The Somerset press. [volume] (Somerset, Ohio) 1873-1977, 1881-06-23
SCRAPS OF SCIENCE.

| The deepest known worked mine is in
| Australia shaft having been sunk
5000 feet.
A MEMBER of the French Academy of
Sciences has discovered well marked
sexual differences In eels.
SPECIMENS of fossil woods and Ignite
are reported to have been brought to the
surface from the depth of 191 feet while
boring an artesian well at Galveston,
| Texas.
EXPERIMENTS at Woolwich have dem
onstrated that the transmission of deto-
nation from one mass of gun cotton to
! another not in contact is SO rapid that q
row of gun cotton reaching from London
to Edinburg could be fred in two
| minutes.
REPLYING to the question whether or
not our ancestors were acquainted with
the peculiar physical condition known to
us as somnambulism, DIR. Reynard, of
Paris, said in recent lecture that one
| of the most accurate descriptions of
somnambulism in existence was the
sleep-walking scene of Macbeth.
Four Jourdan glycerine barometers
are now in use in or near London. One
is at Kew, in the museum of practical
geology, one at South Kensington, and
one in the office of the London Times
The enormous scale of the barometer
enables changes scarcely visible in the
mercurial instrument to be detected with
ease. -s -sa.e
RossErn has found that the tempera-
! ture of the positive carbon of the elect
ric arc is between 2, 400 degrees and
1900 degrees centrigrade, and that of
the negative carbon between 2 500 de-
grees and 9, 900 degrees, making, there
fore, the temperatures of the extreme
points of the electrodes not below 800
degrees and $500 degrees.
EXPERIMENTS have been made on ami
mails with pure hydrocianic acid by NJ.
Brame. The bodies of those killed with
it remained unaffected by decomposition
for about a month. During that time
the acid remained in the tissues, and
especially in the stomach. It could be
easily settled to distillation, but much
more readily from the tissues of herbiv-
orous than of carniverous animals.
In A communication to the st. Peters
burg Technical Society, Prof. Beilstein
recommends the use of sulphate of
alumnia as the best practical disinfec-
tant. He states that the best method
of making the salt for disinfecting pur-
poses is to mix red clay with four per
cent. of sulphuric acid and to add to the
mixture some carbohc acid for destroy
ing the smell of the matter to be disin-
fected. 49,. .5 l...5 s,.
A SCIENTIST in the MagQeine of Phar-
macy asserts. that the usual physico-
chemical methods for determining the
potable nature of water have proved
themselves to be quite insufficient, and
he says that "recourse must be had to
the microscope and to the culture-glasses
used by Psychologists in their inocula-
ton experiments, before any really sound
and valuable knowledge can be gained
by the examination of waters" as to their
purity or impurity. - e~ssssa5
ALARM with indignation has arisen in
Halle regarding tarletans rendered pois-
onous by the introduction of copper
arsenite in their production. DIR. Rel
man has attempted to allay the general
outcry by stating that copper arsenite is
not splendid green color, and as for
such goods as tarletans, Guignet's green,
which contains no arsenic, has quite dis
placed the poisonous Schweinfurt green.
The authority for the statement that
after the extraction of the inter from
gunpowder the residue cannot be dried
at 200 degrees, without slight loss
the sulphur, is Fresenius. Herr A.
Wagner, on the contrary, rises from his
experiments with the conviction that no
such loss has ever been observed at or
below the temperature given. Above
that temperature the residue suffers q
notable diminution in weight.