Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/883

Rh and at least an equal number of banks, and rocks, and shoals, and reefs, all of the same coral formation. There is often a difficulty in distinguishing one atoll from another. A ring of coral surrounds a lagoon, the entrance to which is on the northwest side. Where the coral is a foot or two above the tide, a thick, green robe of clematis covers the white rock, and tall palms flourish overhead. Outside, the sea is in most cases at least two hundred fathoms deep, and inside it varies from three fathoms in some atolls to an almost unfathomable depth in others. Diego Garcia is situated in one of the hottest places in the world, where fierce sunshine alternates daily with heavy showers, and the temperature is between 80° and 90° all the year round. For scenery, there are the three million palms and the varying blue of the inland sea. The island furnishes, in the names of its several points, suggestions for a romance like that of "Paul and Virginia." "But all such tales fail, in leaving out the realities. There is nothing about fleas in any of them; nothing, or very little, about centipeds. The misery of life on a coral island can hardly be exaggerated. . . . It rains every day. The mosquitoes are unequaled for size and ferocity. The only food is an occasional fresh fish, with tinned meat and vegetables from England. The monotony of existence is only broken by the visit of an occasional ship, or by a gale, which unroofs the house. To the lonely inhabitants it is nothing that beautiful shells and branching coral are to be found on the beach; that strange, bright birds come across the ocean to build their nests in the cocoanut trees, or that the sea over the reef is an ethereal blue such as no one can imagine who has not seen it."

Restoration of Life.—Dr. Richardson has started the question whether life may not be restored after actual death, and relates some facts that point to the answer as being in the affirmative. By combining artificial circulation with artificial respiration, a dog was restored to life an hour and five minutes after having been killed by an overdose of chloroform, when the heart had become perfectly still and cold, and was passing into rigidity. Animals that have been killed by suffocation and partially dissected were brought to such a state of muscular irritability that the experiment was stopped for fear that they would return to conscious sentient life. Frogs poisoned by nitrate of amyl were restored after nine days of apparent death, in one case after signs of putrefactive change had commenced. The action of peroxide of hydrogen in reanimating the blood and restoring heat in a really dead body is quite startling. From these observations, Mr. W. Mattieu Williams thinks the conclusion is justified that "a drowned or suffocated man is not hopelessly dead so long as the bodily organs remain uninjured by violence or disease, and the blood remains sufficiently liquid to be set in motion artificially and supplied with a little oxygen to start the chemical movements of life."

Peat-Smoke as an Antiseptic.—Dr. Morgan, of Manchester, England, has remarked upon the healthy condition of the Highland crofters, who live in "bothies" the atmosphere of which is impregnated with peat-smoke, and are yet not troubled by disease, being particularly free from consumption and other lung infections. Their rooms are warmed by a peat-fire kept constantly burning in the middle of the floor; and, there being no means of escape for the smoke except a hole in the corner of the roof, the atmosphere is often pungent enough to make the eyes and nostrils smart. Yet the inhabitants are well and vigorous, and are liable to lung-diseases only when they go to live in houses with chimneys. The explanation of the phenomenon is not hard to find. Peat-smoke is heavily charged with antiseptics—with tar, creosote, tannin, and various volatile oils and resins—and the salutary influence of these more than makes up for the adulteration of the air.

Blondes and Brunettes.—Reports have been published of the "complexion-censuses" of the school-children of Germany, Belgium, Cisleithan Austria, and Switzerland. They show that more than one half of those enumerated are of mixed type. The distribution of the pure types—blondes and brunettes—is very different in different countries. The blondes predominate in Belgium, and still more in Germany, while