SCIENTIFIC.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume X, Issue 571, 21 August 1880, Page 1 (Supplement)

SCIENTIFIC.

FEATHER PLUSH. For some time past the ingenuity of several manufacturers has alighted upon the idea of utilizing feathers as a material for weaving fabrics in various ways. We thus saw recently two samples of feather cloth which had come from France, and which consisted, apparently, of the down of feathers interwoven with fine woollen warp, in one case throwing the feathers- to one surface, and in the other laying them upon ; both sides ; the latter, especially, was a very interesting and exceedingly light cloth, . which we understand is Used in France for ■ chest protectors, and is for that purpose more agreeable, though perhaps not so durable, as flannel or felt. i From a foreign patent we see that one manufacturer has protected a machine by 1 meansof which he produces a cloth of felt, '■ in which he mixes finely broken feathers ! with weol, and then cards and felts them. together. The machine he uses for the purpose is a combination of the opener and scutcher as used in cotton mills, and the fur 1 formers employed in hat works. The 1 feathers, which may be of any cheap kind, • are placed on a feed table, whence they pass ] under a drum set laterally with steel knives, which break the feathers; from this drum 1 they patss between three small rollers and a snperpoßcl fluted and chased iron roller with a to-and-fro motion endways, as well as a 1 revolving motion, and by which the reduced feathers are ground quite small, and, falling upon a traveling apron, pass on to a spiked drum running in a cage, whose office is to re 'uce any pieces which have escaped the 1 action of the rollers. The pounded feathers fall to the bottom of the machine, whence a fan sends them into a proper receptacle, where the feathers are mixed at once with wool. They may be blown direct upon the card table of a carding engine, which, in that case, must have a cover as is usual in carding cotton. The mixture of feathers and wool can, of course, be made in any proportion. The inventor states that he has obtained the best results by felting the cloth ; thelaps made by the carding engines are jointed by friction under the influence of steam, Jthen milled, dried, and subjected to the action cf steam at a high temperature in a steam chamber, which latter action is said to thoroughly amalgamate the feathers and the wool. : — 1 Textile Manufacturer.' MAKING A NOSE. In New York a singular experiment has recently been tried, and is still in progress with apparently good prospects of ultimate success. A man named Turner, whose nose had been destroyed in such a way that there was no possibility of anew nose being formed from the flesh of the forehead by the Talicotian process, consented to let the surgeons try to manufacture a new nose for liim out of the middle finger of his left hand. The flesh along the nose, or rather where the nose should have been, was cut into, and the inside of the aforesaid finger was cut open. Then the wounded finger was applied to the wounded no3e (or no nose), and the two surfaces thus joined wei e kept in close. connexion by means of plaster of Paris poured over the hand and part of the face, and allowed to harden there in mtu. The finger was so placed that the knuckle should eventually form the tip of the hose. It should be added that the finger-nail had, in the first instance, been extirpated. But, ; to say truth, it is not desirable to be too : particular in describing the details of the painful series of operations (though, of course, the actual use of the knife took place when the patient was under choloroform) necessary to furnish Turner with a new nose. After four or five weeks had elapsed (by which time the left hand and arm had become perfectly white, as a consequence of the unnatural position iu which they had been retained) the plaster of Paris was removed. The attachment of the finger to the nasal region was found to be complete, and the patient being placed under chloroform, the finger was severed from the hand. The several end of the finger was then carefully sewed (after due excoriation of the flesh of finger and face) to the upper lip, so as to occupy the place where the nose and upper lip meet in nature. The patient has now to wait until the junction at this part has, in turn, become complete. After that one operation will still have to be gone through—one, namely, by which nostrils will be ! formed, for at present there are, of course, none, and the man's breathing is carried on through the mouth alone. When the nostrils have been formed Turner will have a complete nose—useful and ornamental. THE ELECTRIC LIGHT AND GARDENING. At a meetihg of the Royal Horticultural Society of England, on the 18th of March, Dr Siemens, whose experiments weth the nlectrio light were discribed in these columns, exhibited twe pots strawberries which had been treated in all ways alike, save in the circumstance that one had been submitted to the electric light for 14 nights' whilst other had not. The 'Gardener's Chronicle,' which repots these experiments, says :—-'The difference betwesn the two plants was very marked. The plant which hah been constantly exposed to light—solar by day, electric by night—had finer more vigorous foliage of a deeper green than that which was grown in the ordinary way. This difference in the fruit was even more remarkable. The-fruit on the plant subjected to the electric light was a week, or it might be ten days, in advance of the other. Of sixteen berries that we specially noted, all but two were coloured, ancl most were ripe, only one or two were immature. On the plant which had not been subjected to the electric light we counted specially, for comparison sake, fourteen berries —one or two of which showed faiut indications of beginning to colour, while the rest were all green, and as usual of various sizes ; so that the electric light seemed to have had the effect, not only of hastening the ripening but of ripening, all the berries on a single truss nearly at the same time. If this result be obtained constantly we need not say what a boon it would be to gardeners. But at present the experiments have been conducted on a comparatively small scale, and much remains to be done before the light cau be generally employed ; still, we look upon it as certainty that it will be used extensively in the future, and that with very great gain in point of time especially, and time in forcing means money. 1