Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/293

Rh the amount of beer produced in those countries has about tripled within the last forty years. The production of Great Britain increased from 7,670,100 barrels in 1830 to 25,336,811 barrels in 1870. It consists chiefly of the ancient amber-colored ale and the modern dark-brown porter. The Belgian beers are the mars, a thin beer; the lambic, a strong and light-colored drink; and the faro, which the retailer himself prepares by mixing the other two kinds. The production of France has more than doubled since 1842. A strong lager-beer and a weaker small-beer are most in favor, and the foreign beers are in common use. The principal consumption is in the north, the people of southern France inclining more to wines. The same is the case in Italy, where a light, highly-fermented beer is produced, and a considerable quantity is imported from Austria; but no beer is used south of Naples. The manufacture and consumption of beer are increasing very rapidly in Russia, and a great deal is imported into that country from Austria and England. In Sweden and Norway nearly every man brews his own beer at home. No lager-beer was made in the United States forty years ago. In 1876 the President of the Brewers' and Maltsters' Association asserted that it was the great national drink which was to drive out whisky, and that there were 2,783 breweries, employing 35,400 hands, and producing 330,600,000 gallons. In all Europe and America 63,631 breweries produce yearly more than 3,480,000,000 gallons of beer.

Dampness and Diphtheria.—The opinion that a close connection exists between diphtheria and dampness of site is confirmed in some English reports recorded by Dr. Woodforde. In an outbreak of diphtheria at Purley in 1878, the cottage in which the earliest cases occurred was much shut in by trees, and, although it was very clean, it was damp and insufficiently ventilated, especially in the sleeping-rooms, it was exposed to the emanations of the cess-pit, and the water was not pure. At Ramsbury, where diphtheria was unusually fatal in 1877 and 1878, the ordinary sanitary defects were not much worse than in other villages, but the sites of many of the cottages were almost level with the river, and damp, with the subsoil water very near the surface. At Clifton-Hampden, where diphtheria had occurred for several years in succession, the ordinary defects of porous cess-pits and polluted water were noted, though not to so great an extent as at other places where there had been no diphtheria, but the village also appeared damp, and a stagnation of air was evidently occasioned by the number of trees adjoining the cottages. Sanitary improvements were instituted, the trees were thinned out, and a gale took away some that had been left, and the disease has not appeared in the place since.

Features of the Central Arabian Desert.—Mr. W. S. Blunt read a paper, last December, before the Royal Geographical Society, on a journey he had undertaken during the preceding winter from Damascus to the Jebel-Shammar, in the region of Nejo in Central Arabia, in which he passed through a country that no European had visited since the journeys of Mr. Palgrave and Colonel Pelley in 1863 and 1864. On his way he traversed the red, sandy desert of the Nefud. Here he observed a strange phenomenon, which he describes as the only feature of the tract. The whole surface of the plain is pitted with deep horseshoe hollows, called by the Arabs fulj, which are shown to be permanent in site and conformation by the shrubs and bushes which line their sides, and by the tracks which cross and recross each other in such of them as are frequented by sheep. They are absolutely uniform in shape, differing only in size, and are all set with great regularity toward the same point of the compass. In form they exactly reproduce the print of an unshod horse's hoof, the toe pointing westward and being marked by a steep declivity, while the bottom of the hollow slopes gradually upward to the heel, until it reaches the general level of the plain. The frog of the hoof is roughly represented by a number of shallow watercourses converging to the lowest point, the toe. Solid ground sometimes occurs at the bottom of the deepest of the pits. They vary in depth from twenty to two hundred and twenty feet, and in width from fifty yards to half a mile; the appearance of depth is often enhanced by a