Brief Mention,

Star (Christchurch), Issue 4739, 2 September 1893, Page 3

Brief Mention,

Durable shoes for men are now made oS pigskin. An oyster may carry as many as two million eggs. Many email animals eat their own weight of food in a day. Big belb are now being made from steel, nob from bell metal. j The primitive indti3i ry of spinning ha? been revived in England. Rapid growth of the finger nails is considered to indicate good health. The largest apes have only sixteen ! ounces of brain; the Jc-wesfc men have thirty-nine. Twelve thousand microbes strung on a line would make a procession only one j inch in length. _ , . It costs manufacturers in America only i about tsra and one-half cents to put up a ' can of tomatoes. The first bricks made in the United SUtas ware manufactured by the Virginia settlers in 1612. Telegraph wire? batween London and Paris ara now little used, tho telephone being used instead. - Over ona hundred new telegraph offices were opened in India during the first three months of the year. The bigaest freah water fish, the " arapaima," of the Amazon, in South America, grows to six fset in length. A botanist hag found by experiment that there are grown in America sixteen species of trees, which, when thoroughly soaked, will eink in water. A scientist has discovered that soapy water, making an envelope like that of a eoap bubble, has greater power than oil to eulidue rough water. The electric railway has penetrated even lha fastnesses of the Tyroleae Mountains, a road twenty- seven miles long being projected between Biva and Pinzolo. A new glass for thermometers is uaaffeefced by a heat of JOOOdeg, the ordinary glasa being unreliable above 750deg on account of its tendency to toftso. The breakicg weight of one foot of ca&t iron one inch square is 5871 pounds; the braaking weight of a piece of hickory of the same dimensions is 270 pounds. . Thunder storms are more- frequent in Java than ia any other part of the world, there beini? aa average of ninety-seven days in each year in which they occur. In Baltimore a pneumatic device for the front of street care has. been patantsd, the purpose of which is to push obstructions, such as Ihe bodies of persons, out of the way without harming them. Michael P. Chalk, of Duluth, the most famous diver along the American lakes, has invented a submarine armour which he believes will without! the pressure of the sea at a depth of ISOO feet. The elephant is given the credit of being the most long-lived as well as the most intelligent of all animals. Cuvier tays there are instances of their having lived to beyond the h,%q of 300 years. The use of aluminum has.been proposed for beat?, balloon cars, trotting sulkies, flying rcachineo, and all purposes where lightness is desirable. At present itß cost, seventy cents a pound, is against it. The Cockerill works in Belgium boast of a 100 ton hammer, but Krupp's gun works in E3oen, Germany, " poas them one batter " with one weighing 150 tons. This last hammer is the largest now in use. William A. Bogus was a Georgia land commissioner yearaago caught in rascality in office. He issued fraudulent land righto. Ho furnished the vernacular with ' a word for everything spurious and false. The Health Department of New York ! City has paid 960d0l for a portable disinfecting machine. It is drawn by horses, and cm bo tiken in front of an infected house to disinfect clothing, badding, &c. Quakeresses are not allowed to wear gold orEatnent3, or to have their ears pierced for earrings. If a mother permittsd her daughter to undergo this operation, both mother and daughter would be" read out " of meeting. Aluminum is coming in favour for every | kind of pretty aud useful table necessity, I tazz9, bowle, traya, ba3ket3 for fruit or j cards, psa and. tea-trayß, waiters, &c, in the daintiest designs and at wonderfully moderate prices. Much interest is felt in Scotland in the attempts to utilise Scotch oil — in which the tiade is much depressed — for increasing tliß illuminating power of coal gas. The mixture is claimed to give better gag ab a lower price. j Anew material, called rubber velvet, is made by sprinkling powdered felt of any j colour over rubber cloth while the latter is hob and soft; the result looks like felt cloth, but is elastic, waterproof! and exceedingly light. The inhabitants of Thibet, are the dirtiest people on earth. Not only do they never wash, liufc when once full growth has been attained they never take their cloth6s off. I Whan the garments they v/ear become old I others are put over them. Snow appears white to us because it is. an aggregation of an infinite number of minute crjstala, each reflecting all the colours of the rainbow ; these colours, uniting before tliey reach the eye, cause it to appear white to every normal eye. A European dentist is said to have had great success in curing toothache within five minutes, and often in less time, by applying one pole of an electrostatic machine to the troublesome, tooth, and the other pole to the body of the patient. Experiments have been made by MM. Goutes and Sibillot with the view of adopting aluminum as a material for the ga3-holders of dirigible balloons instead of silk or othor stuffs, and the result of j their experiments have beea satisfactory. • Corn huaka boiled in caustic soda are being used in the manufacture of paper. The husks are reduced to a spongy, glutinous paste, which ia subjected to heavy pressure. The gluten eliminated by this means is said to leave an excellent fibre. ■ - ■ : ■-'• Scientific journals in England" Bpeak approvingly of a Dew method of manufacturing caustic soda, chlorine a-ad other*! chemical products directly from sea water, with the aid of electricity. There is an immense saving of time, labour and material in the process. The healthful effects cf sunshine have been scientifically demonstrated by a number of French, German and English naturalist?, who have discovered that sunlight has a direct germicidal action and is fatal to the bacilli of tubercles, diphtheria, typboid fever and other diseases. * The largest stationary engine in the world is used to -pump out the zinc mines at Friedenville, Pa. Its driving wheels are thirty -five feat in diameter and each weighs a little over forty tons. The cylinder io HOin in diameter, and the engine raises 17,500ga1s of water every minute. In certain iron lamp post 3 used abroad i for arc lights a number of ornamental , projections are thrown oub by turning a key, enabling the trimmer to climb up without the aid of a ladder. The turning of the key also abort-circuits the switch, making the lamp safe to handle. Deadly scorpions ■• have.- become co ! numerous in the city of Durango, Mexico, that the municipal authorities have offered a valuable prize to be given the person capturing the largest number. Two thousand of the deadly pests were killed at thehoßpital there recently in one day. An electric alarm hell for use on trains, to supersede the unsatisfactory cord com- ! munication, has bee a successfully tried in Scotland. In addition to serving p.s an j alarm, it can be used for starting trains from the guard's van, instead o? the present method of whistling and waving of flags.' Chen?iat3 now turn gcrap iron into ink, old bones into lucifer matches, the shavings of the blacksmith's shop into Prussian J blue, fusel oil into oil of apples and pears, ; the drawings of cow houses into faßhion- j able perfumery, baggars' rags into new coats, and tar waste into aniline dyes and saccharine. Tn making sawdust building-bricks the manufacturers dry and screen the sawdust to remove the coarser particles, and then mix it with cement, lime, aud sand. Tho mixture is pressed into blocks, which are ' f aid to be cheap and useful. Thero are as 1 much lime and more than twice as much ) Bap 4 a-i sawdust jr then',,