it requires four tons of coal to smelt of which a mile in length exist. In one ton of ore, it is obviously advisable the side of this gradually ascending to convey the ore to the coal, and not brick chimney are openings closed with bring the coal to the ore. The ore is iron doors. These are ten feet apart. worth about twenty-five shillings a ton. When the furnace is let out, the doors The mundic is now taken to the fur- are opened, and the arsenic dust and naces, where it is first subjected to fires crystals are raked and cut out. The made of ordinary common coal. It crystalline formation is from two to passes along with the smoke into con- three inches thick on the sides, but twodensers. When condensed, it is grey, thirds of the arsenic deposited is on being mixed with smoke soot. In this the floor. It is now as white as paper. condition it is called "arsenic soot." Some of the clusters of rhombohedral The condensation takes place on the crystals are very beautiful. The ar floor and sides of the chimney, which is senic has to be removed whilst warm carried many hundred feet at an incline to the mill to be ground; if left to get to a main shaft. From the condenser cold, the hardness of the crystals would the arsenic is scraped out by the work- cut the grinders to pieces. At the men closely muffled; then is again sub-mill, the workmen are again closely jected to fire in calciners, the fire being muffled. They have to heave the arof anthracite coal. Beside the ordinary senic turned out from barrows into the furnaces, there are two sorts of calcin- mill hopper. When reduced to powers in use of a very original and inter-der in the mill, it is put into casks esting character. One of these is an that contain from three hundredweight enormous drum thirty feet long and to three hundredweight twenty-five three feet six inches in diameter, fur- pounds, which are conveyed to the nished with flanges internally. This stores. drum or cylinder rotates at an incline. The vapor from the calciners, after The arsenic soot is tipped into it at the passing through the condensers, travtop, and is turned over and over as the erses a sheet of falling water, which cylinder revolves, partly by its own arrests a certain amount of the sulphur weight, partly by the flanges. A fire is in the fumes. Owing to the noxious burning at one end of the drum, and effect of sulphurous acid on vegetation, the flame passes through it, consuming more than a certain amount of this acid the arsenic as it falls, or is tossed is not allowed to be given off; it is athwart it. It is possible to look into therefore sought to arrest it on its way. the glowing interior as it rotates and The water as it flows away is milky, or watch the fiery heat scintillate with the rather like soap and water, from the arsenic that falls as a shower of stars. sulphur it contains. The height of the Another calciner consists of a horizon-shaft is one hundred and twenty-five tal rotary metal disc like a millstone, feel. somewhat convex. The cap of this disc is stationary, and is armed with fangs that reach almost to the disc. The arsenic soot flows in through the centre of the cap, and is turned over, ploughed up by the fangs as the disc on which it rests revolves. A furnace on one side sends its fiery breath between the rotating nether disc and the coverer, and turns both to a glowing red, so that the arsenic is volatilized, and all the dross slides away to the lowest portion of the machine and discharges itself over the edge. The vapor is carried through the condensers, In Styria and Carinthia, there is much arsenic-eating among the peasants; the women take it to give themselves a good complexion and to make their hair fine and glossy. The men take it because they believe that it gives them wind in climbing in the chase after chamois. There is nothing of this sort in Cornwall and Devon. In Styria and Carinthia it is known that an arseniceater can never be broken off the habit,. and that, if arsenic be compulsorily kept from the eater, death rapidly ensues. It is believed in the Tamar and this is perhaps true - that an arsenic-worker is fit for no other work. He must remain | scrupulous cleanliness, by care taken at this occupation. Health and breath not only to wash in the " changingfail him at other employments. Event- house," but to bathe freely at home. ually, it may be that chronic arsenical As one of the foremen said to the writer poisoning ensues; but this may be of this article: "Against arsenic the staved off, if not wholly prevented, by best antidote is soap taken externally." ing to note some results obtained lately THE fermentative changes which the leaves of the tobacco plant are made to undergo before they are worked up and finally handed over to the public, are of the greatest importance in determining the quality of any particular tobacco. It was formerly supposed that the alteration in its condition tion is possibly in part due to the necesthus brought about was due to purely chem-sarily large dilution of the fruit with water, ical changes induced by the process of which considerably reduces the nitrogenous 'sweating" which the leaf undergoes, but constituents of the "must," and also to some interesting experiments made recently the fact that the yeast, according to Hango to show that these important results are sen mostly present on sweet fruits is the effected by special micro-organisms. In a Saccharomyces apiculatus, which only pospaper read before the German Botanical sesses a feeble fermentative power. ExSociety, Suchsland gives an account of some periments were made to see whether, by investigations which he has been conduct-increasing the nitrogenous constituents of ing on the bacteria found in different kinds of tobacco. He has examined fermented tobacco from all parts of the world, and found large numbers of micro-organisms, although but few varieties, mostly only two or three different species in any particular brand and but rarely micrococcus forms. But what is of especial interest is the discovery that pure cultures of bacteria obtained from one kind of tobacco and inoculated on to another kind, generated in the latter a taste and aroma recalling the taste and aroma of the original tobacco from which the pure cultures had been in the first instance procured. Thus it may be possible in the future to raise the quality of German tobacco, not, as heretofore, so much by careful culture and judicious selection of varieties, which has so far proved unsuccessful, but by inoculating pure cultures of bacteria found in some of the fine foreign tobaccos on to our own raw material, whereby similar fermentative changes may be induced and the quality correspondingly improved. The further results promised by Suchsland will be looked for with much interest. In connection with the above experiments on the "transplantation," so to speak, of micro-organisms, it is interest the "must," and introducing a pure cultivation of a vigorous wine-yeast, the yield of alcohol would be greater. It was found that by adding a small amount of nitroge nous material, such as 0.15 gram. ammonium chloride, and five cubic centimetres of wine-yeast per litre to the "apple-must" (which was the fruit selected) two per cent. more alcohol was obtained, and not only was this the case, but this cider possessed a finer and more vinous taste than that untreated, or which had only received an additional supply of ammonium chloride without the wine-yeast. Kosutany in a paper published in the Landw. Versuchsstationen, 1892, has recorded the results of his investigations on the behavior of certain species of wine-yeast. He states that not only is the percentage of alcohol yielded very different with particular yeasts, but that also the taste, smell, and bouquet of the wine inoculated with special cultures were distinctly different according to the variety of yeast employed. It is hoped that, as in the case of tobacco so with wine, it may be possible to raise the quality by the judicious transplanting of bacteria obtained from finer brands. Nature. For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & CO. Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents. "FOR LOVE'S SWEET SAKE." BECAUSE you have no golden hoard, Or broad and fertile lands to show, Or wealth in glittering caskets stored, You fear to whisper- what I know. You think 'twould be a grievous wrong Me from my smoother paths to take, Nor understand how brave and strong My heart could be for love's sweet sake. Because you are a man, you seek To hide the tender pain you feel; Life's fullest harmonies could wake, Because the ways you tread are rough, Why, I will half the burden take ; A SPIDER. FROM holy flower to holy flower Thy house a grave, a gulf thy throne As e'er were shut electrum in. These are thy death spoils, insect ghoul, The board is bare, the bloated host t His lip requires no goblet brink Ah, venom mouth and shaggy thighs I break the toils around thy head A REVERIE. HAST thou forgot the roseate light Of setting sun on Alpine snow? Hast thou forgot the starry night, The wooden bridge, and torrent's flow? Have other vows replaced the old ? And do they seem to thee more true? Speak, dearest, speak, was that love gold That I gave you? Pure gold, or dross, 'twas all mine own; C avawla 919 From The Nineteenth Century. Christian boy upon it, and ended by beating the child to death. Be the facts what they may, it seems that the wretched creatures suffered without mercy, and paid very dearly for their fanaticism, or whatever else we may think fit to call it. WE are told by the historian Socrates that during the reign of Theodosius the younger a strange event occurred at a trumpery little town with an odd name, somewhere between Aleppo and Antioch, which was destined to produce The story was often repeated, we a very profound impression upon the may be sure, and, as I have said, it beimagination of mankind in the ages came a "stock story" in the after time. that followed. It is said to have hap-The wonder is that, as such stories are pened at Inmestar about the year 430 wont to do, it did not at once and imA.D. It has disappeared now, but four-mediately become the foundation of a teen centuries ago it was a town with body of mythus for ingenious people to streets of houses, and in those streets embellish and vary in a hundred differthere dwelt a large number of Jews, ent ways. Instead of that happening, who made themselves obnoxious to the it seems that the story was well-nigh other inhabitants by their boisterous, forgotten for more than seven huninsulting, and bloodthirsty behavior. dred years. Then, however, somebody It appears the Jews at Inmestar used fished it up from the obscurity in which to keep the feast of Purim after a fash- it had been lurking for long; and, ion of their own, much in the same way once revived, it became not only a fathat the Protestant folk in the city vorite romance in the Middle Ages, but of Exeter kept the 5th of November to this day there are many credulous twenty or thirty years ago. There the people who firmly believe that this diarabble carried about in procession an bolical crime of the Israelites has been effigy of that arch conspirator Guy committed again and again in various Faux, and ended by burning him, with parts of the world, and that if the Jews much noisy demonstration of loyalty, could have it all their own way there in a a monstrous bonfire, finishing up up would be an annual repetition of the with vast expenditure of gunpowder tragedy of Inmestar in Hounslow, Warand explosions of squibs and crackers. saw, Vienna, or Berlin. and conspireito The Jews in the old days did the The history of the Jews in Europe and England is a bad and sad history enough. It has, however, never been written at all adequately, and there is no English book upon the subject which can be described as even a respectable compilation. We have good reason for believing that there were many representatives of the oppressed race in Britain before the Norman Conquest, and that they continued among us in somewhat large numbers till they were banished by Edward the First in 1290, after which time we hear little or nothing about them in these islands for four hundred years. During the two centuries, however, which elapsed between the coming of the Normans and their expulsion by Edward the First, a great deal may be learned about this strange people and about the barbarous treatment they received. I am not go |