Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/532

508 in such persons, when the external conditions favor the withdrawal of the bodily heat. Alcohol produces a dilatation of the peripheral vessels, whereby more blood enters the skin and contributes to raise its temperature. If the body be well clothed and protected from external influences likely to abstract heat, the reduction of its warmth is inconsiderable; but if exposed to cold and placed under circumstances favorable to the abstraction of heat, there is a rapid loss of warmth from the blood circulating in the skin. The lowest temperature met with by Reincke—lower than in any recorded instance in which the individual survived—was the case of a man thirty-four years old, picked up in the street about midnight in February, when the temperature of the air was 30° Fahr. He was in a state of complete alcoholic coma, responding to no stimulant. At 8 his temperature, in recto, was only 75°, but at 12  it reached nearly 82°. At this period reaction began to show itself, and he could mutter a few words. From this point the heat of the body gradually increased and had reached the normal point the following morning.

Houses for the Industrious Poor.—The problem of cheap and commodious housing for the worthy poor continues to occupy the attention of philanthropists. We have already made mention in these columns of the bequest made by the late George Peabody for the erection of improved tenement-houses for the industrious poor of London. The trustees of the Peabody fund have recently completed twelve of these buildings, capable of accommodating 1,000 persons. In each building there are twenty-two tenements, consisting of one, two, or three rooms, with a separate entrance for each. The rooms are of good size, those of the three-roomed tenements being as follows: Kitchen, fifteen by twelve feet, a bedroom, sixteen by fourteen feet, second bedroom, sixteen by twelve feet, the rent being 5s. 9d. per week. The rent of a two-roomed tenement is 4s. 6d., and for one room 3s. There are several cupboards and a meat-safe inside, and a coal-bin in the passage outside. On each flat is a laundry with every convenience; this is used by the tenants in turn. There is also a bath. The rules to be observed by the tenants are but few in number, and intended merely to secure cleanliness and good order. No one is allowed to occupy these buildings who earns more than thirty shillings per week.

Present Condition of the Suez Canal.—M. de Lesseps, on his return to Paris, after a five months' visit to Suez, communicated to the Académie des Sciences the details of his observations upon the present state of the isthmian canal. Port Saïd he found to be in no danger at all of being filled up with sand. The dredging-machine suffices to keep the channel clear. Moreover, it does not fill up so rapidly as has been supposed, for the work done last year still remains, and two very large ships have recently navigated the canal without difficulty—one of them drawing over twenty feet of water. In winter the current of the canal sets in toward the Mediterranean, owing to the excess of water in the Bitter Lakes; in summer the current is in the opposite direction. Since the construction of the canal there are frequent showers on the Red Sea, whereas, previously, rain was unknown there—a very extraordinary thing indeed, if it can be shown to be a fact. This rainfall, says M. de Lesseps, has started vegetation even on the Asiatic shore of the Red Sea, where the infiltration is only of salt-water.

Prehistoric Relics at the Centennial Exposition.—Mr. Ernest Ingersoll, natural history editor of Forest and Stream, has commenced in that journal a series of letters on the Philadelphia Exhibition. In his first letter he describes the collections of American prehistoric relics exhibited by the Smithsonian Institution and by various States, especially Ohio. For the purposes of general illustration, the Smithsonian collection he pronounces the best; but the State collections possess greater interest for the archaeologist, as embracing many unique objects, only casts of some of which are to be found in the Smithsonian display. In the Ohio collection, the first object which attracts attention is an immense axe of greenstone, sixteen and a half inches long. The arrow-heads and spear-points—chiefly of