SCIENTIFIC AND USEFUL.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XI, Issue 52, 30 December 1893, Page 560

SCIENTIFIC AND USEFUL.

ELECTRIC heating. From Norway comes an account of a striking illustration of the scope of electric heating applications. A furnace for the equal heating of the iron rods for the manufacture of horseshoe nails was required by the Norwegian trade, and Mr Alexander Siemens, who stands among the first Europeau electricians, was commissioned to construct such a furnace. When completed it consisted of a huge core of carbon, rendered incandescent by the passage of a large current at low voltage. The core was imbedded in sand to prevent escape of heat, and was itself hollow. An iron rod passed slowly through, and at once became red hot, the speed of pulling through regulating the heat. PRESENCE OF MIND. Presence of mind is one of the rarest but most valuable virtues. Ao interesting instance of its t fficacy is leported from Sag Harbour (N. Y.). Flora Sterling, a five-year old daughter of Dr. Sterling, drank from a bottle labelled citrate of magnesia, and immediately began to scream with pain. Her father came and at once discovered that she had really drunk a solution of oxalic acid. No time was to be lost, and, looking about for an antidote, he fonnd one in the whitewash of the wall. Scraping some of the lime into his hand he mixed it in a glass of water and poured the mixture down the child’s throat. The antidote took effect instantly, the pain was alleviated, and the throat was afterwards cooled by administering mucilaginous drinks. AN EMBROIDERY MACHINE. A remarkable embroidery machine, invented by Herr Martini, is, we are told, being employed by a Swiss firm. It consists of two ordinary hand machines, so coupled together that they have only one pattern board, and only one manual in the centre, and can be attended to by one embroiderer. To the manual are attached two small drums, on which run two narrow straps, coming down from the gearing above, the machine. To connect the steam power with the machine the embroiderer has only to press the pin of the crank belonging to the manual, and the carriage moves at once. The speed of the machine is regulated by the amount of pressure on the pin. It is asserted that with this machine 6,000 stitches can be embroidered in a 10 hours’ day. contamination by anthrax. That all suspected infectious matter should be destroyed by fire, even to the cremation of animals dying from the effects of solenic fever, obtains support from recent researches and examinations into cases in which the bacillus of anthrax has played the leading part. It has been hitherto supposed that anthrax was communicated only by actual contact, as in * wool-sorters’ disease,’ but Dr. Diaptroptoff has shown that bacillus anthracis can contaminate well water, and, therefore, the waters of ponds from which the animals obtain their drink. Amongst careful communities it has been the practice to bury the carcases of infected animals in quicklime; but recent researches would seem to show the imperative necessity of cremation—at any rate in districts where the water supply is drawn from holes in the earth that are commonly called surface wells. HASHEESH AND ITS EFFECTS. Hasheesh is chiefly composed of the husks of the innocent hempseed, but after its preparation loses ics innocence and bi-comes one of the greatesi curses of the East. One leport states that hasheesh disturbs the functions of the systems of digestion and circulation ; that it injures the senses and motive powers ; that it disturbs the cerebral functions. The phantoms seen by and the tendencies manifested in those who are intoxicated with hasheesh generally indicate the usual habits of thought and moral character of the intoxicated person, or the thoughts and passions by which the man was possessed on the day that he became intoxicated, or at the moment in which 'be symptoms of poisoning began to make themselves manifest. Persons given to the use of hasheesh who become maniacs ate apt to commit all sorts of acts of violence and murder. AU authors are unanimous, basing their opinion on numerous observations, among Eastern peoples, that the long use of hasheesh weakens the body and causes atropy, dulls the mind and creates hypochondria, idiocy, and mania. Those who indulge in hasheesh have a fixed look without expression, and an idiotic appearance. According to statistical information obtained from the lunatic asylums of Cairo and Bengal, the majority of the maniacs and idiots become such from abuse of hasheesh. In most Eastern counties the importation, cultivation, and sale of hasheesh is forbidden, but it is used in large quantitiee, nevertheless. EARTHQUAKE WARNINGS. Earthquake warnings are not possible in the present state of our knowledge. At best, they are only fortunate guesses and accidental coincidences, and the most pretentiously scientific of the order are not better based than the weird warnings of Zadkiel’s Almanac, or of the professional astrologer whom the city of Lima used to maintain, and who—after the event—showed to the satisfaction of himself, if not of bis patrons, that the great catastrophe of October 28ch, 1746, was due at the time it happened. For • the sun was in five degrees, ten minutes of Scorpio, and the moon in not much less of Taurus ; so that these planets wanted very little of being in opposition.’ The appearance of the aurora, a hankering after the electrical theory, planetarv conjunctions—the favourite whim of the seers, who considered the stars as controllers of the destinies of men—and a host of similar doctrines, with the imaginary * laws’ deduced from them, are all alike unworthy of serious thought. A time may come when we may predict the weather underground with not much more error than that with which the weather overhead is forecast ; though even when this period arrives it will be no more possible to say months or years in advance whether an earthquake is to occur than it is to prophesy at a longer interval than twenty-four hours whether the sky is to be overcast, the barometer low, or the thei mometer high.