THE FOUNDLING HOSPITALS OF RUSSIA.

One of Bayard Taylor's letters from Europe to the New York Tribune, contains a note-worthy exposition of the extent and character of foundling hospitals of Russia, where they appear to be conducted on a vast scale.

The hospital at Moscow is an immense quadrangular building or collection of buildings, whose white front towers high over all the neighboring parts of the city, and quite eclipses in its imposing appearance every palace, church, military barrack, or other public building whatever. It can not be less than a thousand feet in length, and at a rough estimate is three times as large as the Capitol at Washington. The governorship of the institution is always conferred upon a nobleman of high rank and attainments. The annual expenditure of the hospital amounts to the enormous sum of five millions of dollars. A portion of the Government revenue is set aside for its use, in addition to which successive emperors and wealthy persons have richly endowed it. The entire property devoted to the foundling system of Russia is said to reach $500,000,000.

The institution at Moscow was founded by Catharine II. in 1762. Eight years afterwards she established a branch at St. Petersburgh, which has outgrown the parent concern, and is conducted on a still more magnificent scale. In the summer all the children are sent into the country. There is a village near Moscow whose inhabitants devote themselves entirely to the work of bringing up these foundlings. The institution last summer had under its care twelve hundred orphan children of officers, who enjoyed some privileges over the foundlings and poorer orphans. The boys are taught some practical science or profession, and not unfrequently receive places as officers in the army. The girls receive an excellent education, including music and the modern languages, and become teachers or governesses. Signs of decided talent in the children are noted and developed in the proper direction, by means of which many poor children have risen to wealth and distinction.

The apartments of the hospital are remarkably clean and neat. Each infant has a separate nurse, and in every hall there is an overseeress. The number of children confided to its care in 1857 was 14,000, and the entire number received since the foundation of the institution is 330,000, to which may be added 60,000 more born in the lying-in hospital during the same period. Including those taken at the St. Petersburgh branch, the number of children received by the Government yearly is 30,000. A very large portion of them are the offspring of poor married people in all parts of the country. The children may afterwards be reclaimed by the parents, on certain condi

tions. The child is taken without question, and therefore no reliable statistics of the public morality can be obtained from this source. The office is open night and day, and no living child is refused. The only question asked is whether it has been baptized; if it has not, the ceremony is immediately performed. Its name and number are then entered in the official book, a card containing them and the date of its arrival is attached to its neck, and another given to its mother, so that it may afterwards be identified and reclaimed. Very frequently the mother is allowed to become its nurse, in which case she receives pay like the other nurses. After six weeks or two months in the institution it is sent into the country, where it remains until old enough to receive instruction. The regular nurses are paid about $50 a year, in addition to their board and lodging. If the parents pay a sum equal to $25 on the deposition of the infant, they are entitled to have it brought up exclusively within the walls of the institution, where it is more carefully attended to than elsewhere. The payment of $200 procures for it, if a boy, the rank of an officer. The parents are allowed to see their children at stated times, but the greater number do not avail themselves of this privilege.

Connected with the Moscow institution is a beautiful church. The buildings are carefully and substantially constructed, with admirable arrangements for heating and ventilation.

The St. Petersburgh establishment covers twenty-eight acres of ground, and employs over five hundred teachers, many of them at high salaries, and upwards of five thousand nurses, servants, and similar employees. The boys and girls, both here and at Moscow, are taught separately. The cost of their education is more than $1,000,000 annually. Besides the soldiers, common mechanics, and factory girls, which the children of merely ordinary capacity become, the government has, of late years, established many of them as farmers and colonists on the uncultivated crown lands.

ON HAUTLE, OR ANIMAL BREAD OF THE MEXICANS.

By M. GUERIN - MENEVILLE.

In the Bulletin de la Societe Imperiale Zoologique d' Acclimation, M. Guerin-Meneville has published a very interesting paper on a sort of bread which the Mexicans call Hautle, and which is made of the eggs of three species of hemipterous insects belonging to the group of water-bugs.

According to M. Craveri, by whom some of the Mexican bread, and of the insects yielding it, were brought to Europe, VOL. 1, NO. 2-4.

these insects and their eggs are very common in the fresh waters of the lagunes of Mexico. The natives cultivate in the lagune of Chalco, a sort of carex called toule, on which the insects readily deposit their eggs. Numerous bundles of these plants are made, which are taken to a lagune, the Tescuco, where they float in great numbers on the water. The insects soon come and deposit their eggs on the plants, and in about a month the bundles are removed from the water, dried, and then beaten over a large cloth to separate the myriads of eggs with which the insects had covered them. These eggs are then cleaned and sifted, put in sacks like flour, and sold to the people for making a sort of cake or biscuit, called hautle, which forms a tolerably good food, but has a fleshy taste, and is slightly acid. The bundles of Cax Mplaced in the lake and afford a fresh supply of eggs, which pocess may be repeated for an indefinite number of times.

Moreover, says M. CraMAR 29 M888 ans collect quantities of these insects from the surface of the water by means of hooped nets, and these are dried and sold as food for birds. In Mexico, these dried insects sold the streets and markets, the dealers crying "Moschitos, Moschtos," just as in Europe, they cry "Food for your singing birds."

It appears that these insects have been used from an early period, for Thomas Gage, a religionist, who sailed to Mexico in 1625, says, in speaking of articles sold in the markets, that they had cakes made of a sort of scum collected from the lakes of Mexico, and that this was also sold in other towns.

Brantz Mayer, in his work on Mexico (Mexico as it Was, and as it Is, 1844), says, "On the lake of Tescuco, I saw men occupied in collecting the eggs of flies from the surface of plants and cloths arranged in long rows as places of resort for the insects. These eggs, called Agayacath, formed a favorite food of the Indians long before the conquest, and when made into cakes resemble the roe of fish, having a similar taste and appearance. After the use of frogs in France, and birds' nests in China, I think these eggs may be considered a delicacy, and I found that they were not rejected from the tables of the fashionable inhabitants of the capital.

The more recent observation of Messrs. Saussure, Salle, Valet D'Aoust, &c., have confirmed the facts already stated, at least in the most essential particulars.

The insects which principally produce this animal farina of Mexico, are two species of the genus Corixa of Geoffroy, hemipterous insects of the family of water-bugs. One of these species has been described by M. Guerin-Meneville as new, and has been named by him Carixa fermorata. The other, identified in 1831 by Thomas Says, as one of those sold in the market at Mexico, bears the name of Corixa mercenaria.

The eggs of these two species are attached in innumerable quantities to the triangular leaves of the carex forming the bundles which are deposited in the water. They are of an oval form, with a protuberance at one end and a pedicle at the other extremity, by means of which they are fixed to a small round disc, which the mother cements to the leaf.

Among these eggs, which are grouped closely together, and sometimes fixed one over another, there are found others, which are larger, of a long and cylindrical form, and which are fixed to the same leaves. These belong to another larger insect, a species of Notonecta, which M. Guerin-Meneville has named Notonecta unifasciata.—London Pharm. Jour., Sept., 1858, from Journal de Pharmacie.

ON THE AMOUNTS OF SULPHURETTED HYDROGEN AND HYDROCYANIC ACID IN TOBACCO SMOKE.

By A. VOGEL, Jun., and C. REISCHAUER.

If tobacco smoke be passed through an alcoholic solution of neutral or basic acetate of lead, the incurrent tube soon becomes blackened in a remarkable manner, whilst in the fluid itself a precipitate of carbonate of lead rendered brown by sulphuret of lead is deposited. To obtain the sulphuret of lead uncontaminated with carbonate of lead in the following quantitative investigations, the tobacco smoke was passed through an alcoholic solution of acetate of lead strongly acidified with acid. The precipitate of sulphuret of lead was dried and weighed, after washing with alcohol.

1. Turkish tobacco, 3-4 grms. gave 7 milligrms. of sulphuret of lead.

Hence the presence of sulphuretted hydrogen in tobacco smoke is unmistakably proved. The presence of sulphuretted hydrogen in tobacco smoke may, however, be proved in a still more simple manner, by blowing the smoke through the cigar upon a piece of paper moistened with acetate of lead, when a brown color is immediately produced on the spot touched by the smoke.

The well-known reaction of sulphuretted hydrogen upon nitro-prusside of sodium is exhibited most characteristically when a few drops of a solution of that salt mixed with ammonia are put into a test-tube and the tobacco smoke is introduced by a tube, which does not reach quite to the bottom of the test-tube. The walls of the glass moistened with the solution of nitro-prusside of sodium, by shaking acquire a deep violet-red color by the action of the sulphuretted hydro

gen

of the tobacco smoke. The above data show at the same time what influence the incineration of the parts of plants must have upon the accuracy of the determination of the sulphuric acid in the ashes.

In order to determine directly the loss of sulphuric acid in the ashes caused by the incineration, the amount of sulphuric acid in the tobacco ashes produced in experiment 1 was ascertained. From this it appeared that of 100 parts of sulphuric acid in the tobacco, 12.63 were evolved in the smoke in the form of sulphuretted hydrogen. This circumstance is consequently of importance in the determination of the sulphuric acid in incinerated parts of plants, and the more as a portion of the sulphuretted hydrogen also escapes observation in the upper part of the smoke of the burning tobacco.

After cyanogen compounds had been sought in vain, even in large quantities of the ashes of tobacco, the tobacco smoke itself was examined for cyanogen. The method of detecting hydrocyanic acid in the smoke is as follows:-Tobacco smoke is passed through a concentrated solution of caustic potash. The solution by this means acquires a slight brownish color, and when a turbidity is produced by dilution with water, it must be filtered. The solution is then mixed with protopersulphate of iron and heated. It is necessary to employ a spacious vessel for this purpose, as a strong evolution of carbonic acid takes place, especially at the boiling-point. The precipitate obtained is treated with an excess of chemically pure muriatic acid, when the precipitated oxide of iron is dissolved, leaving behind it Prussian blue.

The separation of the Prussian blue is facilitated by heating the solution; after filtration and complete washing with hot water, and afterwards with alcohol, it usually remains upon the filter of a dark blue color. If, however, it be of a dingy green color from the presence of empyreumatic constituents of the tobacco smoke, it must be freed from this impurity by agitation with ether and alcohol, when it always remains with its characteristic color.

It is obtained most beautiful, when, after it has been washed as much as possible upon the filter, it is decomposed by solution of potash, and a protopersalt of iron is added to the solution filtered from the peroxide of iron, by which it is regenerated, freed from foreign intermixtures, after treatment with muriatic acid.

Two cigars, weighing together 10.6 grms., furnished 0.018 of Prussian blue; and two cigars of another kind, weighing together 8.5 grms., gave 0.010 of Prussian blue.

Amongst all the samples of tobacco investigated in the above manner by the authors, there was only one which gave