Vermin on the Person.—­I quote the following extract from Huc’s ’Travels in Tartary’:—­“We had now been travelling for nearly six weeks, and still wore the same clothing we had assumed on our departure.  The incessant pricklings with which we were harassed, sufficiently indicated that our attire was peopled with the filthy vermin to which the Chinese and Tartars are familiarly accustomed; but which, with Europeans, are objects of horror and disgust.  Before quitting Tchagan-Kouren, we had bought in a chemist’s shop a few sapeks’-worth of mercury.  We now made with it a prompt and specific remedy against the lice.  We had formerly got the receipt from some Chinese; and, as it may be useful to others, we think it right to describe it here.  You take half an ounce of mercury, which you mix with old tea-leaves previously reduced to paste by mastication. to render this softer, you generally add saliva; water could not have the same effect.  You must afterwards bruise and stir it a while, so that the mercury may be divided into little balls as fine as dust. (I presume the blue pill is a pretty exact equivalent to this preparation.) You infuse this composition into a string of cotton, loosely twisted, which you hang round the neck; the lice are sure to bite at the bait, and they thereupon as surely swell, become red, and die forthwith.  In China and in Tartary you have to renew this salutary necklace once a month.”

Blistered Feet.—­To prevent the feet from blistering, it is a good plan to soap the inside of the stocking before setting out, making a thick lather all over it.  A raw egg broken into a boot, before putting it on, greatly softens the leather:  of course the boots should be well greased when hard walking is anticipated.  After some hours on the road, when the feet are beginning to be chafed, take off the shoes, and change the stockings; Putting what was the right stocking on the left foot, and the left stocking on the right foot.  Or, if one foot only hurts, take off the boot and turn the stocking inside out.  These were the plans adopted by Captain Barclay. when a blister is formed, “rub the feet, on going to bed, with spirits mixed with tallow dropped from a candle into the palm of the hand; on the following morning no blister will exist.  The spirits seem to possess the healing power, the tallow serving only to keep the skin soft and pliant.  This is Captain Cochrane’s advice, and the remedy was used by him in his pedestrian tour.” (Murray’s Handbook of Switzerland.’) The recipe is an excellent one; pedestrians and teachers of gymnastics all endorse it.

Rarefied Air, effects of.—­On high plateaux or mountains new-comers must expect to suffer.  The symptoms are described by many South American travellers; the attack of them is there, among other names, called the puna.  The disorder is sometimes fatal to stout plethoric people; oddly enough, cats are unable to endure it:  at villages 13,000 feet above the sea, Dr. Tschudi says that they cannot live.