brick chimney are openings closed with iron doors. These are ten feet apart. When the furnace is let out, the doors

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 bring the coal to the ore. The ore is worth about twenty-five shillings a ton. 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 stores. 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 horizontal rotary metal disc like a millstone, somewhat convex. The cap of this In Styria and Carinthia, there is much disc is stationary, and is armed with arsenic-eating among the peasants; the fangs that reach almost to the disc. women take it to give themselves a The arsenic soot flows in through the good complexion and to make their hair centre of the cap, and is turned over, fine and glossy. The men take it beploughed up by the fangs as the disc cause they believe that it gives them on which it rests revolves. A furnace wind in climbing in the chase after chaon one side sends its fiery breath be-mois. There is nothing of this sort in tween the rotating nether disc and the Cornwall and Devon. In Styria and coverer, and turns both to a glowing Carinthia it is known that an arsenicred, so that the arsenic is volatilized, eater can never be broken off the habit, and all the dross slides away to the and that, if arsenic be compulsorily kept lowest portion of the machine and dis- from the eater, death rapidly ensues. charges itself over the edge. The va- is believed in the Tamar-and this is por is carried through the condensers, perhaps true — that an arsenic-worker is

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 shaft is one hundred and twenty-five feet.

It

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 hathe 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 some interesting experiments made recently go to show that these important results are effected by special micro-organisms. In a paper read before the German Botanical Society, Suchsland gives an account of some investigations which he has been conducting 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

constituents of the "must," and also to
the fact that the yeast, according to Han-
sen mostly present on sweet fruits is the
Saccharomyces apiculatus, which only pos-
sesses a feeble fermentative power. Ex-
periments were made to see whether, by
increasing the nitrogenous constituents of
the "must," and introducing a pure culti-
vation 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. ammo-
nium 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 un-
treated, or which had only received an
additional supply of ammonium chloride
without the wine-yeast. Kosutany in a
paper published in the Landw. Versuchs-
stationen, 1892, has recorded the results of
his investigations on the behavior of cer-
tain 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 ob-
tained from finer brands.

Nature.

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From The Nineteenth Century.
ST. WILLIAM OF NORWICH.

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 imIt 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 monstrous bonfire, finishing 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.

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