Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/730

712 said that it was her mistress; but it was not. Her vision was thus shown to be keen, but her hearing dull. She was wakened with considerable difficulty, and, seeing the cotton-box disturbed, asked why it had been meddled with. Several questions were asked her during the following day, to test her recollection; but she could not recall her sleep-walking, or anything that had taken place during the night. A miner near Redruth arose one night, walked to the engine shaft of the mine, and safely descended to the depth of twenty fathoms, where he was found soon afterward sound asleep. He could not be wakened by calling to him, and had to be shaken. When awake, he could not account for the situation in which he found himself. Morrison, in his "Medicine no Mystery," tells of a clergyman who used to get up in the night, light his candle, write sermons, correct them with interlineations, and go to bed again, while he was all the time fast asleep. A similar story is told of an English dissenting preacher, who had been perplexed during the week about the treatment of the subject of his Sunday's sermon, and mentioned his perplexity to his wife on Saturday night. During the night he got up and preached a good sermon on the subject in the hearing of his wife. In the morning his wife suggested a method of treating the subject, based upon his sleep-work of the night before, with which he was much pleased; and he preached the sermon with no knowledge of its real origin. The "Lancet" has a story of a butcher's boy who went to the stable in his sleep to saddle his horse and go his rounds. Not finding the saddle in its usual place, he went to the house and asked for it, and, failing to get it, he started off without it. He was taken from the horse and carried into the house. A doctor came, and while he was present the boy, considering himself stopped at the turnpike-gate, offered sixpence for the toll, and this being given back to him he refused it, and demanded his change. A part of the change was given him, and he demanded the proper amount. When awake afterward, he had no recollection of what had passed. To prevent sleep-walking it is necessary to remove whatever is the occasion of it, if it arises from any definable disorder. Often, however, it can not be referred to any complaint; then the best that can be done will be to take precautions against the somnambulist running into any danger.

Parasites in Food and Drink.—M. Milne-Edwards has recently expressed some interesting views suggested by the discussions concerning trichina, respecting the hygienic questions which are connected* with the establishment of colonies of intestinal worms, or microbes, within human bodies. He believes that certain religious precepts and certain established usages, among people whose civilization is very ancient, are based upon acquaintance with the inconveniences that may result from the alimentary use of particular meats or waters. He thus deduces, from the aptitude of the hog to transmit his parasites to man, the reason for the prohibition of pork among the Israelites and Mohammedans, and for the Biblical distinction between pure and impure animals. He also attributes to the very ancient recognition of analogous facts the general use of hot drinks, like tea in China and other countries of the extreme East, where the natural waters are often charged with noxious animalcules or polluted by unclean animals. As bearing on this point, he cites the ravages caused in Cochin-China by a microscopic eel, which produces a persistent endemic diarrhœa. These animals have a faculty of multiplication in the human intestine, that is illustrated by the fact that a single patient is said to have evacuated more than a hundred thousand of them within twenty-four hours! The simplest prudence should suggest the expediency of boiling the drinking-water wherever they abound.

The Great Vienna Telescope.—The equatorial telescope which has just been constructed by Mr. Grubb, of Dublin, for the observatory at Vienna, Austria, is the largest refracting telescope that has yet been made. It has an aperture of twenty-seven inches, or one inch more than that of the instrument in the Naval Observatory at Washington, and is thirty-three feet six inches long, with a tube of steel three and a half feet in diameter in the middle, and tapering to each end. The moving parts, œœœ