The Eaton Democrat. (Eaton, Ohio) 1875-1903, 1879-03-13
POPULAR SCIENCE.

a SMALL quantity of ~salicylic acid is
found to stop termination altogether.
Picnic acid only suspends it.
DIR. HALEY says that the total evap-
Grafton caused by the rays of the sun
on the surface of the Mediterranean sea
amounts to So, SOC, 100000 tons of water
in n summer day.
FROM the debris of the coal mines
France makes annually 100000 tons of
excellent fuel, and Belgium 5000 10
tons. In England, where there is not so
much waste in coal mining, and where
coal is much cheaper, the manufacture
of artificial fuel is only about 100000
tons a year. Germany makes fuel, for
the most part, from peat and similar
earths.
PORK differs from beef and mutton,
not in flavor only, but in the larger pro-
portion of fat to lean flesh. This is due
both to the nature of the animal, in its
tendency to store up fat, and to the habit
of SO feeding and treating it that this
tendency may be fully developed. The
pig stores up in its body three times more
of its food than the OK, and by SO much
is it more cheaply and quickly grown
and fattened.
M. GoPPERT says that no matter how
carefully writing has been obliterated,
enough traces of the iron oxide Of the
ink will remain to appear in a photo
graph of the paper written upon. The
light reflected from virgin paper acts
differently on Photographic materials
from that reflected from parts which
have formerly been covered with ink,
even though the eye may not be able to
detect any difference. M. Goppert thinks
that the ge~nuineness of a document may
always be tested by photography.
VEGETABLEphysiologi used to think
that leaves absorbed dew and rain until
q Frenchman named Duchartre, in 1857,
reversed this view, and his opinion was
adopted by botanists. Practical garden
ers, however, have never been convert
ed, and they freely syringe their plants
under certain conditions. And now the
Rev. Mr.. Denslow, in England, has, after
many experiments, concluded that dew
is not absorbed at night, but that alb
sorption takes place at sunrise, when
Transportation is begun, and the water on
the leaves is sucked in.
In his "True Law of Population"
Doubleday points out that Populations
are universally found thin in pastoral
countries where the food is chiefly ami
NAL; denser where it is mixed; still
denser where vegetable but plenteous;
densest of all where it is vegetable and
scarce" The natural inference is that
in the plethoric state productiveness is
arrested, while in the deplethoric it is
reinvigorated. In the poorest times
Irish families subsisting on potatoes and
meal averaged seven, against five in En-
gland and three in France. In rice
eating countries The population is dense.
A PARIS physician has discovered a
soporifc which he declares to be innocf
uous, and which has the virtue of being
limitable in the duration of its effects
at ones pleasure. The time during
which a given dose will operate can be
calculated to within ten minutes of the
actual figure. Thus, a traveller with two
hours and a halfs journey before him
might feel perfectly safe in taking a
two hours dose, or even a two hours
and twenty minutes, though the last
might be a little dangerous. The in
ventor, who, throughout his expert
ments, had railway travelling in his
mind, arranges the doses in "miles," or
rather kilometres. OF course, its COM
nosition is q secret IT. hos already
been tried by a number of the physi-
clans patients, who allowed themselves
to be experimental on. They pro-
nounce it agreeable to the taste, having
something of the flavor of chartreuse,