The Forest Republican. [volume] (Tionesta, Pa.) 1869-1952, 1885-09-02
SCIENTIFIC AND INDUSTRIAL.

Disease germs are probably much less
affected by extreme cold than might be
expected. Experiments have been re-
ported to the Glasgow philosophical
society in which 100 degrees below,zero
was insufficient to stop processes of pu-
trefaction.
A remarkable property of the ice
plant is its absorption of salt, a fluid ex-
uded by its leaves having been found to
contain about thirty-three per cent. of
sea salt. For this reason it is suggested
that the plant may be advantageously
grown on lands made unproductive by
an excess of salt.
Professor Young says when you con.
slider the brightness of the suns surface
you find it to be about $50 times as
bright as one Of our calcium lights, and
about four times as bright as the bright.
est OF the points in one of our electric
lights. The electric light is very bright,
but the solar surface is about four times
as bright as that.
Recent Investigations show that at
Hockst-on-t -the-Main, while aniline is
poisonous, none of the men employed in
the aniline works who became i'll died,
and those who have been engaged in the
magenta house eighteen years, though
reddened with the dye even to the inside
oil the mouth. were not in bad health.
Men employed in lead works, accord
ing to the London Mining journal, who
eat largely of fat meat and other fatty
matters, are much less susceptible to
lead poisoning than others. At an es-
tablishment on the Continent, where a
great deal of work was done, there were
the usual attacks of poisoning, but a
change in the food-cheese, butter,
bacon, pork, lard and similar articles
being thereafter the principal diet-soon
put an end to the attacks, and no one
was troubled with lead collie for more
than fifteen years. The free use of
milk is said to have tho same effect.
The wood OF the cork elm is heavier
and stronger than that of the white elm
or slippery elm. 1t is close grained,
susceptible of fine polish, and useful for
agricultural implements. wheel stock,
bridge timbers, etc. 1t is quite distinct
in form from the other elms, and deserves
to be planted largely for ornament and
use. 1t ranges from Southwestern Yer
mont through Western New York, On
tario and Southern Michigan to Iowa,
and South through Ohio and Central
Kentucky, reaching its best development
in the southern peninsula of Michigan.
The ordinary dwellings of the Japan
ese are not firmly attached by founda-
tions to the earth, but rest loosely on
squared stones or boulders buried in the
ground, the result of which is to par
TALLY prevent the transmission of mo-
mentum from earthquakes. An English
man has made an improvement on this
plan and rests the house at each of its
piers upon a handful of cast-iron shot.
These shot, of the size of buckshot, so
increase the frictional resistance to roll-
ing that the house is practically astatic,
and the motion is in most earthquakes
only about one-tenth of what it is out
side.
The new process of sugar making
brought forward in Berlin by Trobach is
purely chemical, differing materially
from the mechanical process now in use.
This method dispenses with crushing
and pressing altogether. The cane is
cut into slices by means of machinery,
and the water extracted from it by alco-
hol vapor, which having an affinity for
the water, absorbS it, but leaves the
saccharine in the dessicated cane; this
is then treated with liquid alcohol, which
extracts the sugar, and afterward the
sugar is extracted from the alcohol, or
the alcohol from the sugar, by filtering
through lime and chalk. The effect, it
is said, will be to cheaper the cost of
sugar.