The Opelousas courier., 1901-07-20
SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY.

Cargoes or other masses Of coal Of
ten take fire spontaneously. The pop
ular belief is that this is dne to the
action of moisture on the pyrites and
other impurities in the coal. The Ma
rine Review, however, o quotes the
results of Professor Threlfall's expert
ments on the subject, and shows that
popular tradition is again wrong. The
Investigations showed that dry coal
is more likely to take fire than wet.
A lecturer at the London Polytechnic
declared at a recent meeting that the
progress of leprosy could be arrested
iFleufferers would abstain wholly from
eating fish. He cited several cases in
his wi experience. One was that Of
a man who was blind from leprosy and
who had had muscular atrophy for Is
years. After Is months abstinence,
taking at the same time small doses Of
arsenic, all traces Of patches had dis
appeared from his hands and feet.
An extensive botanical garden has
recently been laid out at Dahlem, a
village within easy distance Of Berlin,
which possesses some novel features.
1t is situated in very rough country,
and unique advantage has been taken
of this fact by reproducing, as far as
possible, the natural scenery from
which the various specimens Of fora
have been collected from all parts Of
the world. BY this g a more COM
~prehensive idea is obtainable Of the
native habitat of the plants and trees,
and the conditions under which they
thrive.
An outbreak Of typhoid fever has
occurred in Lambeth, Eng, owing to
infected mangles. Forty-one cases oc-
Cured in "a houses, all within a re-
stricted area. There was much inter-
communication between places and
families living in different houses.
Many Of the inhabitants after washing
their clothes in their own homes took
them to some neighbor to be mangled.
Owing to this custom, bedding and
clothing Of those i'll with typhoid fe-
yer were mangled in the same ma
chine, thus spreading the disease. Four
different infected mangles were traced.
tProfessor Koch, in describing his ex-
periences with the government expedi-
ton in Java and New Guinea, stated
that he had reached the conclusion
that gnat bites introduced and devel-
oped parasites into the human body.
The germs are passed by a gnat from
n human body to another, but they
develop in the body of the gnat during
the passage. Children are specially liza
Bile to impregnation. In a village in
New Guinea, 1877 inhabitants out of
700 were infected by the disease. All
inoculations have hitherto proved to
be failures, but the success of quinine
is very gratifying.
The liquid crystals with which o.
Lehman SO startled the world a few
years ago have now been proven to
lack no quality that can be logically
made part of the definition of a crys-
tai. The only general characteristics
Of crystals are that they are not iso-
tropic, and that they possess a molecu-
lar directive force that governs their
shape and the disposition of their par
ticles. The directive force is preserved
by surface tension, so that crystals
may be liquid OF solid but not gaseous.
Liquid crystals may be produced by
depositing solid crystals from a mother
liquor on the cover glass of a micro
scope and gently heating them above
the fusing point.