those ferment-granules, and they can be developed quite similarly. M. Terrigi has specially devoted himself to the means of disinfection, which may prevent the decaying process and development of the granules; he found chloride of lime, lime, and chloral, the most efficacious. With aspirators and air-filtering apparatus he ascertained that the germs rose to a height of fifty centimetres (about twenty inches) above the marsh-bottom, where they could easily be carried away by the winds. M. Terrigi found the "malaria-melanin" (as they call it) abundant in the liver and spleen of Guinea-pigs that had breathed the marsh-air for some time.
How the Chinese go a-Fishing.—Under the title "Fishing Extraordinary" a writer in Chambers's Journal describes various singular devices used in different countries for catching fish. Some portions of the narrative are calculated to put a strain upon the credulity of the reader, as, for instance, when we are informed that "the lakes and rivers of China, and especially of the north, are so abundantly stocked with fish, that in some places the men called fish-catchers make their living by actually seizing and drawing them out with their hands." If any of our readers should happen to dwell in the vicinity of such fish-abounding streams, they will be pleased to learn how these fish-catchers set about their work. Here is the modus operandi: The man goes into the water, and proceeds, half walking, half swimming, raising his arms above his head and letting them drop, striking the surface with his hands. Meanwhile his feet are moving on the muddy bottom. Presently he stoops with a rapid dive and brings up a fish in his hand. His object in striking the surface is to frighten the fish, which, when alarmed, sink to the bottom; then the naked feet feel them in the mud, and, once felt, the practised hand secures them in a moment.
Another Chinese method of fishing described by this writer is very ingenious. It is usually practised at night, and depends upon a peculiar power which a white screen, stretched under the water, seems to possess over the fishes, decoying them to it and making them leap. A man sitting in the stern of a long, narrow boat, steers her with a paddle to the middle of a river, and there stops. Along the right-hand side of his boat a narrow sheet of white canvas is stretched; when he leans to that side it dips under the surface, and, if it be a moonlight night, gleams through the water. Along the other side of the boat a net is fastened, so as to form a barrier two or three feet high. The boatman keeping perfectly still, the fish, attracted by the white canvas, approach and leap, and would go over the narrow boat and be free in their native waters on the other side, but for the screen of neting, which stops them and throws them down before the man's feet.
The Use of Anti-Ferments.—To prevent fermentation, a wine-grower in New Jersey added to a twelve-gallon keg of new wine about one gramme (1512 grains) of salicylic acid, or a very little more than the minimum quantity as given by Neubauer. Soon the wine lost its natural flavor, and acquired a flavor something like that of camphor. A sample of this altered nine having been submitted to Dr. Endemann for examination, he at once referred the new flavor to the presence of salicylic ether. In a communication to the American Chemical Society, Dr. Endemann writes: "The formation of this ether may be understood if we regard the circumstances. The wine was only one year old, and could not be considered ripe and ready for sale, and should therefore have received not the minimum quantity but rather more salicylic acid, to entirely prevent after-fermentation. The quantity, therefore, being insufficient, salicylic acid came in contact with alcohol in statu nascendi, which caused this abnormal action. Wine-growers are naturally very suspicious of chemicals, and are therefore very apt to make the same mistake—that is, they prefer to use the minimum quantity; and I should not be surprised if similar experiences had followed the application of this substance in other places."
Determination of Copper.—Mr. J. M. Merrick, of Boston, proposes a new method of determining very small quantities of copper. It is intended as a supplement to Bergeron and l'Hôte's colorimetric test, which fails to
