The record-union., 1899-05-22
INCENDIARY MICROBES.
BACTERIA WHICH PROMOTE
SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION.
Skeptica1 Scientists and Practical
Men Change Their Opinions
on the Subject.


dislikes, acts and passions like our own
belong to the beings that surround us,
to our lower fellow creatures, to the
animals of the stable and the beasts of
the woods to the tyrants of the air
and the peaceful dwellers in the wat
ers. But rare are the living crea-
lures that have as good a title to these
attributes as the microbes. Their in
visible world seems like an echo of
our strife and combats, of our activity,
of our industries, of our qualities and
of our miseries. Some of them, benefi-
cial to man. enroll themselves willingly
in his service and rival each other in
strife to augment his resources, while
others, without relation to US, seem to
have no action on their surroundings;
they live without care as amateurs, as
artists, or, if you prefer the word, as
colorists. Sometimes they grow in our
kitchens, color our bread red or our
milk blue: sometimes they transform
into scarlet the white SHOWS of Alpine
regions, or lend to the immensely of the
ocean the varied tints of their resplen-
dent matter.
But side by side with these inoffen-
for the joy of showing their brilliant
colors of the sun, the microban world
Observation-Disclosures number of
groups of very bad reputation-poison-
ers, murderers and vandals, who, not
content with attacking the lives of our
selves and our domestic animals, carry
their rage and destruction so far as to
set fire to our property. And if they
no n fr,o a
them also, they do all in their power
to bring about this result Many cases
of spontaneous combustion are incon-
testably their work.
Although the cause of these combus-
tions seems to have been known and
experimentally proved as far back as
Liebig's time, it is. only recently that
it has been established to the satisfac-
ton both of scientists and practical
men. Among the conversions brought
about by the evidence of facts we may
note that of great Austrian agricult-
urist, M. Benesch, who for thirty years
refused to put faith in the spontaneity
OF such combustion. Nevertheless,
several years ago he was forced to
admit it by an accident that occurred
at his farm at Meirhof
In an inaccessible barn on a very
nigh scafTold he placed one after the
other five hundred loads of hay, ce-
reals and legumes cut green About
the middle of the pile mass of mixed
oats and vetches began to grow hot.
The employe of the farm, as well as its
owner, did not appreciate the danger.
and waited for time to cool this in
comprehensive ardor. They Jared
padly' however, for several days of
waiting served only to encourage and
make more active the work of the
mlcrospIc heaters. At the end of a
week light curl of smoke arose from
the barn, and caused disquiet in the
farm of Meierhof.
M Benesch, after his unfruitfuI ap-
peal to time, had recourse to air. whose
contact he thought, would cool off the
pile and dispense to the winds the yap-
ofous products of this mysterious eff
1efvescence. But scarcely had his lab
orers reached, with great toll, the CEN
ter of the pile, when flames burst out
on all sides, Transforming the heated
forage into an immense furnace. The
laborers, indeed did not get out alive
without great effort Every presume
tlon of incendiarism or the contact of
a burning body being impossible to
maintain, this fire put an end to the
previous skepticism of the proprietor
OF Meierhof in regard to the spontan-
eous combustion of hay.
Other facts not less striking, confirm
the spontaneity of these accidents so
well that German insurance companies
nave given serious attention to the mat
ter OF foreseeing them in some way.
Inc losses of one company from this
cause reached 2,5G0.00O francs (S50O-
OVO. We need none of US expect that
our farms will escape. Strangely
enough, an excess of water brings on
the lire. The history of wet years shows
thls We'll. Last August a haystack
holdlng 10000 kilograms 06 tons). took
hre near Aulnaysous-B -Bois and a barn
1ull of hay burned spontaneously near
Salnt-Amand. This was because the
nay harvest of 1898 took place in un-
favorable conditions, and the excess of
moisture predisposed the hay to in
fammation
This spontaneous combustion, in fact
is only the last act in one of these
secret dramas that are played silently
IN the center of badly dried masses of
cotton or tobacco. The microbes that
exist in all these vegetable matters ex-
cited by the contact of water vapor
grow and increase rapidly. Their bat
tallons form for the attack on the great
fortresses of vegetable fiber, which they
dlsmantle and digest. This work of dis
location and fermentation cannot go on
without a certain production of heat.
which is localized by reason of the de-
fective conductivity of organic sub
stances. For this very reason the evil
becomes aggravated; the theater of all
these microbian operations is over
heated, and, instead of extending their
caloric activity, the microbes become
their own eXecutioners. In short, it has
been proved that in the places where
they flourish the temperature rises to
3Oo degrees, changing the hay into car
ponaceous matter, porous and very
light In these unsupported kilns, the
forage, being altered into finely di-
vided carbon, consumes without flame
for want of oxygen, but when the pile
is suddenly opened the access of air
causes the incandescent mass to in
flame instantly.-Jean de Loverdo in
La Nature.
BOSS BASEBALL CRANK.
Maintains a Team for His Own
Amusement.