100 YEARS AGO

A novel way of making building land is being carried out not far from New York. The rapidly growing population of this city has made ground scarce on which to build villas and houses for the summer resort of the inhabitants; but the enterprise of the American builder is equal to the emergency, and land is now being literally pumped up from the sea, on which it is intended to erect houses, and to create a new suburb. The site chosen for this venture is the Nassau Beach, on the shore of Jamaica Bay, in Long Island, not far from Brooklyn. The salt marshes bordering on this coast, which for centuries have been overflowed by the tides, and which, of course, while in this condition were utterly unfit for building purposes, are being raised from four to six feet above high water by pumping up the sand, shell and gravel which form the floor of the bay, and delivering this on to the land to be reclaimed… Ten acres have thus been raised since the pumping began a few months ago. A raised road and promenade two miles long and seventy feet wide, and an electric railway, will connect this new suburb with the railway to Brooklyn and New York.

From Nature 14 June 1900.

50 YEARS AGO

Simulium damnosum Theobald is a common biting fly in many parts of Africa and an important vector of human onchocerciasis. After the female has bitten a man, the blood in the hinder part of the insect's mid-intestine forms an approximately spherical mass, which retains its form when removed from the gut. During recent dissections, it was noticed that the blood was completely enclosed in a membrane which could not be detected in unfed flies. It was evidently produced by the wall of the mid-intestine during the blood-meal, and appeared to be a peritrophic membrane rather unlike those found in various other insects… When S. damnosum is dissected after biting a man and taking up many microfilariæ, most of the worms can usually be seen imprisoned by the peritrophic membrane in the mid-intestine and eventually die there. Comparatively few appear in the thoracic muscles of one of these flies and continue development. Frequently, therefore, the membrane protects the fly itself from heavy infection without preventing it from transmitting the parasite.

From Nature 17 June 1950.