AN ELECTRIC TRANSFER-TABLE.

THE accompanying cut represents the new transfer-table at the Fitchburg car repair shops at Fitchburg, Mass., just built by the Fitchburg Railroad Company. The table or car is moved by the Union Electric Car Company's system. The motor, gears, clutches, etc., are all on the front axle of the car. The motor is geared to the axle, and the gears run in an enclosed bath of oil. They are brass cut gears, and work with the least possible amount of friction and consequent loss of power. The switch which governs the motor and controls the car is just above the motor, on a platform built out from the front of the car, as are also the reversing

SINGLE COPIES, TEN CENTS. $3.50 PER YEAR, IN ADVANCE.

being at the dynamo, now run the table and draw on and off the cars, which work formerly required twelve men and a shifting locomotive and its men, and some four times the amount of work can be done by these three men.

The Union Electric Car Company will use this same system on the Beverly and Danvers Railroad, which is being equipped by the company, and will be running this month. These cars will use storage batteries in place of the overhead wires for the propelling power. The storage batteries are placed under the seats, with two sets to each car. They are charged by a steam and electrical plant in the car-house. Each set runs the car forty miles. It takes eight hours to charge. The batteries are changed by the con

bar and the handle throwing in and out the clutch by which the motor is used either to propel the car in the desired direction or to draw off and on the cars to be changed from one track to another.

The two shops are each five hundred feet long, and face each other. Each shop is divided into three divisions, separated by brick walls running through the roof. In each division there are eight tracks, making twenty-four in each shop. Between these shops, which are seventy-five feet apart, is the pit in which the table or car moves. The car is ten feet long and seventy feet wide, and runs on four rails laid in the pit. The track on the car, running from side to side, matches the tracks in the shops. The control of the table is so perfect, by the use of the switch, that it can be put and matched to any track desired without the least trouble or hitch; the same power that moved the car forward, stops or slows it. The table is run by the dynamo which lights the shops at night, and is connected by two overhead wires, on which run two trolleys, the trolley-poles being on the top of the house built over the front platform at the front of the table. Three men, one

ductor and driver in from three to ten minutes, and each car makes a run of eighty miles per day.

THE SOFTENING OF HARD WATERS FOR DOMESTIC USE.

SINCE waters possessing an inconvenient degree of hardness are very common in many localities, owing to the almost universal prevalence of calcareous soils and geological deposits, it is of no little interest to have some simple means of doing away with this property, so as to render such waters more convenient for domestic uses. This is the more important, as in some cases the presence of a large proportion of magnesia tends to cause serious, even though usually only temporary, gastric disturbance with persons unused to such waters, whereby quite frequently an unfounded prejudice against the general health-conditions of perfectly healthful localities is created. This subject has been heretofore discussed in many places, especially in California, but its continued importance and the frequent demand for information in the prem

When, as is most commonly the case, this hardness is due to the presence of large proportions of the carbonates of lime and magnesia, it can be recognized by the extent to which the water becomes turbid, or forms whitish scum or incrustations, when boiled. Boiling, then, is one of the means for softening waters that are hard and "curdle the soap" from this cause; and this fact is well known to housekeepers, but owing to the inconvenience of the application of this remedy, it is rarely resorted to except for drinking-water. For this purpose boiling has the special and additional advantage of insuring the destruction of any minute germs of disease that might contaminate the water.

To soften water for washing, a common and very good remedy is the use of carbonate of soda (sal soda) in sufficient quantity to bring down the lime and magnesia, and thus insure the proper solution of the soap to form suds. Only there is too often a mistake made in not allowing time for the soda to bring down the lime and magnesia in a powdery form, which requires from half an hour to an hour when the water is cold, but occurs very quickly when the water is hot. When, as is commonly done, the soap is put into the water while the lime is still in the gelatinous form and diffused in the water, a certain amount of "curdling" will still happen, and the washed clothes (especially flannels) will have that soggy and unpleasant touch which is caused by the accumulation of the lime and magnesia soaps in them.

That it is undesirable to use soda for softening water to be used for drinking hardly needs more than mention. The natural hard waters usually contain quite as much of saline matters as is desirable in drinking water. Soda, however, does not in any manner correct the sanitary condition of a water; on the contrary, it aids in keeping vegetable and animal matters in solution, and unless added in very large excess does not interfere with the vitality of fungous or other germs.

By far the most convenient and effective mode of purifying larger quantities of hard water for domestic use, is the introduction of a definite amount of quicklime, proportioned to the requirements of each particular water; a point that can be readily ascertained by any one having an ordinary capacity for observation.

The principle upon which this apparently paradoxical process is based is this: The lime and magnesia in most hard waters are contained in the form of carbonates, dissolved in the water by the aid of free carbonic acid. Whatever drives off or takes possession of this free acid will bring down the earthy substances in an insoluble form, and thereon depends the efficacy of boiling as well as of the addition of washing soda; cooking soda or bicarbonate will not produce the effect. Now, lime in the caustic condition, as lime-water, or milk-of-lime, freshly prepared, will most effectually take possession of any free carbonic acid, and will form with it the same insoluble compound that, when hard water is boiled, settles to the bottom or incrusts the boiler. Hence, when an amount of clear lime-water, just sufficient to absorb all the carbonic acid in a water, is added to it, both the lime added and the lime and magnesia originally contained, are brought down in the insoluble form, and the mineral contents of the water are diminished very materially, sometimes to less than one-half of the original amount. With the sediments thus brought down there also usually comes a large proportion of the vegetable or animal matters contained in the water; so that instead of perhaps becoming putrid in a tank serving for domestic supply, water so treated will remain clear and odorless for a long time if protected from recontamination by insects, falling leaves, dust, etc.

The only practical difficulty in carrying out this purification is the ascertainment of the proper proportion of lime or lime-water to be used, so that the water shall neither retain too much of its original hardness nor acquire an unpleasant taste and astringent action from an excess of lime. This can, however, be done quite readily by a few tests with different proportions of lime-water, and the very simple trial as to which will produce the least "curdling" of soap when ready-made soapsuds are added in small proportion. Whatever proportion of lime-water or lime satisfies this easily ascertained condition, is the best for all purposes.

Numerous experiments prove that for the waters of the wells,

As one part by weight of pure, unslaked lime requires seven hundred parts of water for its solution, a simple calculation shows that the above proportion corresponds to from five to eight grains of lime per gallon, or about three-quarters to one pound per thousand gallons.

In the practical working of this process it is best to have, for small tanks up to one or two hundred gallons, a supply barrel in which clear lime-water of full strength can always be kept on hand ready for use. A few pounds of lime, slaked into a creamy mass, may be put in the barrel, the sediment being stirred up from time to time as the clear water standing over it is replaced. Of course, in order to preserve the proper proportion, once determined, only clear water must be used, otherwise more lime than is called for, will be introduced into the water. The lime-water barrel should be kept closely covered.

For larger tanks it will be more convenient either to take a weighed amount of unslaked lime for each one thousand gallons, slack it into milk-of-lime and stir it in, or else to prepare a large quantity of milk-of-lime which, when thoroughly stirred, will for each measure (bucketful) contain a known amount of lime. This would be the best way to handle cases in which the feeding water of boilers requires to be corrected. It should, in this connection, be understood that the lime treatment is very efficacious against the frothing produced in boilers by waters containing a large amount of vegetable matter, as is commonly the case in that from ponds or other catchment reservoirs.

The sediment that accumulates in tanks used for this treatment is usually of a sandy nature, and not readily stirred up; it therefore causes little inconvenience, and can be removed at leisure, from time to time, as it becomes too large.

It is true that, like some other household measures conducive to sanitation and comfort, the maintenance of this system requires some regular personal interest and attendance on the part of some member of the family. If carelessly handled, there may be unaccountable variations in the gastric conditions of the family, from one extreme to the other, and the soap may curdle from the water's natural hardness one week, and from excess of lime the next. But there is no excuse for such occurrences, except as the result of carelessness or negligence, and the advantage gained, whether as to health or comfort, amply repays the trouble when these hard waters require to be used.

A NOVEL ELECTRIC BATTERY.

A NOVEL and simple form of electric battery has recently been invented in Italy. As described in the Rivista Technica, it consists of conical vessels of cast iron and porous earthenware, with nitric and sulphuric acid. An iron cone is placed point downwards in a stand, and is partly filled with strong nitric acid. Into this there is placed a cone of porous earthenware containing dilute sulphuric acid. Then follows an iron cone surmounted by an earthenware one, and so on in a series, each vessel containing its respective acid. It follows that the inner surface of each iron vessel is bathed in nitric acid, and becomes passive, acting the part of the platinum or carbon in an ordinary cell. The outer surface is attacked by the dilute sulphuric acid, and takes the place of the zinc. There are no connections to make, the simple building of the pile putting all the parts into union. The earthenware cones are eight inches in diameter and four inches in height, and contain five hundred and fifty cubic centimetres of ten per cent sulphuric acid solution. The iron vessel contains one hundred and ten cubic centi. metres of nitric and sulphuric acids, the latter being three times the volume of the former. Sixty elements, arranged in two piles, have a resistance of ten and one-half ohms, an electromotive force on open circuit of eighty-one volts, and on closed circuit of fortyfive volts, with a current of four and four-tenths ampères. After five hours the difference of potential falls to twenty-eight volts and the current to two and seven-tenths ampères.

OLIVE CULTIVATION.

Of the various food products, or vegetable liquids, perhaps those most extensively shown at the Paris Exhibition are wine and oil. These two seem to follow the progress of civilization and settlement, whenever the climate is suitable. Olive oil is shown in a very large number of the foreign sections, and the wide and extensive progress it has made over the world is exemplified now by one French exhibitor, who exhibits samples from the following widely-separated districts: the Gold Coast of Africa, Melbourne and Adelaide, Chili, Guatemala, Guayaquil, Mexico, Venezuela, La Plata, New Orleans, Philadelphia and New York, Canada, India, Cochin China, Reunion, Mauritius, Japan, Polynesia, Havana, Guadaloupe, Martinique, Trinidad, Hayti, the Black Sea coast, the Levant, Spain, Portugal, and France.

But these are not all the seats of production, and are merely cited to show how widespread is the culture of the olive at the present day.

Taking the French official catalogue, and turning to the alimentary products, "class 69, oils and fatty substances," there will be found over six hundred exhibitors of olive oil specially named, besides numerous collective exhibits, and many others also are included under the general term "comestible" or edible oils. There is much substitution, however, carried on in this respect at the present day by the sale to the public of refined cotton-seed oil, sesame, and other oils, in place of olive oil. The number of exhibitors of olive oil under each country as given by Mr. P. L. Simmons in the Journal of the Society of Arts, are as follows: Portugal, 448; Algeria, 128; Italy, 8; France, 12; Spain, 5; California, 4; Japan, I; total, 606. There are two or three exhibitors also from Tunis, and in the French section there is a collective exhibit of edible oils made by sixty-seven producers and dealers from Salon, Bouches du Rhone.

The various uses of the olive for its fruit and its oil are well known. In ancient Greece the tree received all the honors, and had almost a sacred character. This was in consequence of its being the chief production of the country, and its produce the main source of public food.

From olden times the people of the Mediterranean coasts have made the olive their principal culture, and it is there the oil industry chiefly centres, - in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, and France, on the northern coast; and Morocco, Algeria, and Tunis, on the southern shores.

--

The olive has been cultivated in those regions from time immemorial, as the bounteous gift of heaven and the emblem of peace and plenty. Olive oil takes there the place of butter. Spain has about 3,000,000 acres under olives, Italy 2,250,000, and France about 330,000, of which 15,000 acres are in the district of Nice. Olive oil in the country of Nice forms now four-fifths of the agricultural produce.

The varieties of the olive are very numerous. The naturalist Risso, in 1826, described forty distinct varieties, and these have since been increased to forty-five.

In the countries where it is indigenous, the olive tree attains gigantic proportions. It reaches, occasionally, sixty feet high, with a circumference of trunk of twelve feet, and these trees are supposed to have attained the age of one thousand years. Certain varieties grow more rapidly than others, and some differ from each other in the nature of the wood, the foliage, and the quality of the fruit. There are large olives and small olives, pointed, oval, round, and curved fruit, and of all colors, ranging from white to black, and from green to red. The flavor of the fruit is mild, sharp, or bitter. Hence, according to the variety, there is obtained sweet oil, light colored, and of exquisite flavor, up to dark green, thick, and of a bitter taste, strong and very unpleasant to the palate. Hence it follows that olive oil can be obtained pure, and also quite unfit for food purposes, only suitable for greasing machines and making soap. The green unripe olives, after remaining in a solution of salt for some time, to remove the bitter taste, are preserved in vinegar, with spices, in bottles or small barrels. Those of Tuscany and Lucca are considered the best, on account of their lightgreen color and strong flesh. In all parts of southern Europe they are in this form a daily food.

The ripe olives are gathered in the fall, when they are as large as common plums; their color is dark green, and the soft kernel has changed into a hard stone, which contains a savory almond. The flesh is spongy, and its little cells are filled with the mild oil, which pours out at the least pressure.

There is a fine collection of preserved olives shown by Hernanos & Company, of Barcelona. The finest oil is the so-called virgin oil, to obtain which the freshly gathered olives are put into little heaps, and by their own weight the oil is pressed out, and is caught in some vessel. It is clear like water, has a delicate nut-like taste, with little or no odor. When the fruits cease to give the oil by themselves, they are pressed with small milkstones. The oil gained by this process is also clear, and of a pleasant taste. After this treatment the olives are still rich in oil, and the fruits are put in sacks; boiling water is poured over them, and they are pressed once more. The oil gained by this process is yellowish green, and has a sharp taste and an unpleasant smell, because it contains some mucilaginous matters.

At Marseilles, the great seat of the vegetable oil trade, the olive oils are classed into manufacturing oils for burning, for greasing machinery in factories, and for soap-making; refined oil; oil from the pulp or husks; and table or edible oil. The latter is divided into superfine, fine, half-fine, and ordinary. The table oil is refined by allowing it to run through layers of thin sheets of wadding into tin perforated boxes; the wadding absorbs all the thick particles, and leaves the oil perfectly clear and tasteless.

In the Spanish section, Signor José Gonzalo Priete, who has steam works at Lora del Rio, Seville, makes a display of an imitation olive tree silvered, from the branches of which are suspended six glass globes, filled with the different qualities of pure olive oil. The Tuscans were the first who exported olive oil largely, and thus it has obtained the name of Florence oil. It would be a curious fact to ascertain the number of olive trees which exist in the different countries bordering on the Mediterranean, -- Tunis has over four millions, Algeria three millions, Nice one million, Syria several millions, while the number in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Morocco, and Turkey is unknown.

The Union of Proprietors of Nice is a limited society, with a capital of about a hundred thousand dollars, which, by its statistics, binds itself to deal only in pure olive oil. It has about twenty-six plantations and presses in different parts of the district. The company makes a fine display of olive oil.

It may be stated, in conclusion, that the olive crop is a very variable and uncertain one; one that yields a profit does not perhaps occur for six or eight years.

HEALTH MATTERS.

Report of the Paris Commission on Consumption. THE permanent commission, appointed last year by the Congress for the Study of Tuberculosis, has just presented its report, through M. Villemin, chairman. This report embodies certain instructions to the public, which the commission deems of sufficient importance for general adoption. The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal summarizes this report, a comparison of which with that issued in New York, and previously referred to, is of interest.

Tuberculosis is, of all diseases, that which has the most victims, especially in the cities. More than one-fourth of the mortality of Paris during the year 1884 was from tuberculosis in some of its forms. Tuberculosis is a parasitic, virulent, contagious, transmissible disease, caused by Koch's bacillus. The microbe penetrates the organism by food, by air of respiration, and through the skin and mucous membranes by abrasions, excoriations, and divers ulcerations. Certain diseases, as measles, chronic bronchitis, pneumonia; certain constitutional states due to diabetes, alcoholism, syphilis, predispose to tuberculosis.

The cause of tuberculosis being known, there is but little difficulty in preventing its dissemination and propagation, if proper prophylactic means are taken. The parasite of tuberculosis may infect the milk, muscles, and blood of animals which serve for the food of man. Raw meat, underdone meat, blood, may contain the living germ of tuberculosis, and should be interdicted. For the same reasons, milk should be boiled before being ingested. By

reason of the dangers which attend the use of raw milk, the protection of young children, who are so susceptible to tuberculosis, should earnestly engage the attention of mothers and nurses.

By reason of the dangers which attend the use of butchers' meat, which may come from animals that were tuberculous, though having every appearance of health, the public should insist that the inspection of all meats, as required by the law, should be rigorously enforced. The only sure way of avoiding the dangers arising from meat derived from tuberculous animals, is to subject such meat to a thorough cooking, which shall include the entire substance in depth, as well as the surface. Meats completely roasted, boiled, or broiled are alone safe.

As the germ of tuberculosis may be transmitted from the tuberculous to the healthy man, by sputa, pus, dried mucosities, clothing, or other objects impregnated with fine tuberculous particles, it is necessary for the public, in order to be protected against the contagion:

(1) To know that, the sputa of phthisical patients being the most formidable agents of the transmission of tuberculosis, there is danger in allowing these expectorated matters to be deposited on the ground, on carpets, on drapery, screens, towels, handkerchiefs, clothing, and bed linen.

(2) To be pursuaded that the use of spittoons is obligatory on all phthisical patients everywhere. Spittoons should always be emptied into the fire and cleansed with boiling water. They should never be emptied on dung heaps, on garden soil (where they may tubercularize fowl), nor into privies.

(3) To refrain from sleeping in the bed of a tuberculous patient; to remain as little as possible in a room occupied by such person. This caution is especially applicable to young children.

(4) To sequestrate from all places occupied by phthisical patients, individuals considered as predisposed to tuberculosis, children born of tuberculous parents, or that have lately had measles, smallpox, pneumonia, etc., and all diabetic patients.

(5) To avoid using objects which a phthisical patient may have contaminated-garments, bed-clothing, toilet-implements, playthings, etc., till after previous disinfection, in the hot-air stove, by boiling water, sulphur fumigations, etc.

(6) To insist that the rooms of hotels, furnished houses, cottages occupied by phthisical patients at watering-places or winter stations, shall be equipped and tapestried in such a way that disinfection may be easily and completely effected after the departure of each patient. It would be better that these apartments should have no hangings or tapestry, and that they should be whitewashed. The floors should be bare, either oiled or painted. Hotels and furnished cottages in which such hygienic precautions and measures of disinfection are taken should alone be patronized by the public. At the meeting of the Academy of Medicine, Aug. 6, 1889, this report was discussed. Dujardin-Beaumetz was in favor of suppressing entirely the sections pertaining to raw meat and raw milk. There is nothing that proves the possibility, in man at least, of the transmission of tuberculosis by butchers' meat. As for milk, if it be true that it may on certain occasions contain bacilli, we must not forget that in order that milk may be thus contaminated the cow must not only be tuberculous, but must also have tuberculous mammitis.

Germain Sée did not believe in the communication of tuberculosis by the air of respiration. The bacillus cannot live in the air. It never develops and multiplies outside of the organism of man or the animal. In the open air it dies rapidly, as, in order to live, it needs a temperature of 30° C. The matter of atmospheric contagion is a bugaboo, which has already wrought trouble in families by causing the poor consumptive to be treated like a leper, — shunned and abandoned by his nearest relatives. It has been demonstrated experimentally that air taken three or four yards from the bed of a consumptive patient does not contain a single bacillus ; but if the air exhaled by a phthisical person is inoffensive, the sputa are not so, and too much pains cannot be taken to disinfect and destroy all expectorated matters.

With regard to the prohibition of meat and blood, it is a fact, said Professor Sée, that the blood is never virulent, and animal flesh, according to recent experiments (Nocard, of Alfort), far from containing bacilli, destroys them by the muscular juice which the

flesh contains. Hence, there is no necessity, in order to destroy the bacillus, to boil meat to a pap, to forbid roast meat, or underdone meat, or even raw meat. If we were to hearken to the commission, he thought we should be deprived of some of our best alimentary products, and nothing would be served on our tables that was not spoiled to the taste by over-cooking, as well as rendered more indigestible thereby.

With regard to the care that should be taken of those that were hereditarily predisposed to tuberculosis, he thought that excessive precaution was an evil; the best prophylactic is gymnastic exercises and hydrotherapy.

Professor Sée did not think persons especially liable to tuberculosis, who had been subject to colds, bronchitis, or who had had pneumonia, measles, whooping-cough, or small pox. On the contrary, he had found such persons remarkably exempt from tubercular diseases.

Tuberculous Meat.

Simultaneously with the report of the permanent commission of the French congress on tuberculosis, says the journal before quoted, we have before us a voluminous report from Glasgow, giving the proceedings at trial, under petitions of the Glasgow local authority, against two butchers who exposed for sale, for human food, the carcasses of two tuberculous animals. Among those giving testimony at the trial we find the well-known names of Dr. J. B. Russell, medical officer of health for Glasgow since 1872; Joseph Coats, pathologist to the Royal Infirmary of Glasgow, and Professor J. McCall, Principal of the Glasgow Veterinary College. In addition, there were the medical officers for Edinburgh and Greenock, and for Leeds, Birmingham, and Hull; three other veterinary pathologists besides McCall; and Mr. Mayland, as a bacteriologist and pathologist in addition to Dr. Coats. There were, in all, fifteen witnesses for the prosecution and nineteen for the defence. The conclusions of the French congress, as well as of the Brussels veterinary congress of 1883, and of a departmental committee of the privy council, were frequently referred to in the course of the testimony.

The cases were test cases, brought to enable the medical officers of Glasgow to apply the same stringent standards as were already enforced in Edinburgh and Greenock.

The evidence showed that, in regard to one of the animals, "there were tubercles in the substance of the lungs themselves, in both the costal and pulmonary pleura, in the pleura connected with the diaphragm, and further in the cavity of the body inclosing the respiratory organs;" there was tubercular deposit in the lymphatics, and tubercular bacilli were found in the inguinal gland. In regard to the other, it was shown that there was active tuberculosis in the lungs and pleura, and bacilli were found in the prepectoral gland. The question before the court was, whether the meat of these animals after the carcasses had been "stripped" was "unfit for the food of man."

The prosecution laid down five propositions, and asked for conviction upon their acceptance by the court. (1) The disease called tuberculosis, whatever form it may assume, whether phthisis, or scrofula, or struma, is a widespread disease amongst animals and man, and to it may be attributed a large percentage of the deaths in the community, and a very large proportion of the ill health. (2) That the disease known as tuberculosis now, is identical in man and in the lower animals. (3) The disease is communicable from the lower animals to man, by, amongst other means, inhalation and ingestion. (4) The disease tuberculosis is due to the active presence of a specific organism known as the bacillus tuberculosis. (5) Given the signs of tuberculosis upon certain specific organs of an animal, you may and ought reasonably to infer that the virus of the disease is in other portions of the carcass of the animal, where there may be no outward and visible signs to indicate its presence.

The defence held that no one has ever yet heard of a case of tuberculosis contracted from the ingestion of tuberculous meat; but in the case of milk, the disease has been traced, and if in the latter, why not in the former; that cooking was a sufficient safeguard, and if people preferred to eat partially cooked meat, they should be allowed to take whatever infinitesimal risks might exist; that, even