The Middlebury register. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1850-1882, 1880-10-29
TIMELY TOPICS.

.he Holyoke (Mass.) Gasette says:
II Is stated upon excellent authority that
In this neighborhood there Is lady
who has built a house out of fund
made by selling rum to her own hus-
band. He is a drinking man, and 30 his
wife struck the bargain with him that
If he would drink he must agree to buy
all his liquor of her. She thus pocketed
the profit. instead of the regular rum
sellers. Such q plan put into general
practice would build many a home, and
we commend it to all the married
drunkards of the city.
The proof that petroleum sources are
almost worldwide appears to be abund-
ant, and its use would also seem well
nigh coeval with civilization. In one
OF the 1onian islands there is spring
which has yielded petroleum more than
1000 years. The wells of Armenia, on the
banks OF the FARO, were formerly used for
lighting the city of Genoa. in Persia,
too, near the Caspian sea at Baku, nu-
merous springs of petroleum have been
known from the earliest times; and
those of Rangoon, on the Irawaddy, are
said to have yielded before the general
Introduction of petroleum among civil
lied nations, some 100000 hogsheads oil
Oil per annum.
The Nortbwestern Lemberman men
lions an experiment which may have
important results for lumbermen and
grist- millers. Sawdust and bran COM
pressed at little cost into space which
will much reduce the cost OF their
pressed sawdust an eight-penny nail
was driven so firmly that it broke in the
attempt to draw it. Yet the plock was
easily friable. Three pecks Of bran
were compressed into roll six inches
long by six inches diameter, capable OF
enduring much handling, yet easily
broken with the fingers. The process
will probably bring sawdust largely into
use for bedding horses, and will reduce
the cost OF bran to consumers distant
fIom the mills.
Among the patents recently taken out
Is one which claims to be new and
useful mode of producing rain, or pre-
cipitating rain-falls from rain-clcuds," )"
as a protection against drought. The
invention consists in sending balloons
into the cloud regions, carrying torpe-
does and cartridges charged with explo-
sives, and to explode them there by
electric force. 1t is also claimed by the
inventor that not only can rain be pre-
cipitated when it is needed. but that too
great a quantity can be checked in any
given locality by causing the rain-clouds
to be discharged before they have
reached that place. Hdrper's Weekly
suggests that this novel plan, if practi-
cable and successful, might equalize the
droughts and floods in our land.
A London periodical gives some re-
markable railway statistics in the yearly
return bv the board of trade for 1879. In
the United Kingdom the trains have
Travelled 222 OO0, 600 miles, and have car
ried more than SOS, 600. 900 passengers.
With the exception of the Tay bridge
disaster in Scotland, by which seventy
three persons were killed, this enormous
amount OF work has been done with the
loss of only two lives by accidents. And
the number Of persons injured was much
less than in previous years. This speaks
highly for the carefulness of the EN-
ployees on the railroads; but the report
adds that, owing to the negligence and
misconduct of the passengers, eighty
five must be added to the bill of NOR
tality.