Macon beacon. [volume] (Macon, Miss.) 1859-1995, 1872-11-02
SCIENTIFIC NOTES.

The artificial production OF ice in
New Orleans has reduced the price
to IS per ton.
WITHIN a radius of six miles of
Portage Lake, Michigan, there is
available metallic wealth sufficient to
sustain I00,Q00 people, and pay a
handsome interest on 800, 000, 900.
\ NEW pavement is being made in
Union Square, New York, chiefly of
rock imported from Switzerland,
winch Is first ground to powder,
then heated to three hundred de-
grees, and while in that state spread
upon a bed Of cement, 1t is said to
form a sclid surface, alike imperyi-
Gus to heat and water.
THERE is a lake among the Cas-
cade mountains in Oregon, thewalls
around which are nearly pcrpen.
dicular, and 1000 feet high. The
depth Of the lake is unknown, its
length IS twelve and breadth ten
miles. No man has ever yet reached
the waters edge, and it is not likely
any will.
a MAcHSE has lately been devised
N Europe for testing the richness of
milk by means Of its transparency.
Two polished plates of glass are so
arranged that their distance apart
can be varied at will by NEAR Of a
screw. These are placed in front of
a candle, and the milk is poured in
between them. They are then
screwed together until the light of
the candle becomes visible through
the mass and of course the poorer
and more transparent the milk is,
the sooner this will be the case.
The opinion that light was abso-
lutely necessary to the existence of
lie, which formerly prevailed among
scientific men, has b7en modified by
the view of Agassiz, that the animals
of the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky,
including the blind fish, are abort
ginal inhabitants of their present
abode. Sir Humphrey Davy, who
studied the habitat OF the eyeless
reptiles found in the caves Of the
Austrian province Of GArnlola, came
to the conclusion that these crea-
lures are brought from surface lakes
through assures in the limestone
rocks.
There is a music box at Geneva
that plays tlirty.six tunes with
flute, bell, drum and castinet accom-
paniments. The cost of it com
plete was seven thousand francs, or
about fourteen hundred dollars, the
purchaser to have tie privilege of
naming twelve airs to be arranged
on two of the cylinders that were
blank. The instruments made in
Geneva range from FIVE francs to
sever thousand.' The high priced
ones are in elegant rose wood cases,
but the most OF them are surpris-
ingly low when we consider the
prices at which the smaller boxes are
sod in the United States.
GEORGE ROBINSON, NJ. D., of New
York, has invented a mode of saw
ing or cutting wood without saw or
ak, by electricity. The galvanic cur
rent, when passed owe platinum
wire in sufficient quantity, heats the
wire to a white heat. This wire
thus heated does the work of saw or
AK, without any appreciable muscu.
force. BY arranging the wires
with handles or other means by
it may be guided, any kind of
whether in trees, logs or
may be cut as desired. The
battery need be only of the simplest
lind, as quantity, not intensity, of
urrent is required. A child by this
means may fell the largest tree in
be forest, divide it into logs or cut
into boards, without saw or ak.
A NAN that keeps riches, and en- !
them mot is ike an ass that I