The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1880-08-07
SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY.

CREMATION appears to be making
rapid progress in Germany. Fifteen
cremations were performed last year at
Gotha, and forty-eight bodies have been
burned in Milan during the past three
years.
EXPERIENCE has shown at the Petro-
leum Iron-works, Titusville, Pa, that
barrel of petroleum will generate heat
sufficient for making a ton of iron, while
ton and quarter of coal would be re-
quired for the same result.
M. MELsENs, of Paris, recommends,
for the protection of workmen handling
lead and mercury compounds, small
daily doses of iodide of potassium. This
salt, he says, dissolves the lead or mer-
curial compounds and effects their re-
moval.
FROM the fact that the lower animals
arrive at maturity much earlier than
man, and the inferior races of men de-
velop more rapidly than the superior, a
French biologist infers that precocity
indicates low order of development.
WHEN the system begins to need nu-
triment, it sends fluid from every por-
ton of the body toward the stomach,
the diStension of which causes the SEN
sation of hunger; the fuller they be-
come the more hungry we are.
BY the use of mixture of carbonate
and sulphate of soda, DIR. Calantariento,
of Scarborough, England, has been able
to make a new skating surface, which
costs far less than the ordinary artificial
ice floors, and which can be readily re-
paired. When it is once laid it will re-
main serviceable for years.
A BILL has been introduced into the
local Legislature of Montreal to incor-
porate company to construct tunnel
between the north and south banks of
the st. Lawrence at that city. The tun-
mel is to be used by provincial and
American railways, as well as by We
hicles and pedestrians. The capital is
$5,000,000. Five years will be required
for the completion of the work, if it is
ever begun. The Grand Trunk is Of
fering vigorous opposition in the inter-
est of Victoria Bridge, of which it has
monopoly, and charges such high tolls
that other means of outlet from the city
are absolutely necessary.
DIR. EDWIN ANDREW, of Shrewsbury,
Eng, has pointed out the advantages
in certain surgical and medical cases of
employing indicated ice. He thought
the cold was rendered more effective by
being combined with the active princi-
pies of drugs and by freezing various
medical solutions. In that manner ice
might be rendered highly antiseptic,
caustic or styptic. In medical cases,
especially of the throat, stomach and
hemorrhages from internal organs, ice
might be thus pleasantly used to relieve
symptoms, and at the same time convey
medicine as food to the stomach, when
the latter would resist them in any other
way
DIR. LANDoTT, Assistant Director of
the Ophthalmological Laboratory of the
Sorbonne, Paris, has lately invented an
instrument for measuring the distance
to inaccessible objects. 1t is, in fact,
telemeter, and generally resembles the
heliometer in principle, but differs there
from in the fact that the mensuration
is obtained by doubling the image of the
object. This is effected by simpler
means than in the heliometer, and con-
sequently the instrument can be more
readily applied to practical purposes.
By this means the diameter of a rod at
the top of a lofty building can be gagged
to a hundredth part of a millimeter, and
the distance of an inaccessible object in
motion can be easily ascertained. 1t is
expected that the instrument will be of
great use in military operations.