The Opelousas courier., 1893-11-25

10y ILL ~ $3.50
There is no getting rid Of
" it. It is the bother Of my
So says the housewife. It eve &C.
7urs to her to wonder what IS this
ever-accumulating dust Of which she
complains. Yet there are ever SO
many strange things to be told about
it.
Of all the materials eff which dust is
composed the most interesting is
starch. In every pinch of dust there
is more or less of this ingredient IN
the shape Of oval and spherical grains.
The dust found in collins with old
Egyptian mummies contains starch
grains Just like those which fly about
in the air to-day,
A scientist with an inauirlng mind
once took the trouble to examine I'M
der a microscope specimens OF u
which had penetrated the skulls Of an
finals embalmed in the days of the
Pharaohs. The samples revealed the
same kind of grains Of starch. Such
grains are always in 5verybody's
clothes and on the hands. Press your
moistened finger upon a clean piece OF
glass, and on looking at the latter with
a microscope you will discover several
starch grains. Wash your hands a
dozen times and every repetition OF
the experiment. will produce the same
result.
Where does all all this starch come
from? The answer is; From the food
of mankind. Wheat, barley, rice, po-
tatoes, ETC., are largely composed Of
starch. Little grains of it are widely
scattered by the winds, and being very
light are held in suspension.
For the reason above mentioned
much more starch is to be found in the
dust of cities than in that of the u
try, where population is comparatively
sparse. Thus it may be said that in
| every town e cloud of starch always
hangs in the air. However, the dust
that blows through the streets, which
settles upon furniture and makes work
for the housewife, contains ever SO
many other things besides starch.
Take a small pinch Of it at random and
examine it at leisure. Perchance you
will discover among it a fiber of wood,
a scale of human epidermis, a frag'
ment of the hair of a dog, a piece of
| an insects claw, the shell of an AMI
malcule and the spore of a plant await
ing a proper resting place, with the
necessary dampness to reproduce Its
species.
These are ell organic substances,
animal or vegetable. Dust contains
much inorganic matter, particularly
small particles of silica. On account
of their size and shape such PARTICLES
| were for q long time mistaken for eggs
| of some kind, but this notion was fin
| ally exploded by making chemical
analyses of the alleged eggs. The
| history of a single one of these fra3-
| ments would be most interesting to
know. Ever SO long ago perhaps IT
was part of a rock. The waves wore it
away from the parent stone and
| threw it into a heap of sand on
| the shore. After q while the wind
caught it and flung it upon the upland.
Rain took it from the groundand hur-
| ried it along to river. The river car
| ried it to the sea. From the sea water
it was taken by an oyster to build the
| latter's shell. The mollusk was caught
and eaten, and the shell, beingthrown
away, was trampled upon, powdered
and dispersed by the breezes. Thus
the particle whose story is here re-
lated was set afoat III the atmosphere,
to fall at length upon your library
table and to afford a subject for spec
ulation beneath your microscope.
AS you walk down the street on one
of the breezy autumn days a cloud
of dust is blown in your face, almost
sitting you. 1t is q mixture consist
ing largely of small fragments of sand
But if you will take a pinch of it home
and subject it to examination, you
will find that it contains an extraor'
binary variety of other things, such as
the broken fhers of plants, pollen,
fine hairs, tibers of clothing and othel
fabrics, particles of lime and SCOT
ashes and clusters of different kinds o
micro-organisms.
When a ray OF sunlight streams into
a darkened room it reveals the fine
dust particles which always fill the air
though ordinarily invisible to the eye
Doctor Pruden, who has made a stud,
Of this subject, says that the particles
inquestion consist mostly offragment
of vegetable and animal fbers, sucl
as cotton and wool, and of an enor
nous variety of micro-organisms
singly or in masses, such as bacterl'
and the spores of mold plants. sucl
are the "motes in the sunbeam re
specting which so many poetic idea
have been expressed. Not a few o
them are germs capable of producing
diseases Of various sorts if they harper
to find Judgment in the human system
Washington Star.
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