it first.

From our experience with this disease in the past, and from the ravages which it has already made in parts of France and Italy, we have reason to believe that it will not only spread over Europe, but that it will reach this country, if urgent measures are not taken to arrest it; as the season is far advanced it may not touch our shores until the early part of next year; the different cities on and near the Atlantic Coast have organized strict sanitary regulations to prevent it. Has Kansas City been placed in a proper state of defense? Under the able management of the head of the health department, the health of the city for the last two years has been very good, the annual mortality list is so low as to make it almost unexampled, but there remains much to be done to guard against epidemic disease. His timely warnings and suggestions should be heeded and his arms strengthened with the means necessary to place it in a good sanitary condition. If this is not done, the city may suffer a calamity in loss of life and business such as it has never experienced.

The field of medical investigation which we have briefly, presented to your view in this paper, is one of great extent; and the facts, but recently developed are too complex to be fully settled by the labors of a few men. Pasteur and Koch have, by their discoveries, already placed their names high upon the scroll of fame, they have opened the way through which will continue to flow the richest benefits to the health and happiness of the human race; but it should be recollected that new-born truths encounter opposition, and cannot in the very nature of the mental constitution of men, be generally accepted in a day.

The signs of the times indicate that the different branches of scientific medicine will be consolidated and crystalized into one harmonious system, the rough places will in time be made smooth. The various processes that will bring about this desirable result are quietly at work, and will make it, at no distant day, an accomplished fact.

KANSAS CITY, Mo., October, 1884.

CONCLUSIONS REGARDING THE WARING SEWERAGE SYSTEM.

(Translation from M. Pontzen.)

The first application of sewerage according to Waring's system, made in Paris in 1883, in a quarter where all of the unfavorable conditions are combined, has been a complete success.

The establishments drained by Waring's system leave nothing further to be desired in a sanitary point of view, and the ensemble of the drainage works has not, during the five months it has been in operation, given rise to the least complaint. The water-closets in the courtyards are no longer offensive, and their presence would not be suspected, the conduits of the system have never required any special cleansing, no deposit has been formed in the collecting sewer in the Rue de Rivoli at the mouth of the main, and the air in this main, constantly

renewed and passing only over recent matters moving in a rapid current of water, has no odor.

The officers of the city and the members of the Municipal Council, more particularly interested in the improvement of the sewerage of Paris, have watched the experiment with interest, and I am permitted to say that the good services rendered by the combined arrangements introduced by Mr. Waring contributed largely to the influence which led the Municipal Council to decide, in its session of the 11th of April, 1884, that the preliminary official inquiry which is about to be made, and which is the prelude of a definite decision as to the method of sewerage for Paris, should relate both to the direct discharge of household wastes into existing sewers, and to their removal by separate sewers.

It seems certain that within a short time the entire suppression of vaults and movable receptacles for focal matter will be decreed, as well as those which receive and retain excremental matters as those which attempt a division, and are intended only to retain the solid portions; and that the immediate removal of all excremental matters and household liquids will be accomplished by their direct discharge beyond the limits of the city.

These substances will be discharged into the sewer, wherever the condition of the sewers is suitable; they will be sent through the sewer, that is to say, by special conduits located wherever possible in the interior of the large sewers, where their immediate delivery into the sewer itself would not be admissible-these special conduits to deliver into the sewer as soon as a point is reached where the necessary conditions for the rapid and complete removal of the discharge of such affiuents is assured.

This is one of the great advantages of Waring's system of sewerage, that it can as well be established in isolated sections, constituting an auxiliary and an economical complement of the great system of sewers suited to receive fresh focal matter and household waste, as it can, by itself alone, be extended for the complete drainage of whole quarters or of entire cities.

Whatever may be the extension of a series of sewers according to Waring's system, it retains always, by reason of its exclusion of storm-water, the great advantage of requiring only small diameters and reasonable inclinations in which the volume of flow undergoes only slight variations, and for the cleansing of which relatively small quantities of water suffice.

The establishment and maintenance of a system of sewers according to Waring's system has therefore in all cases the advantage of being economical.

PARIS, May, 1884.

GEOLOGY AND MINING.

THE BURLINGTON GRAVEL BEDS.

PROF. JOHN D. PARKER, U. S. A.

During the summer of 1883, some students of the Kansas Agricultural College, while on a geological excursion in Southern Kansas, found on Shell Island, which is located a little below Burlington, a piece of Burlington gravel containing a trilobite. The specimen is a cast, small but quite perfect, and is evidently in situ, that is, it belongs to the gravel. This specimen was submitted to Prof. O. St. John, the accomplished paleontologist of the United States Survey, who identified it as belonging to the genius Phillipsia, of the Upper Carboniferous. This find is important, due to its bearing on the geological horizon of the Burlington gravel beds.

Prof. Schaeffer, of Cornell University, found in the gravel, a specimen of which was sent to him for examination, a large number of small silicified corals, the two genera Fenestella and Tremotopora being readily distinguishable. These genera belong to the Silurian. The late Prof. Mudge, who was probably more familiar with Kansas geology than any other person, on a casual examination of the Burlington beds in the fall of 1871, expressed the opinion that they were the result of modified drift. The beds extend over a large territory passing over the divide between the Neosho River and the Verdigris, and the gravel is found as far north as Emporia, and as far south as Oswego. I have found the gravel in walks at Topeka and Leavenworth. The Kansas River may have been the general terminus of glacial action southward in the State of Kansas, but we find boulders farther south, and possibly there might have been enough glacial action over the region of the beds to have deposited them. Or, perhaps, the drift may have been modified, and the beds transported to their present position by subsequent agencies.

Prof. O. St. John is of the opinion, however, that the beds are to be considered of local origin, and to have been derived from the Carboniferous. We give the following extract from a private letter of this eminent palæontologist, which indicates his views on the subject:

"In regard to the chert gravel from the Neosho Valley near Burlington, Kansas, it is perfectly safe to say it comes from the chert beds overlying the heavy building limestone series, well up in the Upper Coal-Measure series; the same that crowns the highland eminences south of Manhattan, and thence extending south-southwest into the so-called Flint Hills east of the Arkansas Valley, in the southern central portion of the State. It may not be strictly a "glacial gravel, although these particular deposits might well have in part been the result

"

of glacial agencies; but they are to be regarded as of a local origin, as we can distinctly trace them to their native ledges only a few miles to the west or northwest of their present position in the gravel deposits, to which they might have been transported by the agency of ordinary currents. But as we do find unmistakable evidence of true erratics, or traveled boulders, as far south, at least, as the divide between the Kansas and the Neosho, it is altogether likely much of this chert gravel was transported by the same agency that brought the quartzite and the boulders from their northern home, hundreds of miles away, to their present resting place, in the superficial deposits of central Eastern Kansas. As you request, I have identified the fossils contained in the chert quartz, from which you will find they are all of Coal Measure age, and identical with forms occurring in the great chert beds, in situ, in the aforesaid highlands."

The Burlington Gravel Beds, in an economic view, have recently come into prominence, and will undoubtedly play an important part in furnishing Macadam for the streets of our cities. and gravel for ballasting railroads, and it is of interest to scientists to know from what geological formation these immense deposits have been derived. Such questions would be authoritatively settled by a scientific survey of the State of Kansas, during which geologists would have ample time and means for careful examinations and mature opinions.

The Legislature of Kansas cannot much longer put off the geological survey, when such vital interests are at stake as the development of the natural resources of the State. There is also a demand on the part of the most intelligent citizens of the State, that such a survey shall be made at an early day.

THE MINING OPERATIONS OF THE ROMANS.

Before the antiquarian section of the Royal Archæological Institute, which has just been holding its annual meeting at Newcastle-on-Tyne, the Rev. Joseph Hirst, of Wadhurst, read a paper on this subject. He said: As the Romans gradually extended their conquest over the world, they became more and more aware of the immense increase to their wealth that might be derived from skillfully conducted mining operations. Indeed, the desire to obtain possession of such countries as yielded most abundantly the various metals that were required for objects of use or luxury seemed to have led them to push their conquests in certain specified directions rather than in others. Spain, a country of gold and silver mines, had been called the Indies of the old world. As then Tyre and Carthage had sent Phoenician colonists to establish their factories all along the coast of Africa as far as the Atlantic, who having crossed over into Europe, settled along the far-stretching shores of Spain, and, according to an ancient tradition, pushed their trading outposts as far as the British Isles; so the Romans poured into Spain and reaped there the benefit of the discoveries and of the labors of those who had been before them in the field. Tunnelings of a Phoenician origin might still be seen in that country, and there the Romans found mines of gold, silver,

copper, tin, mercury, iron, sulphur, and salt. During the republic, the State did not occupy itself much with the management of mines, upon which it looked with some disfavor, but left them chiefly to the care of private enterprise. Very little was known about the principles that at that time guided the policy of the Romans in this matter. To one who read the thirty-third book of the Natural History of Pliny, it might appear that indifference to wealth and compassion for their fellow-creatures were at the bottom of this disfavor shown by the Romans in their early history for the work of mines. Various proofs in support of this theory were collected by Barba in his Métallurgie. Certain it was, that after the conquest of foreign lands, it was altogether forbidden to work mines in Italy, the mother country. Yet it was remarkable that Pliny should consider Italy the richest country in the world for mineral wealth. However much frugality, sobriety, simplicity of manners, and disregard for luxury might have been virtues practiced by the Romans in the early days of the republic, they but too often yielded in later days to sentiments of a different order. It had been submitted that the restriction limiting the number of men to be employed in the mines of Vercellæ to five thousand, so that no more should be employed in the works at one time by the public contractors, was to prevent the latter from exhausting the mines under the terms and by the force of one agreement. Similar restrictions might have been suggested for similar reasons. Thus it was forbidden by a decree of the Theodosian code to export silver from the rich mines of Sardinia. on to the mainland. In course of time, however, the greed of gold, so much inveighed against by the Roman moralists, became universal throughout the empire. Mines and public works of all sorts were seized upon, monopolized, and administered by the State through the agency of public farmers, called technically publicani. In the days of the republic, however, only the more important mineral products, whether in Italy or the provinces, were claimed as belonging to the State. Among the works at that time in the hands of the government were, said Marquardt, the gold mines near Vercellæ, in Northern Italy, employing, as already stated, 5,000 hands; the silver mines near Nova Carthago, in Spain, where 10,000 men were employed, and where the daily output was reck ̄ oned at a value of 25,000 denarii; the gold and silver mines in Macedonia; and the tin and lead mines near Sisapon, in Bætica, the modern Almaden in Andalusia. The same fate fell to the lot of a great many other mines, which, when let out by the revenue officers to those who thus came to farm them, were deemed capable of yielding a goodly income. The greater portion, however, of the mines throughout the Roman dominion, were still left in the hands of private speculators. In fact, the heavy rent paid by private works was more profitable to the State than the smaller and more precarious sums paid by the publicani. Livy made the express statement concerning the iron and copper mines in Macedonia, that they were to be left in the hands of the provincials: while of the gold and silver mines, he said that, on the formation of that country into a Roman province, they were altogether closed, though it was related that some ten years afterward they were reopened and let out in the ordinary way, through the cen