SCIENTIFIC AND USEFUL.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 43, 22 October 1892, Page 1042

SCIENTIFIC AND USEFUL.

A SCIENTIFIC REMINISCENCE. An exhibit of striking historical interest will be shown at Chicago by the Baltimore and Ohio Railway in the shape of the original apparatus employed in laying Morse’s first telegraph wire. Morse’s first line was laid underground, from Washington to Baltimore. A heavy plough was procured with a reel rigged up l>ehind, and from this the leadcovered wire unwound itself and was covered up in the furrow. The leakage to earth, however, proved too great, and overhead-wires afterwards came into use. The skins of sixteen oxen stuffed will represent the original team, and wax figures of Professor Morse and his associates will complete this scene.

old amber. Old amber beads are often of a very beautiful colour, almost like gems, in fact. This colour is produced by age, and is an alteration of the surface of the amber—it does not penetrate into its substance. If the surface is removed by being polished, then the colour goes too, and with the colour much of the beauty and value. Since the surface cannot be interfered with without removing a property it may have taken fifty years to produce, it follows that scratches or breaks are better left in, and they should be unless the owner gives explicit orders to repolish after he has been warned of the change that will take place. It is rare that repolisbing spoils an article, but it would do harm in this one case, however it might improve the other nine hundred and ninety-nine articles out of a thousand.

A LUMINOUS COMPOSITION. To produce a composition that will be luminous in the dark, cleanse oyster shells by well washing, expose them to a red heat for half an hour, separate the cleanest parts and put into a crucible in alternate layeis with sulphur, now expose the vessel to a red heat for an hour at least. When cold, break the mass, and separate the whitest parts for use. If enclosed in a bottle, the figures of a watch may be distinguished by its aid. To renew the luminosity of’ the mass, place the bottle each day in the sun, or in strong daylight, or burn a strip of magnesium wire close to the bottle ; the sulphide of calcium will again emit light, which will again be available at night.

AN INGENIOUS RAILWAY INVENTION. An ingenious arrangement has been invented by which railway engines can take coal without stopping. This apparatus is constructed above the track in sucn a way that when the engine comes along, a trap is sprung, emptying the coal in the tender. The new arrangement would do for the taking of coal what the water-tanks in the centre of the track have done for taking water. A great deal of valuable time would be saved, and the expense of stopping and starting heavy trains for this purpose, which would then be abolished, would be a considerable item. The apparatus will be erected on the Pennsylvania Road somewhere between Johnstown and Altoona. A working model has been in operation, which has been examined by a number of railroad men. It is believed by many the invention will be a success, and that it will soon be adopted on the leading railroads.

coloured prints and plates. It is announced that a German doctor has invented a more perfect method of making two-coloured prints from colour plates, and of photographically producing autotypic colour blocks ; when making a double print from an autotypic block in black colour, either the print differs only in intensity from the simple prints, or it comes out striped or otherwise irregular. The doctor says that to have absolute regularity the angles at the crossing points of the two prints must be lufinitel/acute when the prints will coincide exactly, and no stripes will be formed. This result is difficult of attainment because ot the influence of temperature on the paper, and for other reasons. Tne doctor proposes to remedy this by printing from surfaces drawn in a series of parallel lines crossed in such a manner that the lines of each separate colour cross those of the other colour at an angle of thirty degrees.

the cuttlefish. Until the year 1870, or so, it may be said Victor Hugo’s idea of the existence of a huge cuttlefish remained simply as a piece of poetic fancy and fiction. In 1867, however, a very large cuttlefish, averaging about 20 feet in length in the body alone, was met with by a French war vessel between Madeira and Teneriffe. Later on, great squids were seen on the American coast, aud chiefly in the north, whither possibly they may have been attracted by the prospects of suitable food in the cod. Actual measurements of some of these big squids—which, by the way, also occur off the Irish coast now and then—give bodies ranging from 10 feet to 20 feet in length, exclusive of the arms, which, as regards the two long ones at least, may be set down at 30 feet in length. So that the realisation of the zoological phantasy ot the ‘ Toilers of the Sea ’ has come in a very decided fashion indeed, in the shape of the Newfoundland giant cutties, whose powers of attack may be regarded as fully equal to those credited to the big devilfish of the great French novelist. Furthermore, it may be suggested that a huge cuttlefish rushing along the surface of the sea, propelled backwards by its jets of water, with its head and arms, leaving a long • wash ’ behind, may very aptly appear as a fit representative of the sea serpent itself. From various accounts given of the ‘ great unknown ’ of the deep, it seems pretty certain that what was seen was really a giant cuttit fish swimming swiftly through the water, its movements, aud especially those of its arms, counterfeiting closely the motions of a serpentine form.