The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1871-11-17
CURIOUS AND SCIENTIFIC.

! CUkIOIS AND SClENIAElCs
Two-thirds of all the zinc produc
ed is manufactured into sheets. The
remainder is employed in making
brass, in wire, in zinc-White as a sub.
stituts for lead in paints and for cast.
ings. The two chief requirements
| for zinc sheets are roofing and sheath
ing the bottoms of ships.
An English chemist has been ex-
| perimenting for the purpose of as
certaining how much of various
kinds of food must be eaten in order
to make one pound Of flesh. lie
| comes to the cOncluson that it Fequir-
es 25 pounds of milk, leo Of turnips,
! 80 of potatoes, so OF carrots, 8 of oat-
meal, IL of barley meal, and 3115 o
beans.
Some recent preparation have
| proved dangerously explosive on
being mixed by the apothecary. a
lady in England recently put a box
0fpills which had been prescribed
for her IN her bosom. In a short
! time there was a severe explosion,
and she was badly burned. The re-
cipe was mixture of oxyd of silver,
muriat of mOrphia and extract OF
! gentian.
A Western physician successfully
used ip ecacuanha in delirium trem-
ems. He first gave it as an emetic,
and afterwards from 10 to IS grains
every other hour. Connected with
this remedy he used shower baths
and let the patients frequently drink
strong beef tea, without any alco-
/ hOliC Stimulants. 1t quieted the nerv-
Gus system, excited the appetite, act
/ ed on secretion, and uniformly pro-
! duccd sleep, curing the patients in
| nearly every case.
Prof. B. a. Gould, who has gone to
| the Argentine Republic to take charge
/ of the National Observatory at Cor
dova, writes home very enthusiast
cally in regard to the splendors Of
/ the Southern heavens. lie SAYS the
msgnifi2ence of the Milky Way is
indescribable, exhibiting huge clus-
| ters, the sight of which through the
| telescope evokes exclamatiOns of
| delight and surprise from every be-
holder, young and Did, and whether
with or without ast onomical infor-
nation.
The Stevens Institute of Techno-
I logy has an electro agnet, made in
| AnsOnia, Conn, which weighs about
l,600 pounds, and has n lifting force
| estimated at between so and so tons.
About 400 pounds of copper wire,
! One-fiftb of an inch thick, is wound
! on eight spOOls, each y19 inches high
/ by 1l% inches external diameter.
The cores are hollow, and 6 inches
! in diameter, by 3 feet inches in
length. This magnet is about five
/ times as powerful as that used bv
Faraday in his famous researches.
From a paper on the vertebrate
( animals of Australia, lately publish
/ ed by Mr.. KretfC, the Curator Of the
/ Sidney Museum, we learn that no
| WOOdpeCkers or rhumming-birds have
ever been met with in that country.
/ Among birds, the parrot is the most
/ prominent, there being more than
sixty species. Reptiles abound,
among them species of crocodile,
individuals of which frequently grow
to the extraordinary length of thirty
/ feet, and occasion much trouble to
/ the coIOnists. No one of the five We
/ uOmOus snakes OF the country is so
/ deadly as the English viper. The
/ number of known harmless species
! is seventy-five.
Among recent discoveries in fossil
/ botany is the occurrence of three or
/ four species of tree ferns, like those
/ of the coal period, IN the Devonian
formation of New York and Ohio,
which underlies the coal. By this
discovery, made by the geological
/ surveys Of those States under the di-
rection of Profs. Hall and Newberry
| respectively, the existence of those
/ gigantic ferns is carried back as far
/ as the bottom of the middle DevO-
nian. One OF them, says DR.. Daw-
son, their deseriber, has the cellular
/ structure and vascular bundles in
| such preservation as to show their
microscopic structure, which is pre-
cisely similar to that of modern
| ferns.
The English journals report that
/ during recent explorations in the
moss on the shores of LOch EtiVe,
Argyle County, Scotland, the re-
mains Of an extensive lake dwelling
were discovered. The platform OF
/ this structure is sixty feet in dame
ter, and the dwelling in the middle
is fifty feet long and t venty-eight
/ feet broad. There was also disc0v-
/ cred in large caiTn q structure COM
posed Of huge stones, and consisting
of two chambers, each twenty feel
long, connected by q passage of nearly
/ the same length. Ohe broken urn
and the remains Of four others were
also discovered Loeb EiYe is an
/ inlet to the sea OH the northwest
coast of Scotland, running up for
over twenty miles, and varying in
| breadth.