The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1850-1873, 1873-07-04
CURIOUS AND SCIENTIFIC.


: pears to have been demonstrated thI
l meteors, before they encounter the n
tarding influence of the earth's atmo
! phere, often move with a velocity sev
{ eral times that of a cannon ball, at th
, instance of its discharge. If a canno
{ ball, could be made to move with sue
velocity, ID would almost instantly b
} destroyed, disappearing in a streak {
| flame. Meteors which enter the atmos
} phere at any considerable angle from
direct line toward its center are defiecte
from their course, and soon move fror
its influence. Such is, no doubt, tn
case with many which are seen to fiji
across the sky while many which ente
in direct line are dissipated into i'm
palpable gases before passing half tn
distance from the solar bounds of tn
atmosphere to the earth, or reach tn
earth in state of impalpable dust.
Hands are infinitely varied. Thei
shape, tint, the nails, length, width
rOundness, are as different as individu
ais. There are hands that seem intel
lectual in their symmetry, beautiful
fiexibility and grace of motion. Som,
are soft and voluptuous, and other,
precise, striking and brilliant. The
form of the hand often expresses the
capabilities of the person to whom il
belongs. The strong palms, conicaI
| fingers and small thumb indicate in wo.
men Incidence, fancy and feeling. The
| square hands belong to the intellectual
and ambitious, and those who love in.
fuence and rule. The small, soft, al.
most feshless hands, but rosy and with
knotted fingers, are brilliant and witty.
Fingers delicately squared at the ends,
| like those of English women, love domes-
| tic life. The small thumb and fingers,
broadening at the ends, desire activity
and practical knowledge of the world.
| There are smooth and knotted fingers
to the first belongs grace, to the second
reason. COnical hands with pointed
| fingers obey inspiration and worship
the beautiful in painting, poetry, ro-
nance and nature. There are soft
hands more capable of tenderness than
of love, and "delicate fingers that are
formed of sensitiveness and sympathy
of touch, and made to minister to pain
and grief :" hard hands that know not
tenderness, but are not ignorant of love !;
trough hands that the heart teaches
and guides and softens.
THE TRANSIT OF VENUs.-In June,
1859, a company of English astronomers
sailed from London, IN the specially
appointed ship, the Endeavor, and in
remote and widely sundered regions of
the globe, scanned, by detachments,
the face Of the sun, to note the pith,
across its glowing sierra, of a little
black spot, which might, to an untu-
tored eye, have seemed a chance speck,
a mere mote. In less than the space of
three years from this date, il Decem-
Der, 1874, there will be another transit
of Venus, and the Importance of it to
science may be measureably estimated
by consideration of the fact that the
British government has appropriated a
sum exceeding fifty thousand dollars
for the equipment of various expedi-
tions of learned men and scientific ex-
perts to take the closest possible cogni-
zance of its progress and phases. These
expeditions will doubtless go to the re-
mote zones of our globe, to Hawaii
on the one hand, and on the other to
Crozet Island, or Mauritius, in order to
obtain favorable views of the transit.
1t will happen, not as IL the last his
torical account of it, in the "leafy june"
but in the dead of our winter; and ex-
treme northern points, otherwise most
desirable for sentinels, will be very
bleak, and perhaps utterly inaccessible.
In the antartic latitudes, also, there
will undoubtedly present themselves
formidable barriers to the enterprise.
A hundred thousand dollars will not
cover the cost of scientific observations
of this unusual event. The observers,
as the fruit OF toll, perilous exposure,
patient waiting at some points for
months, will see, generally, a small
round disk of intense blackness, which
is the unillumined hemisphere of We
nus. impinge upon the suns glowing
border, and occupy four hours,
more or less by minutes, according to
the observers position, in accomplish
ing its procession across the disk, when
the little pageant will come to an imme-
diate close
CHEMICAL Ice MACHINES. The fact is
a familiar one, that an intense cold Is
obtained when salt is mixed with snow
or pounded ice, owing to the strong
tendency which salt possesses to dis
solve in water, which forces, as it were,
the ice to liquify, in order to procure
water to the salt. If solid be forced
to Gquify or melt, without giving it the
heat necessary as latent heat for this
liquifacation, it will take this heat from
the sensible heat, which will then
diminish as it will become latent in the
liquid, this sensible heat being the only
kind the thermometer indicates. A
similar effect is produced when dissolv-
ing other salts in water or any other
liquid, the descent of temperature being
very different according to the nature
of the substances. Thus five parts of
sal ammoniac and five parts nitrate of
potassa dissolved in sixteen parts of
cool water will cause the temperature
to descend about 20 degrees. Nine
parts of phosphate of soda dissolved
into four parts diluted nitric acid will
cause a descent of temperature of fifty
degrees. Six pounds of sulphate of
soda gradually dissolved in five pounds
of hydrochaloric acid will cause such a
descent of temperature that it will
freeze from five to six pounds of water
in the course of one hour. The most
remarkable mixture of this kind, and
producing the most intense cold, is the
following: Two or three pounds of
chloride of lime is heated until it forms
q porous mass, and is powdered and
passed through a sieve, by which opera
tion it absorbs just enough moisture
as is necessary to cause it quickly to
dissolve in wet and it is then mixed
with half its amount of snow, in
wooden vessel placed in a mixture of
snow and salt. In the interior of this
cooling mixture mercury or ether may
be frozen when properly introduced.
When this powdered chloride of lime is
dissolved in half or two-thirds its
amount of cold water it will easily
freeze water when introduced into the
mixture in a proper vessel, and this, it
is thought, may finally be found a
cheaper freezing mixture for ice ma
chimes than. any of the common ones
now in use, as by simple evaporation
the original salt may be regained. The
evaporation of amonia is, perhaps, most
frequently used for accomplishing this
object; and there is a German machine
constructed on this principle, which,
with the aid of three men and an en-
gine of three-horse power, manufactures
], 200 pounds of ice per hour.
Marrying an Actress.
In the winter of 1888 a party of
bright and lively Young people had as