stores.

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 arfloor 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 drum or cylinder rotates at an incline. The arsenic soot is tipped into it at the top, and is turned over and over as the cylinder revolves, partly by its own weight, partly by the flanges. A fire is burning at one end of the drum, and the flame passes through it, consuming the arsenic as it falls, or is tossed athwart it. It is possible to look into the glowing interior as it rotates and watch the fiery heat scintillate with the arsenic that falls as a shower of stars. Another calciner consists of a horizon-shaft is one hundred and twenty-five tal rotary metal disc like a millstone, feet. 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,

The vapor from the calciners, after passing through the condensers, traverses a sheet of falling water, which arrests a certain amount of the sulphur in the fumes. Owing to the noxious effect of sulphurous acid on vegetation, more than a certain amount of this acid is not allowed to be given off; it is therefore sought to arrest it on its way. The water as it flows away is milky, or rather like soap and water, from the sulphur it contains. The height of the

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
by Nathan (Die Bedentung der Hefenrein-
zucht für die Obstweinbereitung). The
amount of alcohol present in such wines as
cider, currant wine, etc., is generally from
three to four per cent.
This small propor-

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 the "must," and introducing a pure cultiof tobacco. He has examined fermented vation of a vigorous wine-yeast, the yield of tobacco from all parts of the world, and alcohol would be greater. It was found found large numbers of micro-organisms, that by adding a small amount of nitrogealthough but few varieties, mostly only two nous material, such as 0.15 gram. ammoor three different species in any particular nium chloride, and five cubic centimetres brand and but rarely micrococcus forms. of wine-yeast per litre to the "apple-must" But what is of especial interest is the (which was the fruit selected) two per cent. discovery that pure cultures of bacteria ob- more alcohol was obtained, and not only tained from one kind of tobacco and inocu- was this the case, but this cider possessed a lated on to another kind, generated in the finer and more vinous taste than that unlatter a taste and aroma recalling the taste treated, or which had only received an and aroma of the original tobacco from additional supply of ammonium chloride which the pure cultures had been in the without the wine-yeast. Kosutany in a first instance procured. Thus it may be paper published in the Landw. Versuchspossible in the future to raise the quality of stationen, 1892, has recorded the results of German tobacco, not, as heretofore, so much his investigations on the behavior of cerby careful culture and judicious selection tain species of wine-yeast. He states that of varieties, which has so far proved unsuc- not only is the percentage of alcohol yielded cessful, but by inoculating pure cultures of very different with particular yeasts, but bacteria found in some of the fine foreign that also the taste, smell, and bouquet of tobaccos on to our own raw material, the wine inoculated with special cultures whereby similar fermentative changes may were distinctly different according to the be induced and the quality correspondingly variety of yeast employed. It is hoped improved. The further results promised that, as in the case of tobacco so with wine, by Suchsland will be looked for with much it may be possible to raise the quality by interest. In connection with the above the judicious transplanting of bacteria obexperiments on the "transplantation," so tained from finer brands. to speak, of micro-organisms, it is interest

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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.

The story was often repeated, we may be sure, and, as I have said, it became a "stock story" in the after time. The wonder is that, as such stories are wont to do, it did not at once and im

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 a very profound impression upon the imagination of mankind in the ages that followed. It is said to have happened at Inmestar about the year 430 A.D. It has disappeared now, but four-mediately become the foundation of a teen centuries ago it was a town with streets of houses, and in those streets there dwelt a large number of Jews, who made themselves obnoxious to the other inhabitants by their boisterous, insulting, and bloodthirsty behavior. It appears the Jews at Inmestar used to keep the feast of Purim after a fashion of their own, much in the same way that the Protestant folk in the city of Exeter kept the 5th of November to this day there are many credulous twenty or thirty years ago. There the rabble carried about in procession an effigy of that arch conspirator Guy Faux, and ended by burning him, with much noisy demonstration of loyalty, in a monstrous bonfire, finishing up with vast expenditure of gunpowder and explosions of squibs and crackers.

body of mythus for ingenious people to embellish and vary in a hundred different ways. Instead of that happening, it seems that the story was well-nigh forgotten for more than seven hundred years. Then, however, somebody fished it up from the obscurity in which it had been lurking for long; and, once revived, it became not only a favorite romance in the Middle Ages, but

people who firmly believe that this diabolical crime of the Israelites has been committed again and again in various parts of the world, and that if the Jews could have it all their own way there would be an annual repetition of the tragedy of Inmestar in Hounslow, Warsaw, Vienna, or Berlin.

The Jews in the old days did the same with the effigy of Haman. They The history of the Jews in Europe hanged him upon a gallows with up- and England is a bad and sad history roarious shoutings of derision and hate enough. It has, however, never been and scorn, and they spared not their written at all adequately, and there is curses loud and deep upon all who no English book upon the subject should follow in the steps of Haman which can be described as even a reand conspire to work the Hebrews spectable compilation. We have good harm. The Christians did not like the reason for believing that there were ceremony, and when the gallows, in- many representatives of the oppressed tentionally or unintentionally, assumed race in Britain before the Norman Conthe form of a cross, their blood was quest, and that they continued among stirred, and angry passions were roused. us in somewhat large numbers till they Both sides waxed more and more wroth. were banished by Edward the First in The Jews said they had a right to their 1290, after which time we hear little or Guy; the Christians said they should nothing about them in these islands for have nothing of the sort. How much four hundred years. During the two truth or falsehood there may be in what centuries, however, which elapsed befollowed it is idle now to conjecture, tween the coming of the Normans and but, at any rate, Socrates believed that their expulsion by Edward the First, a the Hebrews became at last so furious great deal may be learned about this and mad that they actually set up a strange people and about the barbarous veritable cross in the streets, fastened a treatment they received. I am not go