Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/511

Rh the Turkish patterns are too often disagreeably violent. But for the most part the carpets exhibited are of a very ordinary class indeed. The inlaid marqueterie and cabinet-work seems rude in design and coarse in execution, if we measure it against the Japanese standards. The carved olive-wood from Jerusalem recalls the pedlers' hawking goods made for sale at the doors of the Holy Sepulchre. Here and there are some exquisite arms among many that are inferior; but even the very best of them are excelled by the Persians. There are graceful shapes in the pottery, but they are not unfrequently marred by defects in the workmanship. There is a great collection of figures in the various national costumes, and the dresses strike one as being somewhat incongruous. On the whole, the only articles in which Turkey may be said to show to decided advantage are some extremely rich furniture stuffs, the choicest of which seem to have been already sold or removed, and the dyed morocco, which, in its vividness of color, shames any thing that can be shown by the West. It must be remembered, however, that the Turk gives almost as many months to the dyeing process as the European allows days. Taste apart, we may perhaps console ourselves for the inferiority which we must confess by repeating that facts like this deliberate process of dyeing furnish the key to much of the Oriental excellence. Time is of no value in the East, and patience and indefatigable perseverance have always been the willing handmaids of their arts and manufactures.—Saturday Review.



HE healthy human body has a temperature which varies but little either way from 99° Fahr. The heat required to maintain this temperature is derived from the oxidation within the body of the elements of the food. In other words, our bodies are furnaces; the food we take is the fuel which supplies the furnace, and the air we breathe is the draught that keeps the combustion going. The amount of heat thus evolved is, in health, always in excess of that needed to maintain the required temperature. There is, therefore, a constant overplus, a part of which is converted into mechanical work, while the remainder escapes as waste, partly along with the matters passing out of the body through the lungs, kidneys, and skin, and partly by the processes of conduction and radiation.

In estimating the morbid effects of external heat upon the living body, this waste requires to be taken into account, as its fluctuations, through the operation of surrounding conditions, have much to 