Page:Architectural Review and American Builders' Journal, Volume 1, 1869.djvu/183

 1868.] Miscellaneous. 155 Modern French Dolls. — George Augustus Sala says: "If you bu}' a doll in Paris now-a-daj^s you must not only put her dans ses meubles, but fur- nish for her a luxurious boudoir in the Pompadour or the Empire style. She must have a carriage. She must have a saddle-horse. She must have a 'ghroom' and a 'jockei.' She must have a grand piano from Erard or Pleyel. Her gloves must come from Madame Causse, her bonnet from Jenny Navarre, her watch from Leroy, her diamonds from Mellerio. She must have seventy-two petticoats, like the Russian Countess who lives at the Hotel Bristol. She must bathe in milk of almonds, or sang de menthe. And I am very much afraid that, if }'Ou are suddenly called away, and return in about a fortnight, unexpectedly, you will find your doll drinking champagne with your 'ghroom.' Don't think I am talking about real men and women. I am discoursing simply about the dolls who, in the French Bimbeloterie Court at the Exhibition, are .flirting, lounging, waltzing, jingling on the piano-forte, survej'ing themselves in mirrors, and ogling each other through consoles. The old child-doll type seems entirely lost. The French toymen have taken to the manufacture of adult dolls. They look like dolls that have vices — dolls that don't care much about the Seventh Commandment — dolls who, to feed their insatiable appetite, would eat you out of house and home, mortgage your lands, beggar your children, and then present you with a toy revolver to blow out your brains withal. They are so terribly sjmimetrical, so awfully life-like ; they carry their long trains and nurse their poodles, and read their billets doux, and try on their gloves, and gamble at lans- quenet with such dreadful perfection, that you would not be at all surprised at last to find a male doll cheating at cards, or a female doll running a long milliner's bill and forgetting to pay it. And this is the chief count of my indict- ment against the modern French dolls in the Exhibition. They have nothing to do with the happy, innocent, ignorant time of childhood. They look like dolls who know the time of day." In this matter the present American fashion of giving dolls the appearance of children, varying from babyhood to about five years of age, is natural and therefore proper. All little children prefer and instinctively choose them for their own use. This modern French idea is a reversal of the order of nature, as the infants, who can get no other stjde, are compelled to nurse the adults. Eds. Respiration of Animals. — M. Reiset, in a memoir to the French Academy of Sciences, gives an account of his experi- ments on the exhalations of calves, sheep, etc. The apparatus used by him was large enough to enclose the whole animal. Under normal conditions he found, during the respiration of calves and sheep, that carburetted hy- drogen was given off in considerable quantity ; but this was not the case when calves were fed upon milk. M. Reiset regards carburetted hydrogen as the result of incomplete combustion, and draws the general conclusion that the respiratory products depend much more upon the nature of the food than upon the species of the animal. Internal Heat op the Earth. — An artesian boring near Geneva, Switzer- land, to the depth of 742 feet, and at an elevation of 1,600 feet above the level of the sea, showed an increase in heat at the rate of one degree Fahrenheit for every 55 feet, while another at Men- dorff, in Luxemburg, which penetrated to the depth of 2,394 feet gave an in- crease of one degree Fahrenheit for every 51 feet.