Chapter XVII: Conclusion (2)

A return published in the governmental _Gazette_ shows that the number of persons killed by wild animals and snakes in 1883 was 22,905, as against 22,125 in the previous year. Of these, 20,067 deaths were due to snake-bites, 985 to tigers, and 504 to other carnivora. The loss of cattle from the same cause amounted to 47,478 animals, being an increase of 771 on the figures for the previous year. It is somewhat remarkable that while the great majority of human deaths is set down to snakes, only 1644 cattle are said to have perished from that cause. Nearly three-fourths of the deaths occurred in Bengal and the North-west Provinces. The number of dangerous animals killed during the year was 19,890, and more than fifteen thousand pounds was paid in rewards. In regard to the fearful mortality from snake-bites, it might be suggested that the government should increase the rewards paid for bringing in the dead bodies of these reptiles, or otherwise take more active measures for their destruction.

ENSILAGE.

Mr Edward S. Blunt, Blaby Hill, Leicester, writing to the newspapers on the subject of Ensilage, says that he has recently opened two of his silos, and both have proved very satisfactory. He adds:

‘Two years since I tried pits sunk in the ground without any building; last year I tried bricks cemented on the inside; this year I have tried wood, and am so pleased with the result that I certainly shall stick to it for the future. Notwithstanding its perishable nature, I believe it will compare most favourably as regards expense with anything else. I have used one-inch red deal boards, grooved and tongued, and these I find quite sufficient to resist what little lateral pressure there is. I have built my silos, four in number, partly in the ground and partly out. This may be considered merely as a matter of convenience, as I find the ensilage just as good in one part as in the other. I construct them in such a manner that they are easily put up and taken down again; thus at a very trifling cost they can be removed from one place to another. My first silo, a round one, only six feet in diameter, was filled in May with rough grass cut from the hedge-sides and from under some trees; neither cattle nor horses would eat this before it went into the silo, but both will eat it readily enough now that it is made into ensilage. My second silo, only eight feet in diameter, was first filled with pea-straw after the main crop had been gathered for market, and then refilled with the second cutting of clover; this is all very good quite up to the boards at the sides.

‘I am weighting my silos this year with a press I have invented and patented. I obtain my weight by means of levers: two levers, each twenty feet long, with four hundredweight at the end, will give eight tons weight upon the silo, and being thoroughly continuous in its action, I am able to dispense with the labour and cost of moving so large a quantity of dead-weight.’ There is to be a model of the silo and press exhibited at the Smithfield Show, Islington.

Mr Blunt further explains his method of filling the silo. He says: ‘In nearly every instance I placed the grass or clover in the silo the day after it was cut, and as it was put in, it was well trampled. In three or four days the silage sank from twelve feet to eight, and as it sank I put in more. In about ten days from the time when the silo was first filled I put on the weight. The silage at this time had attained a temperature of from one hundred and forty to one hundred and fifty degrees. After the weight was applied, the temperature never rose any higher; but, at the end of a fortnight, had fallen to one hundred and thirty degrees, and then continued to fall. When the silage had sunk sufficiently low in the silo, I took off the weights and boards and filled up to the top again; this I repeated three or four times.’

A HANDY GAS COOKING-STOVE.

To his already extensive list of gas cooking apparatus, Mr Fletcher, Warrington, has just added what he calls his ‘Large Cottage Cooker,’ which is simply a Gas cooking-stove in the cheapest and simplest form to be effective. For two pounds may be had a good roasting, and a fairly good pastry and bread oven, with a reversible boiler and grillers on the top. The body of the stove is made of galvanised iron, and the shelves are wrought iron. The height of the whole is thirty inches; space inside the oven twelve by twelve by sixteen inches.

When we consider their convenience to housekeepers and the time which they save, we do not wonder that the use of such stoves is rapidly extending. The equable nature of the heat insures good cookery; a pot or kettle may be boiled on the burner in a few minutes, and the housewife may be kept quite easy as to the state of her kitchen fire for cooking purposes. In fact, in summer the kitchen fire may be dispensed with altogether. There is no smoke or ashes; pans and kettles are easier kept clean, and all this is done at but a trifling expense for gas—say one penny per hour for a medium stove. A potato steamer will be found a useful adjunct to the stove. By its aid, the potatoes, after being boiled, are finished off with steam in the upper part of the same vessel; and will be found drier and mealier than if cooked in an ordinary pot in the old way.

RAILWAY PASSENGERS.

A curious return has just been issued, showing the number of railway passengers who have travelled on all the railways in the United Kingdom during the half-year ending 30th June last, by which it will be seen that railway shareholders continue to be mainly indebted for their dividends to third-class traffic. During the above period the number of passengers who travelled were as follows, omitting fractions: First class, sixteen million one hundred thousand; second class, twenty-five million eight hundred thousand; third class, two hundred and forty-one million seven hundred thousand—the number of third-class passengers being more than five hundred per cent. in excess of first and second class combined; and the relative amount of receipts is in equal proportion. This remarkable difference applies to all the lines in common, the third-class passengers being in excess all throughout the kingdom. But the North London line is especially striking in regard to receipts, inasmuch as the receipts from the third-class passengers amounted to about eight hundred per cent. more than from the first and second combined! Within the same period, the Metropolitan and District Railways, and the North London Railway, carried over fifty million passengers; to which enormous return must be added, as showing the prodigious traffic within the area of the metropolis, that of the Great Eastern; London, Chatham, and Dover; London and Brighton; South-western; and South-eastern—a large portion of whose traffic is purely metropolitan.

THE NEW ALBO-CARBON LIGHT.

An experiment has been tried on a grand scale with this new and beautiful light, which as an illuminating medium will most certainly take a front place, whether the question is gas or electricity. The immense church belonging to the Oratory of St Philip Neri at Brompton has lately been illuminated by the employment of eight twelve-light, two six-light, and two four-light clusters constructed on this principle; and these have been found so effective, that the interior of this vast and very lofty building is filled with a brilliant, yet soft and subdued, light, which covers the area of the great church. The authorities of the Oratory have expressed their satisfaction at the favourable results of the experiment; and the capability of the Albo-carbon Light has been demonstrated as to bringing out clearly the architectural features of our churches, which, as a general rule, are not celebrated for the excellence of their various systems of gas-lighting. Therefore, any clear and brilliant light which will do this, and at the same time not add too much to the heat of the interior, should be hailed as an inestimable boon, and be one of the chief recommendations of this new and beautiful system.

THE LAST OF OLD SION COLLEGE.

One by one the old City landmarks are disappearing before the ruthless hand of the modern speculative builder. Many of the City churches have already been taken down and their sites covered with shops or warehouses; Charter House and St Paul’s School are both going; and Sion College is gone—to be opened in a new building on the Thames Embankment, into which the ancient stone front is to be transferred from London Wall. The College, of which all the City vicars and rectors are Fellows, was originally incorporated in 1630, but burnt down in the great fire of London, to be rebuilt shortly afterwards. The site is let for building, but the ancient wooden fittings of the Hall and Library have been sold. The fine library of books will be removed to the new building when complete.

IRISH FEMALE EMIGRATION.

Mr Vere Foster, of Belfast, has issued another appeal on behalf of his Irish Female Emigration Fund, which has already been the means of granting assisted passages to twenty thousand two hundred and fifty girls from the west of Ireland to the United States and colonies, at an expenditure of about thirty thousand pounds. This scheme has the support—as it should have—of the clergy of all denominations, and there is little doubt that if carefully gone about, it will prove a benefit both to Ireland and the colonies. Mr Foster, who has exhausted what he can spare of his own means and the funds placed at his disposal, has also given assistance by loan to four hundred girls, who have promised to repay him. We trust they may do so, as the good fortune of four hundred more hangs on this contingency.

The purpose of the fund is the relief of present poverty in the densely peopled districts of the west of Ireland, by assisting the emigration of young women of good character of the farm and domestic-servant class. To such it gives a chance of well-doing impossible at home, where, if they marry and rear families, there is but a prospect of poverty for themselves and all concerned. The scheme is a resumption of that adopted with gratifying results immediately after the great famine of 1846-7.

The plan which Mr Foster has had in operation for helping these young women for the past five years is a very simple one. Blank forms of application are issued to inquirers, when, if returned and approved of, vouchers to a certain value are issued in their favour. These vouchers are available within three months of issue for embarkation from Liverpool or from any port in Ireland where the necessary arrangements have been made. The promoter of this scheme does not approve of shipping young girls in large companies, but leaves them the utmost freedom in their choice of ship and port and time of embarkation. This enables them to take a passage when perhaps they can have the company of friends and neighbours. The young women thus assisted were between eighteen and thirty years of age; and it is satisfactory to know that most of them are going on well, and that many of them have sent home money to their friends more than once.

One of the most satisfactory forms of good doing is to help people to help themselves. This is the object of the Irish Female Emigration Fund.

EXPLORATION IN THE CHILIAN ARGENTINE ANDES.

It would appear, from the proceedings of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, that Dr Güssfeldt’s explorations in the central Chilian Argentine Andes extended from November 1882 to March 1883, in the wild and lofty mountain region containing Aconcagua, the most elevated known point of the American continent, which lies between thirty-two and thirty-five degrees south latitude, and is bounded on the east by the Argentine Pampas, and on the west by the Pacific. Much of this journey being through new country, Dr Güssfeldt daily observed the great orographical and landscape features, the glacial conditions above the snow, the character of the vegetation, and the phenomena of rock-weathering. He also undertook the special duty of fixing positions astronomically and taking altitudes; for which purpose he was provided with nineteen instruments. The central Chilian Argentine Andes are sketched by the traveller as two parallel chains, having on the Pacific an outlying coast-range. The western chain is the true water-parting of the Atlantic and Pacific; and the eastern is in many places broken through by the waters rising in the great trough between the two chains, which has no well-defined valley formation, indications of a longitudinal depression being only found at intervals, constantly interrupted by cross ridges. This trough or basin, one hundred and eighty-five miles in length, is very difficult of exploration, and only three months of the year are available for the purpose. The doctor crossed the divide at four points, and obtained altitudes from nine thousand four hundred and ninety-four feet to twenty-two thousand eight hundred and sixty-seven feet, which was reached near the great volcano Aconcagua, not far from the commencement of Valle Hermoso. A most interesting question of the effect of rarefied air at great elevations upon the human frame is dwelt upon by the doctor. He states that he and his assistant attained twenty-one thousand and thirty feet on Aconcagua, and were able to work their scientific instruments at that height, though not in good condition, through anxiety and want of sleep. Their lungs were physically exhausted by the effort of speaking; but there was no flow of blood from nose or ears. He says that the so-called _puna_ can be resisted by mental effort and confidence, the only effect upon a properly trained individual being increased lung-action, and that any one who could work as he did at twenty-one thousand and thirty feet, could reach the top of Aconcagua, where the proportion of oxygen is only 6.2-3 per cent. less than at the former elevation.

NATIVE TREATMENT OF DISEASES IN INDIA.

A correspondent thus writes: Regarding the native treatment of diseases, one of the most curious things I ever witnessed was a half-clad native shouting through the streets of a country town: ‘Does any one want back his sight?—one rupee only!’ as if he were hawking fruits or sweetmeats; and, to my astonishment, a patient soon presented himself to be operated on for cataract. There and then standing in the bazaar, the itinerant oculist took out his penknife and performed the operation in a few minutes, bound up the man’s eyes, and telling him to keep in the dark for a fortnight, received his fee of one rupee, and shouted his war-cry for more patients. The operation was almost unvaryingly successful; one instance among my servants being a woman of eighty, who had charge of my fowl-house, and had for many a day been sightless, except to distinguish light from darkness, and who in this way was successfully operated upon. Besides this operator are bone-setters, and medical rubbers male and female, especially represented by the hereditary low-caste _accoucheuse_ of each village, whose skill in shampooing is such an aid in her lowly calling—as the natives regard it—as to supplant much of the useless medicine and enforced rest of more civilised countries, and save endless mischief and suffering to her sex. What skill they have is of course almost purely traditional. None of the science of the world or British usage has yet altered in the slightest degree either the customs of the native or his horror at the idea of male physicians for women—especially in certain ailments—and their wonder at our obtuseness and disregard of propriety on so delicate a point. To supply a vacancy so long unfilled, lady-doctors have now appeared on the scene, who, it is hoped by reaching the zenanas, may reach the real source through which a higher enlightenment in India is possible. An immense field is open to them along with every encouragement; and were but some of the many young ladies at home who are straining health for a future pittance in one or other of the spheres of teaching, to turn their attention in this direction, they would find an opening of wider and greater utility before them, and a prospect of large and rapid emolument.

LONG AGO.

We wandered in a garden fair,
When summer sun was shining,
And laden was the balmy air
With scent of roses rich and rare
Around us intertwining.
There trilled the thrush his glorious song;
There thrilled the echoes all night long
The warbling nightingale.
You taught me all each songster said,
And in each floweret’s heart you read
Some hidden tale;
You said their message I should know:
’Twas simple as an easy rhyme—
But that was once upon a time
Long ago!

We parted in a woodland glade
When autumn winds were sighing,
In gold and russet bright arrayed
A glowing canopy displayed
The summer leaves a-dying;
And but the wind, no other sound
Than a leaf that fluttered to the ground,
And a far-off robin singing,
We heard. You guessed my thoughts, and said:
‘In spring, the swallows who have fled
Will back be winging;
The trees a brighter emerald show,
The rose a richer crimson glow,
Than any gleamed in this year’s prime’—
All this was once upon a time
Long ago!

‘What though a while we part,’ you cried;
‘What though the wind is sighing;
The spring will autumn’s frost deride,
The summer laugh at winter-tide,
Long power to grief denying.
We part, but never say farewell;
Nor let the dead leaves to us tell
A tale of changeless sorrow;
Fair Spring comes sparkling down the dell,
And in that morrow,
If still upon this world below,
We’ll meet ’neath yonder spreading lime’—
You said so once upon a time
Long ago!

Perchance you have forgot all this;
’Twas long ago;
Perchance you sneer at words like bliss
And lovers’ woe.
Or else you are amused—as I—
To think we once swore we should die,
If fate us parted;
To think we vowed so soon to meet,
And said in spring-time we would greet,
Or else be broken-hearted.
Strange—is it not?—to have fancied so.
You smile, no doubt, such things to know;
Or do you count it as a crime
To think of once upon a time
Long ago?

LINDA GARDINER.

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_Volume I. of the Fifth Series of CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL is now completed, price Nine Shillings._

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_A Title-page and Index, price One Penny, have been prepared, and may be ordered through any bookseller._

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_An elegant cloth case for binding the whole of the numbers for 1884 is also ready._

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_Back numbers to complete sets may at all times be had._

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In our next Part will be given the opening chapters of an original Novel, entitled:

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

BY MRS OLIPHANT.

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END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

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