Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/297

Rh may be effected by microbic organisms, or by the digestive ferments of the healthy body; and they are various according to the particular organism or ferment that sets them up, and according to the temperature at which they occur, and the length of time that they continue. Some of the products of decomposition are poisonous in various degrees of activity, while others are innocuous. When kept separate, the poisonous products remain unchanged for a long time, but when mixed together they are apt to undergo further decomposition and become inert. Besides temperature, the degree of moisture in the subject of decomposition or in the atmosphere, and electrical conditions—as when milk is "soured by thunder"—exercise modifying influences, which have not yet been definitely ascertained. The difference between the products of decomposition in hot and cold weather is illustrated by the alkaloids obtained from decomposing maize in summer and winter. The winter alkaloid has a narcotic and paralyzing action; but in summer another alkaloid is also yielded, which has a tetanizing action something like strychnine. On account of the greater rapidity of the putrefactive process, albuminous substances become poisonous much sooner in summer than in winter, and again lose their poisonous properties more quickly by further decomposition. As putrefaction may go on to a certain extent after the introduction of food into the intestinal canal, poisons may be formed from the part eaten, and produce dangerous symptoms, while no poison can be found in the remaining parts of the same food.

The Hypothetical Planet Neith.—Seven times since the invention of the telescope a lesser body has been observed near Venus in such a situation as to suggest that it might be a satellite of that planet. The observations can hardly have been illusive, though they were only fleeting ones, for they were made by skilled astronomers. The last one was in 1764. M. J. C. Houzeau, of the Brussels Observatory, has examined the data of them in an endeavor to determine the nature of the body. They do not agree with the supposition that it is a satellite, or that it is an intra-Mercurial planet. They are consistent, however, with the supposition that it moves in an orbit about equal to or a little larger than that of Venus, with which it comes in conjunction at intervals which are multiples of a little less than three years; for the intervals between the observations all represented such multiples. Supposing the observations to be correct and to indicate the real existence of such a body, M. Houzeau proposes for it the name of Neith. The search for this planet would furnish good occupation for amateur astronomers.

Causes of Financial Stringency.—The "Edinburgh Review" ascribes the present general monetary scarcity to the vast expansion of trade since the middle of the century, which was in great part an effect as well as an accompaniment of the new supply of gold that came in at that time; the decline which has taken place in the yield of the gold-mines; and the large augmentation in the demand for gold which has been occasioned by the extensive demonetization of silver. The influence which the large addition to the world's stock of specie since 1848 has exerted upon the value of money, though important, has been by no means so great as was expected. "The doctrine that changes in the amount of the circulating medium are really of no consequence, inasmuch as such an increase is pari passu attended by a proportionate change in the value of money, so that the effective power of the currency remains unaltered, is now all but extinct, and can survive only in minds which are impervious to the remarkable lessons of the last thirty years," which have "demonstrated afresh the correctness of the old and common-sense view of the matter—namely, that if there is an increase of business operations, or other effective requirements for money, a proportionate addition to the currency will only serve to keep the value of money at its previous level; and, if trade or these monetary requirements increase faster than the amount of currency, prices will fall (or the value of money will rise), however large the annual additions to the currency may be. More remarkably, and on a far grander scale, the same truth or principle was illustrated in the history of the three centuries which followed the discovery of