The Hickman courier. [volume] (Hickman, Ky.) 1859-current, 1881-06-24
SCRAPS OF SCIENCE.

THE deepest known worked mine is :,
Australia shaft having been snni-
5000 feet.
4 MEMBER of the French Academv &c
Sciences has discovered well mortoi
sexual differences in eels.
SPECIMENS of fossil woods and lionito
are reported to have been brought re- a.
surface from the depth of I9l feet Will
boring an artesian well at Galveston
Texas.
EXPERIMENTS at Woolwich have dem
onstrated that the transmission of dot
nation from one mass of gun cotton h
another not III contact is so rapid that n
row of gun cotton reaching from London
to Edinburg could be fired in two
minutes.
REPLYING to the question whether ar
not our ancestors We're acquainted with
the peculiar physical condition known To
us ms somnambulism, DR.. Reynard. of
Paris, said in a 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.
RossETrI has found that the tempora-
ture of the positive carbon of the elect
ric arc is between ? 100 degrees and
5000 degrees centrigrade, and that Of
the negative carbon between 1890 de
grees and 3, 900 degrees, making, there
fore, the temperatures of the extreme
points of the electrodes not below 2. 800
degrees and 200 degrees.
EXPERIMENTS have been made on ami
mails with pure hydrocianic acid by NJ.
Brame. The bodies Of those killed with
1t remained unaffected by decomposition
for about a month During that time
the acid remained IN the tissues, and
especially IN the stomach 1t could be
easily settled to distillation. but much
more readily from the tissues Of herbiv-
orous than of carniverous animals.
IL communication to the St. Peters
burg Technical Society, Prof. BeilsteIn
recommends the use of sulphate OF
alumnia as the best practical dlslnfec-
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 carbolic acid for destroy
ing the smell of the matter 70 be dlsln-
fected.
A SCIENTIST in the BfaqaziBe Of Phar-
HldcY 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
aud valuable knowledge can De gained
by the examination Of waters" as 10 their
purity or impuIIty.
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 10 allay the general
outcry by stating that copper arsenite is
not a 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 o
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 a
notable dIminutiou in weight.