corpuscles of the blood of animals bitten
bya snake begin to display small bril-
liant points on the surface. which in
crease rapidly in number. and then the
globules unite with each other, forming
a paste which cannot circulate through
the veins. Affected blood. if introduced
into the circulation.o of other animals, will
produce the same symptoms and fatal
termination as original virus. The
author believes that the best antidote
for snake poisoning is alcohol, which
may be given to the patient to drink or
may be administered simultaneously.
Professor Grote thinks that the Indian
corn plant originally grew wild on the
slopes of the Rocky mountain region,
and on the sides of the valley of the Col
orado. 1t was cultivated by the early
men of that region, who were Asiatic
emigrants in pre-glacial times. The
cliff dwellers and mound builders cuI-
tivated maize. The plant was proba-
bly, at first single-eared, and the grain
smaller. Professor Grote believes that
its present yield might be sill increased
by planting corn from plants producing
the largest number of ears, so that final
ly more numerously-eared variety
may be introduced.
Experiments in the incubation of
horse-pox have been made by some
French savant. In the early part of this
year there was an epidemic of horse-pox
in some parts OF France. A white horse
having been selected for the experiment,
its virus was carefully collected. and
seven young soldiers who had never been
vaccinated were inoculated with it. Up
on six of these subjects it proved sue:
cessful. Four of these were made use
of for the incubation of sixty-four other
men, eight of whom had never been
vaccinated. The result was that in
forty cases characteristic pustules were
obtained. Then a number of calves
were inoculated, and theiI virus was
used for vaccination; but in this case
there were only forty-eight per cent. of
successful cases, and in the former ex-
periments there were sixty-four per
cent. This seems to show that the horse
pox virusis weakened by passing through
the calf system.