The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1885-08-05
SCIENTIFIC AND INDUSTRIAL.

DR.. G. f. Saunders, of the West Hcrts
medical association in England, contends
that cholera is transmitted from one To-
cality to another by human agencies
rather than climatic causes. Evidence
of this is the fact that no outbreak has
been known to occur in less time than it
would take man to travel the distance
from the nearest place where the disease
already existed.
Among the new applications of cotton
is its use in part, in the construction Of
houses, the material employed for this
purpose being the refuse, which, when
ground up with about an equal amount
of straw and asbestos, is converted into
paste, and this is formed into large slabs
or bricks, which require, it is said, the
hardness Of stone, and furnish really
valuable building stock.
Professor Tromholt, in Norway, has met
with partial SUCCESS in photo.
graphing the aurora boreals. feat
which his many failures had led him to
pronounce impossible. After exposing
plate for eight and half minutes he
secured n negative OF an aurora. but the
impression is so very faint that it cannot
be reproduced as positive.
A novel use for paper has been found
in the manufacture Of gas pipes. In nd.
dition to being absolutely tight and
smooth, and much cheaper thnn iron,
these pipes are of great strength. for
when the sides are scarcely thrce.6fths
of an inch thick, they will stand pres
sure of more than fifteen atmospheres.
If buried under the ground they will not
be broken by settlement, nor when vic.
lently shaken or iarred. The material
being bad conductor Of heat, the pipes
do not readily freeze.
Sea waves, according to observations
Of the United States naval photographic
officer, show n height OF from forty.four
to forty eight feet. but those Of a height
greater than thirty feet are not COM
monty encountered. The longest re-
corded wave measured half.mile from
crest to crest, with period OF twenty
three seconds. Waves having length
of 500 or GOO feet, and periods of ten to
eleven seconds, are the ordinary storm
waves of the North Atlantic.
DR.. Wormley, in recent work, con-
cludes, as the result of most searching
study of the bloods of forty different
mammals, that "a microscope may ena-
bic us to determine with great certainty
that blood is not of certain animal,
and is consistent with the blood of man;
but in no instance does it in itself enable
us to say that the blood is really human
or indicate from what particular species
of animal it was derived" The state
ment has high medico.legal importance.
The Boston Journal says: "The pure
white light Of the sun is a delusion OF
our senses, according to late scientific
discovery. The true color of the sun is
blue, and becomes white only as We see
it through our atmosphere, which acts
like sort of sieve holding back the ex-
cess of blue in the original sunlight.
Hereafter the scientific poet will sing Of
the blue sunshine sitting through the
leaves from the white sky, and blue
we're her eyes, like the sunbeams fair.
Accuracy and poetry are not incompati'
bic.
While eScavating the bed for q new
and larger gasometer Dumfries (Scot-
land) gas works, the contractor came
upon bed of peat, in which were i'm
beddcd the trunk of Scotch fir, six
feet in height, with the bark upon it;
pieces of elm, oak and hazel, with nuts
and cones, broken antlers, and various
coleopterous remains. Ina quantity of
the moss placed under glass the cram
berry and other plants have begun to
germinate after sleep of centuries. The
spot, which is now in the heart of the
town, is supposed to have formed part
of the bed of lock in prehistoric times,
and three centuries ago mill dam was
constructed at the place which was then
morass. The bed of con3lomerate
on which the peat and other top layers
rect has been found to contain large
fragments of red granite, rock which
is not known to exist in the immediate
vicinity.