The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1899-03-07

strife and combats, of our activity, of
our industries, Of our qualities and of
our miseries. Some of them, beneficial
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 ar
lists, or, If you prefer the word, as col
orists. 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 tnts of their resplend-
ent matter.
But side by side with these inoffensive
dilettanti, who seem to exist only for
the joy of showing their brilliant coors
of the sun, the microbian world also
| alas!-includes a number Of groups of
very bad neutrality-suspicious. muir
derers and vandals, who, not content
with attacking the lives Of ourselves
and our domestic animals; carry their
rage for destruction so far as to set fire
to our property. And if they pay dear
for it, for the flames destroy them also,
they do all in their power to bring
about this result Many cases of spon-
I taneous combustion are incontestably
their work.
Although the cause Of these combus-
lions seems to have been known and
experlmentally proved as far back as
Lebig's time, it Is only recently that
it has been established to the satisfac-
| tion both of scientists and practical
| ,s,ta ~,
about by the evidence of facts we may
| note that of a great Austrian agrcul-
turist, M. Benesch, who for thirty years
refused to put faith in the spontaneity
of such combustion. Nevertheless, sew
eral years ago he was forced to admit
| it by an accident that occurred at his
farm at Meierhof.
In an inaccessible barn on very high
scaffold he placed, one after the other
| five hundred loads of hay, cereals and
legumes cut green. About the middle
of the pile a mass of mixed oats and
vetches began to grow hot. The en-
ploye of the farm, as well as it's owner,
did not appreciate the danger, and
waited for time to cool this incompre-
hensible ardor, They Jared badly, how
ever, for several days of waiting serv-
ed only to encourage and make more
active the work of the microscopic
heaters. At the end of a week a light
curl of smoke arose from the barn, and
caused disquiet in the farm of Meier
hof.
M. Benesch, after his unfruitful APP
peal to time, had recourse to air, whose
contact, he Thought, would cool off the
pile and disperse to the winds the va
porous products Of this mysterious eff
fervescence. But scarcely had his lab
orers reached, with great toll, the CEN
tire 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 presump-
ton of incendiarism or the contact of a
burning body being impossible to main
tain, this fire put an end to the pre-
vious scepticism of the proprietor of
Meierhof in regard to the spontaneous
combustion of hay.
Other facts, not less striking, con-
firm the spontaneity of these accidents
so that German insurance companies
have given serious attention to the mat
ter of foreseeng them in some way.
The losses of one company from this
cause reached in a relatively short time
the sum of 2,500,O00 francs, (s500, 000)
We need none of us expect that our
farms will escape Strangely enough
an excess of water brings on the fire.
The history of wet years shows this
we'll Last August a haystack holding (
$4,000 kilograms (sixteen tons) took fire
near Aulnaysous- Bots, and a barn full /
% l,o,, Inv 81,
Saint-Amand. This was because the |
hay harvest of 1898 took place in I'M
favorable conditions, and the excess of |
moisture predsposed the hay to in !
Illumination. |
This spontaneous combustion in fact, |
is only the last act in one Of these Sc
cret dramas that are played silently in !
the centre of badly dried masses Of
forage or In the heart of bales of cot +
ton or tobacco The microbes that ex-
ist in all these vegetable matters, ex-
cited by the contact of water vapor,
grow and increase rapidly Their bat |
talions form for the attack on the |
great fortresses of vegetable fibre which |
they dismantle and digest. This work |
of dislocaton and fermentation cannot !
go on without certain production of /
heat, which Is localized by reason of !
the defective conductivity of organic |
substances. For this very reason the
evil becomes aggravated; the theatre |
Of all these microbian operations is
overheated, and, instead of extending /
their caloric activity, the microbes be-
come their own executioners. In short,
it has been proved that in the places
where they flourish the temperature
rises to 800 degrees, changing the hay
into carbonaceous matter, porous and
very light In these unsupported kilns
the forage, being altered into finely dl-
vived carbon, consumes without flame
for want Of oxygen, but when the pile
is suddenly opened the access Of air
causes the incandescent mass to infame
instantly.-M. Jean de Loverdo in La
Nature.
THE DUBLIN DRAWING ROOMS.
TT Ia c1Irio1S to notn tho Jiffaraooo |