Sacramento daily record-union., 1883-09-08
SCIENTIFIC NOTES.

| Professor Alexander Graham Bell has de
| voted great deal of time recently to tht
preparation of bibliography of electric
ity, with view to facilitate the labors o.
scientific investigators. He has gathered
in the library at the top of his handsome
home on Scott Circle, Washington, the
titles of 10000 books, pamphlets and short
articles on electricity, and has only begur
the collection.
Bricks impregnated at high tempera
ture with asphalt are being successfully
used in Berlin for street pavement. By
driving out the air and water with heat
bricks will take up from Is to 20 per cent.
of bitumen, and the porous, brittle mate
ial becomes durable and elastic under
pressure. The bricks are then put endways
on beton bed, and set with hot tar. Il
is said that the rough usage which the
pavement made of these bricks will stand
is astonishing.
DR.. Schlieman is very busy in the prep.
aration Of his German and English work
on his last excavations. To Karl Blind he
recently wrote =" Proofs in point of fact
of your views as to the kinship between
Trojans and Thrakians, which latter were
interpreted as belonging to the
Eastern Teutonic race, l have found
near and in the tumulus of Proterilaos,
in the Thrakian Chersonese; for the gar
dens all around, and the tumulus itself are
strewn with fragments of that wonderful
pottery which only occurs in the first and
oldest settlement of Troy and nowhere
else"
From geological paper by NJ. Michaud
on the material collected and observa.
tions made by him in the valley of
the 0goone in Central Africa, some
interesting facts are given. The
temperature is nearly constant at
about 90 Fahrenheit. Maize, manioc, and
tobacco are grown. Although the people
are peaceable they are very brave. The
sheep have no wool, and but very little
hair. In the forests there is a dark, fierce
species of cattle found in great abundance,
probably because the fear with which the
natives regard them allows these animals
to multiply without the restraint of the
chase. There are no indigenous horses in
the region.
A new blasting material is thus de.
scrlbed: Two mixtures are prepared, the
first consisting of 1906 parts of potassium
or sodium bisulphate, IS 60 parts of po.
tassium nitrate and 20 parts of glycerine,
and the second one of 90 to 65 parts of a
chlorate and 45 to so parts of body
rich in carbon. The latter mixture
on igniting produces heat enough to
convert the glycerine in the first mixture
into nitro glycerine, which at once ex-
plodes. The carbonaceous material is sat-
urated with concentrated solutions of the
bisulphate, nitrate, and chlorate. and then
dried. The mass is then mixed with gly-
cerine and made into cartridges.
DIR. Frelize, Brazilian, believes that he
has discovered the yellow parasites in the
blood of yellow fever patients. Expert
ments with some of the germs seem to lead
TO the belief that he is right in some of the
lower animals usually selected for pur-
poses of experiment. What tests
were made seem to prove the same charac-
teristics ss those from the original
fever victim. The doctors explora-
tions appear to prove that these parasitic
germs of death survive in the soil where
the body is b1ried. From such places may
come minute living organisms which can
cause the most mysterious and fatal out
breaks of disease to the individuals en-
gagged in the excavation of old burial
places, but given certain other conditions
al epidemic will appear.