which this "remote control" is attained -which apparatus Dr. Millener calls the "selective device"-is, of course, the inventor's secret, though he says it is the most simple thing in the world as all great inventions are when worked out. Another part of the invention, second in importance only to the selective device, is the "traveling ground." The constant break in the "ground" was the great obstacle to telephoning or telegraphing from moving trains and, so, of course, it was also a great obstacle to controlling the movement of a train or any other machine on wheels. This obstacle Dr. Millener has surmounted by his "traveling ground" which, like the selective device is also simple and of unfailing efficiency. The scope of "wireless" given to it by these two great inventions of Dr. Millener, "remote control" and the "traveling ground" is almost boundless. It can now be applied to so many machines, made to do so much of the world's work that it seems almost as if a man can sit in a room at a wireless instrument and by a touch of the finger do anything he desires almost anywhere in the world, provided only he have the machinery which he wishes to control, attuned beforehand to his sending device. Wireless can be applied in railroad signaling, which is now done by means of cumbersome levers and wires, and, of course, the distance of the signals from the signal tower cannot be very great. With Dr. Millener's invention, any number of signals can be thrown or lowered by the mere touching of the sending device and it matters not whether the signals be fifty feet or fifty miles away. The selective device will unfailingly throw the signal desired by a certain touch and not affect the others in the slightest degree. It can be applied to railroad telegraphy. By Dr. Millener's device he can ring a bell in a given one of any number of stations and leave bells in the others undisturbed. Torpedoes equipped with the selective device can be steered through the water with unfailing accuracy by having the control of the rudder attuned so as to be controlled by the selective device. In fact it is easily conceivable how one man could operate a number of trains END VIEW OF THE ELECTRIC TRUCK OPERATED BY WIRELESS. on a railroad system of several hundred miles in length with his selective device attuned to the locomotives of the several trains so that a certain touch would affect only a certain locomotive; and with a system of electric registration lights to show where each train is and its course of movement, it is not out of the range of the probable and the practicable. When a train was ready to leave a given station the station-agent would merely have to send a wireless flash to the central operating station whence the loco motive would be started and run to the next station. Communication from moving trains going at any rate of speed is made simple by the "traveling ground" which Dr. Millener has invented. This apparatus connects the car with the ground, giving a full and sufficient connection to make an aerial circuit in order to send the required impulses. Dr. Millener believes that by this device he can even telegraph from an automobile while it is in motion. SNAKE VENOM TO CURE By P. HARVEY MIDDLETON OR the second time in eighty years the lancehead viper of Brazil, known to science as the Lachesis trigonocephalus, and to the natives as the "sudden death" -the poison from which is the most deadly of all reptiles has been compelled to spit forth its venom in the interests of suffering humanity. The specimen in question arrived in America on April 18 on board the Brazilian liner Acre, on which it was smuggled by the captain, unknown to his men, after the crews of several vessels had emphatically refused to have it on board, for it is held in the utmost horror by all sailors. The first trituration and first dilution. in alcohol of this snake poison was made by Dr. Constantine Hering of Germany on July 28th, 1828, and in 1837 this remedy was first introduced into the Materia Medica. To the genius and heroism of Hering the world owes this remedy and many another of which this has been the forerunner. When Hering's first experiments were made he was botanizing and zoologizing on the upper Amazon for the German government. With the exception of his wife, all those about him were natives, who told him so much about the dreaded "Surukuku" TAKING ENOUGH VENOM FROM THE FANGS OF A LANCEHEAD SNAKE AT THE BRONX. N. Y.. ZOO TO SUPPLY THE WORLD FOR FIFTY YEARS. that he offered a good reward for a live specimen. At last one was brought in a bamboo box, the carriers of which immediately fled, together with all the native servants. Hering stunned the snake with a blow on the head as he opened the box; then holding its head in a forked stick he pressed its venom out of the poison bag upon sugar of milk. The effect of handling the virus and preparing the lower attenuations was to throw Hering into a fever with tossing delirium and mania-much to his wife's dismay. Towards morning he slept, and on waking his mind was clear. He drank a little water to moisten his throat, and the first question the indomitable scientist asked was, "What did I say?" His wife remembered vividly enough. The symptoms were written down, and this was the first installment of the proving of Lachesis, as set forth in the Dictionary of Materia Medica. The natives crept back one by one, and were astonished to find Hering and his wife still alive. The snake grows to seven feet and upwards in length, has fangs nearly an inch long, a reddish brown skin, marked along the back with blackish brown rhomboidal spots. The small quantity of lachesis obtained by Hering-about a teaspoonfulhas been used for eighty years by homeopathic physicians in the treatment of pyaemia or septicaemia, erysipelas, carbuncle, gangrene, malignant scarlet fever, diphtheria, and a number of men-" tal and nervous diseases. So well known are the symptoms produced by lachesis that it is given with great precision in properly diluted doses whenever the symptoms characteristic of the remedy appear. Hering's supply had almost run out when a New York pharmacist concern imported a specimen, which on April 26th last at the Bronx Zoological Garden gave up, under the most vigorous protest, sufficient of its priceless amber-colored liquid to last medical men for another fifty years. A stranger in a hostile country, far from its native habitat in the Ipecac HOW THE LANCEHEAD SNAKE IS HELD. woods, the lancehead refused to eat for several days-a condition that boded ill to anyone who approached too near it. When frogs, mice, and other dainty morsels were offered it, the sinuous velvety body coiled up instantly, and the wicked forked tongue shot. out of the javelinlike head as quick as lightning. On the day appointed for the operation there gathered in the reptile house a number of well-known medical and scientific men, includi. Dr. Eugene Porter, State Commissioner of Health for New Grim preparations were made in case anyone was bitten, for the slip of a finger might mean an agonizing death. Strips of cloth for a tourniquet were laid upon a shelf near the operating table. A bottle of snake-bite antidote was placed beside it. A hypodermic with several grains of this antidote ready for injection was laid beside the bottle, and lastly a keen-bladed knife. Then a small glass beaker was covered with a thin strip of gauze, which was tied securely like a drumhead. Dr. Raymond L. Ditmars, the Curator of the Bronx reptile house, explained that should anyone present be bitten the flesh of the poisoned part must be slashed with the knife and then the wound sucked for a few seconds. Then a tourniquet must be immediately made about the finger or hand bitten and twisted until the circulation ceased, to prevent the spread of the poison. After that the antidote would be injected into the blood vessels and the tourniquet removed. This would probably save the life of any one who might be so unfortunate as to be struck. This highly necessary speech finished, the head keeper, Snyder, took the cover off the glass box in which the lancehead was captive and placed a long piece of wire with a crook in the end under the reptile's head. The snake at once coiled its body round the wire and was lifted clear from the box and carried to the operating operating table. As the keeper approached with the reptile dangling from the end of the wire everybody present except the curator scattered. "Don't get excited," cried Dr. Ditmars. "The snake cannot spring with only the wire to balance itself upon." The keeper placed the snake gently on the table, and before it had time to move, pinioned its head down with the aid of a piece of wood. Quick as lightning Dr. Ditmars grabbed the lancehead between his forefinger and thumb just behind the jaw. The wood was removed from the head and the viper's mouth went open, exposing the long sharp fangs, while the four feet of body and tail lashed furiously about the arm of the curator, who with his free hand seized the tail in a firm grasp about a |