The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 47 pages of information about The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction.

The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 47 pages of information about The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction.
every house had a patient or more under this fever, though these were mistaken for typhus, or at least thus misnamed.  Then it was also about Vauxhall and Lambeth; and to a great extent among all that scattered mixture of town and country which follows from Whitechapel, from Bishopsgate, &c., and very particularly along Ratcliffe-Highway to an indefinite range along the river.  In Lewisham there were in one house nine patients under this fever, which proved mortal to one.  We may also enumerate Dulwich, especially subject to this disorder, Fulham, Ealing, and the several other villages along the Thames, as far as Chertsey; and even Richmond, where, as at Lewisham, there was one house where ten individuals at one time were suffering under this disease.  Whatever was the pestilence last year, it promises to be much greater in the present one.  This is easily judged from the manner in which the season has set in, but still more decidedly from the extraordinary prevalence of ague in the spring; since that which was intermittent fever then, will be remittent in the autumn, or rather, there will scarcely be a definite season of vernal intermittent, but the remittent will commence immediately, increasing in extent and severity as the summer advances, and promising to become, in the autumn, the greatest season of disease that England has known for this century.  Dr. Macculloch attributes this alarming increase to malaria, on the production and propagation of which he has recently published an essay, the leading argument of which is, “that as the quantity of the poison which any person can inspire is necessarily small, and as this small quantity can be produced by a small marshy spot as well as a large one, it is the same, as to the production of the disease, whether the marsh is a foot square or a mile, provided the exposure be complete; while also any piece of ground where vegetables decompose under the action of water is virtually a marsh, or must produce malaria.”

Acclimatizing Plants.

A Mr. Street, of Biel, in East Lothian, has recently made some successful attempts at acclimatizing, or giving to exotic plants greater powers of withstanding cold than they had when first introduced.  By planting in situations well drained from superfluous moisture, under circumstances where rapid growth was rendered impracticable, and in a garden admirably adapted to the object from its position, he has succeeded in naturalizing, in latitude 56 deg.  N. plants which have not yet been known to endure the winters even of the parallel of London.—­Quarterly Journal of Science.

In a table kept at Sydney by Major Goulburn, from May 1821 to April 1822, the thermometer never rose above 751/2 deg. and never lower than 54 deg. of Fahrenheit.

Bronzing Tin.

To obtain complete success in bronzing medals of tin, the two following solutions must be employed:—­

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The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.