Saint Mary's beacon. [volume] (Leonard Town, Md.) 1867-1983, 1870-10-20

Ui1oNAhiEs AApk III ACCluENT.-Not
few discoveries in the arts and sciences
have been made or suggested BY accident.
The useofs psndalam was suggrstcd By the
vibrating Of chsndelier id Z cathedral /;
the power Of etesm intimated by the oscil-
lating Of the lid Of tea-kettle the utili-
ty Of coal gas for light. experimen.ed upon
By an ordinary tobacco pipe Of white clay;
the magnifying property Of the lens. ssa.a-
hled upon by an opticians apprentice while
holding spectacle-glasses between his
thumb and 6nger--are well known instan-
ces Of proof Of the fact.
Galvanism WAS discovered By accident,
BY Prof. Galvani. Of Bologua. in Italy.
He gave his name to the operation. but
his wife is generally considered rs entitled
TO the credit of the discovery. She being
in bad health. some frogs were ordered
for her. As they lay upon the table skin
ned. she noticed that their legs became
strongly convulsed when near an electro
cal conductor. She called her husband 5
attention to the fact he instituted a se-
ries of experiments. and in 1898 the gal
vanic battery was invented.
Eleven years later. with that discovery
for his basis, Prof Alessaadro Volta. also
IN italian, announced his discovery Of
"voltaic pile" ,
The discovery of glass-making was eff
feeted by seeing the sand vitrifed upon
which fire had been kindled.
Blancort says that making ofplate glass
was suggested by the fact Of workman
happening to break crucihle filed with
melted glass. The fluid ran under
one of the large fagstones with which the
floor was paved. On raising the stone to
recover the glass, it was found in the form
Of plate, such as could not be procured
by the ordinary process Of blowing.
Glass pearls, though among the most
beautiful, inexpensive and common orna-
ments worn by the ladies', are produced
by a very singular process In 1855. a
Venetian, named Jaquin, discovered that
the scales of fish, called bleak fish, possess
sed the property of communicating pear
ly hue to the water. lie found by exper-
imenting, that beads dipped into this wa
ter assumed, when dried, the appearance
Of pearls. 1t proved, however, that the
pearlv coat. when placed outside, was cas-
lily rubbed of; and the next improvement
was to make the beads hollow. The ma
king Of these beads is carried on to this
day in Venice. The beads are all blown
separately. BY means Of u small tube.
the insides are delicately coated with the
pearly liquid and waxed coating is pla-
ced over that. 1t requires the scales Of
four thousand fish to produce half q pint
Of the liquid. to which small quantity of
sal-amnonia and isinglass afterward ad-
ded.
Lundy Foot, the celebrated snuff man
ufacturer, originally kept . small soboc-
conist shop in limerick. On one night
his house, which was uninsured, was
burned to the ground. As he contempla-
ted the smoking ruins on the following
morning, in state bordering on despair
some Of the poor neighbors, groping among
the embers for what they could find, stum-
bled upon several canisters Of unconsum-
cd, but half-baked snuff which they tried
and found it so pleasant to their noses that
they loaded their waistccat pockets with
it, Lundy Foot, aroused from his stu
por, initiated their example, and took a
pinch Of his own property, when he was
saruck by the superior pungcncy and fla
vor it had acquired from the great heat to
which it had been exposed. Acting upon
the hint, he took another house and called
it the Black Yard, erected ovens and set
about the manufacture Of that high-dried
commodity which soon became widely
known as the Black Yard snuff. Eventu-
ally he took larger house in Dublin, and
making his customers pay literally through
the nose. amassed great fortune for hav-
ing been ruined.