SCIENTIFIC AND USEFUL.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XIII, Issue VII, 18 August 1894, Page 152

SCIENTIFIC AND USEFUL.

A GOOD WAY TO DISINFECT. Crude carbolic acid is excellent for disinfecting the premises of the hens. It is both cheap and easily applied. The best way to use it is to dissolve a pound of soap in a gallon of boiling water, add a half gallon of the acid and agitate briskly, as for the well-known kerosene emulsion, adding ten gallons of water, but be careful in handling the acid in order to avoid injury to the skin or clothing. COST OF BIG GUN FIRING. The cost of firing one of Krupp’s 130 ton steel guns is £650, or, adding the cost of the projectile, £3OO, about £950 for each shot fired. The gun cost £39.000, and it can only be fired, at the most, sixty times. Two shots a minute can be discharged, so that if it were fired continuously it would become valueless in about half an hour. The gun has a range of fifteen miles, and the projectile weighs 2,600 pounds. STRANGE PLAYMATES. In a field near my garden (says a Cumberland correspondent of Nature Notes) a cow and sheep live in close companionship. The sheep was brought from the Fells sick from water in the head, and not worth 3s 61—so its owner said. However, he successfully operated upon it, turned it into the field, where it became fat and strong. I watched it one evening playing with the cow. It gambolled round it like a dog ; then going to a distance, made a ‘ butt ’ at the cow’s head, which was lowered to receive the charge. Then they stood a while with heads close together, presently resuming their play. Jesse has shown in his Gleanings how the instinct of friendship exists in animals. TEMPERATURE AND HEALTH. At a meeting of the Royal Meteorological Society Mr W. H. Dines read a paper on * The Relation Between the Mean Quarterly Temperature and the Death Rate.’ The Registrar General’s quarterly returns for the whole of England since 1362 were taken by the author, and the numoer of deaths in each quarter expressed as a departure per thousand from that particular quarter’s average ; the value so obtained being placed side by side with the corresponding departure of the temperature at Greenwich from its mean value. The rule seems to be that a cold winter is unhealthy and a mild winter healthy ; and that a hot summer is always unhealthy and a cold summer healthy. AN IMPROVED AMBULANCE. A new ambulance which has lately been designed for rough use by Mr John Carter, of New Cavendish Street, is remarkable for the strength and simplicity of its construction. The fiame runs on two light wheels, and has four iron legs which fold up when not in use. Tne stretcher is fitted with wooden lollers to enable it to slide smoothly into a van or railway train, and is held in position on the frame simply by its own weight, so that there are no pins or complicated fastenings of any kind to waste the time that is often so precious in cases of serious injury. The machine is supplied with an expanding hood, sucn as is used with bath chairs—a distinct improvement on the somewhat clumsy arrangement of hoops usually adopted. Mr Carter has also an ambulance intended for town use. It is built on the same lines as the other, but runs on three wheels instead of two. INDIAN MAGIC EXPLAINED. Miraculous as the feats performed by the Indian juggler appear to the onlooker, there is no doubt they cau all be reasonably explained. The disappearance of a living being from a basket in a place where trap doors, concealea exits, or collusion were impossible, seems inexplicable; yet the wiiter, quite by accident, detected the way in which this trick is aone. A j aggler stepped at Madras on to the deck of a Peninsular and Oriental Company’s steamer, and offered the company assembled, who were lounging about highly bored by the old method of coaling, if they would subscribe to show them something better than common juggling. The collection, of course, was forthcoming at once; he cleared a space on the deck, and told his wife to lie down. The young woman, who may have weighed seven stone, but more probably six, lay down, and her husband placed over her a shallow, flat basket, with a handle at the back, exactly resembling the baskets used for vegetables in East Anglia, and called a ‘frail.’ Then with a light and graceful gesture, he took up the basket, and laid it down two or three feet off, when it was seen that the woman bad vanished. Unfortunately for the juggler, the writer accidentally stepped on the edge of the ‘frail,’ and heard a little cry of pain. The whole thing had been a piece of superb acting. The young woman had learned to hook herself with her fingers and prehensile toes into the strong network forming the top of the frail, and the husband, a slight but powerful man, had learned to lift her as if he were lifting nothing but the basket. The writer of course said nothing about his awkwardness ; the juggler, after one savage glance, said nothing either, and the trick is still quoted as one which, owing to the absence of machinery, cannot be explained away.