Connecticut western news., 1886-06-16
SCIENTIFIC AND INDUSTRIAL.

A new metalloid called "Germal ium " has been added to the list of elements, making the sixty-seventh.
 The curious observation has been made that the cinchona trees growing in the hot-houses of Europe, develop no quinine in their bark.
 A micrcscopist of the Smithsonian In stitution, who has investigated the sub- ject closely; declares there is nothing harmful in the green coloring matter sometimes found in oysters.
 By means of an extremely sensitive 'thermo- electric calorimeter," French physiologist is enabled to measure the heat liberated by cold -blooded, animals, such as frogs and fishes, and even by in sects and larvp.
 The oil of an African bamboo is re- ported by Catholic missionaries to be an excellent lubricator, and, when refined, to form a fair substitute for olive oil in the cuisine. Its preparation bids fair to become an important industry in the French Congo region.
 Tobacco blindness is becoming a com mon affiiction. At present there are sev- eral persons under treatment for it st one London hospital It first takes the form of color blindness, the sufferers who have smoked themselves into this condi- ton being quite unable to distinguish the color of a piece of red cloth held up before them. Sometimes the victim loses his sight altogether. Although smoking is to large extent the cause of the malady, heavy drinking is also partly responsible.
 The people of Siberia bless the snow on account of the result, which is a fer tilized soil; but the Canadians, more scientific, if not less grateful, say that snow in descending, especially in falling slowly, contracts from the atmosphere | carbon di-oxide gas, and other impurities | dangerous to human life. From its porosity a free entry of these gases is aa- mitted to the seeds lying in the unfrozen earth beneath, which require their in auence in their germination, and as the snow melts are washed into the soil.
 Plant growth is always accompanied by the consumption of food, and in no starved part of a plant can growth take place by absorption or oxygen, growth stopping when the plant is deprived o1 this. A pretty way to show the libera. ton of carbonic acid as waste product is by planting different seeds in wet moss or sawdust on piece of marble polished by friction and not by the oxalic acio method. Marble is insoluble in pure water, but soluble in slightly aciditieo water, and the tiny growing roots of tht seeds, as they wander over the surface o the marble, leave an autograph. behind in corroded lines, each peculiar to the plant which made it.
 A correspondent in the Farmers Re pie,o says that when riding over thou sands of miles of Russian railways fou years ago he was interested in the system of shrub and tree planting to arres snow at all points where banks could form. The trees are planted twenty-tiv to thirty feet from the rails in five te seven lines, lines five feet apart and thu plants foot and half apart in thu rows. The three inner lines are planted with trees, and the outer ones with con ifers, or shrubs. This system is said tt protect very perfectly the roads durins the gales on the steppes. The snow i whirled in heaps back of and among thu trees and shrubs, and fails to reach thu rails to serious extent.