Science Notes.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 996, 3 April 1891, Page 6

Science Notes.

Grated potatd takes the rust off the inside of a decanter,

Eaeh day daring a trip the Teutonics con. denßers require as much water as would supply the needs of two such cities as Sheffield.

One of the employes of the postal and tele, graph office in St. Petersburg has ihvented a watch which will run forty-five days bn a single winding. The Mechanical Technical Association; to which the inventor submitted it, wound the Watch, placed it in a vanl,, and found that it ran the full time claimed for it.

A physician who declares that both the ‘eye-opener* and the ‘night-cap’ are very Injurious says that the latter is the lesser evil of the two. . * WKen a man, he says, * gets to drinking early in the morning as a regular custom, he is pretty far gone. _ A drink before breakfast is a pretty certain indication of a half-dozen others before sundown.*

* * > * The Bell Telephone patent monopoly ia England has expired. The patent was gaanted for fourteen years. Cheap telephones will now prevail in England the same as in Germany, where Bell failed to obtain a _patent. In this country the Bell patent will expire on March 7, 1893, having been originally granted March 7, 1876, for a term of seven* teen years. ;

A Paris physician, M. Y ariot, one of the best known doctors in the principal hospital, has for some time been studying the project of metalising dead bodies entire. He has at last succeeded so that a body may be hermetically enclosed in a gold, silver, nickel, bronze, copper and other metal envelope, according to the taste or menus of the mourning relatives. It is Baid that Varlot’s process is makfng considerable headway. _

What becomes of the bacilli which are not directly affected by the lymph treatment is a question of considerable importance. The statement of Virchow that when they are routed they are scattered in adjoining sound tissues; is doubtless backed by a careful and intelligent study of post mortem appearances. Until, however, more definite fasts than those already offered are given, it will be well to suspend judgment.

The enormous water-power of Lake Superior is the next natural force to be utilized. It has been calculated that the actual velocity and volume of water falling at Saute Ste. Marie is 122,000 feet per second —equivalent to 236,000 horse-power ; and it is proposed to construct very extensive works in the vicinity, including blast furnaces and ship-yards, paper mills, pulp mills, flour mills and other industries. The learning Of scienoe and the ingenuity of inventors are daily succeeding in diminishing the waste of energy that is met with in the mechanical world, and doubtless before the century shall have closed even greater triumphs will be recorded.

La Nature records aa interesting archeological discovery which has lately been made near Apt, in Vaucluse, in the valley of the Cauloa. M. Rousset, a retired inspector of forests, while superintending the digging of a ditch, was lucky enough to find, on a bed of pebbles, at a depth of 2‘50 metres, the remains of what seems to have been a prehistoric workshop. The flint implements had such sharp edges, and were generally in so excellent a state of preservation, that they had evidently never been disturbed from the time when they had been chipped into shape. Among the objects were three nuclei, and students who have been examining -them have succeeded in reuniting with each nucleus the fragments broken from it. Thus it is possible to note exactly the procedure of the prehistoric workmen.

Messrs Hughes and Gawthorp haß on exhibition at the Pittsburg exposition an eleotromagnet designed for lifting pig iron from the pig bed in the cast-hoase. It was manufactured by tbe Thomson-Houston Motor Com. pany. This magnet had a lifting capacity of 72001 b. In shape it somewhat resembled a bell with nearly vertical sides, standing about 20in. in height, and measuring about 24in. across the bottom. The thickness of the sides of the bell, if it may be termed such, is about 3in., and within the bell and being flush with it at the bottom was a large coil forming a powerful electro-magnet. The coil is made a magnet by the passage of a current of electricity through it. The magnet, which is attached to a crane, can be raised and lowered. The load can be dropped by simply shutting off the current.

In a lecture delivered recently before tbo Franklin Institute, on ‘The Diamond, Drill and its Work,’ by Mr W. P. Durfee, he referred to the use of the diamond drill by the ancient Egyptians. Since the delivery of the lecture, Mr Durfee has been enabled to obtain evidenoe, showing that the Egyptians used an annular drill equivalent in mechanical action to the modem drill, from Mr Flinders Petrie, the author of ‘ Pyramids and Templds of Gizeh.’ In that work Mr Petrie gives illus - trations of samples of work showing, in his judgment, the use of jewel points in drilling and sawing by the Egyptian masons. Y arioua specimens of that work are now also in his possession, and he cites six samples existing in Egypt, some in the Bulak Museum and some at Gizeh. One of them is of special interest. In the granite temple at Gizeh there is found in one of the lintels of the door a drill hole with the core still sticking in it. Almost as interesting sb this is a base of a tuba drill hole between the feet of a statue of Chefren (Kofra) now preserved in the Bulak Museum.—lron.