The Abbeville messenger. (Abbeville, S.C.) 1884-1887, 1886-11-23
SCIENTIFIC SCRAPS.

The mean annual rainfall of India, &C.
cording to the Government metcorolo.
gist, is about forty-two inches, varying
from nearly 500 inches ut Cherra Poon.
jee to about three inches at Jacobbabad
In experiments in Berlin, a new dc.
scription of shell, charged with rolls oil
gun cotton, is reported to have produced
such extraordinary destructive effects
that no kind Of defensive works can be
expected to resist it.
A Wisconsin farmer going down a hill
with n load Of hay, locked one of the
wheels of the wagon. The friction Of
the wheel upon the ground struck 6
spark which ignited the hay and started
a fire that required eleven men to cxtin.
guish.
A writer in a French medical journal
proposes that cities be supplied with
fresh country air. A large field in the
country is to be surrounded with a high
wall ana planted with baIsamic trees to
absorb the dust, and the air from this
fed is to be conveyed through pipes
nto every city house.
At the Liverpool exhibition there is o
machine for condensing milk in a vac
uum, a plan preferable to boiling it al
atmospheric pressure, as the flavor is I'm.
impaired. The apparatus consists of q
large globular pan from which the air is
exhausted by an alr-pump. The milk
then rises into it from a reservoir below
and is boiled there, together with the
sugar which is added to condensed milk.
BY observing how fur the sun has to
sink beneath the horizon before the top.
most summit of the air is cut off from its
rays, M. Bravais some years ago deter.
mined the greatest upward limit to be
378, 600 feet, or nearly II miles above
sea level. BY observing the earth's shad.
ow on the moon during eclipses, astrono.
mers had inferred that the atmosphere
must be sufficiently dense to produce
twilight for at least 24o, 900 feet away
from the earth's surface.
According to a noted Russian sc1en-
fist tits a fallacy to assume that the
weight of the brain has any influence
, whatever on the mental faculties. II
ought to be borne in %mind,she says, that
the significance of the brain weight
should depend upon the proportion it
bears to tho dimensions of the whole
body and to the g of the Individual.
1t is also equally important to know
what was the cause of death, for long
disease and old age exhaust the brain
thus showing the slight significance OF
mere weight.
Some time ago, DR.. Schmidt, Profcsso,
OF Geology at the University of Gratz,
employed several weeks of the carly sum.
mer in artiicially producing and rearing
the bath sponge, and his labors, it ap-
pears, have met with such success as to
induce the Austrian government to adopt
the system along the Adrian and Dalma-
tian coasts. The fact is we'll known, OF
course, that several families of zoophytes
have such great powers of reproduction
that n portion of one will grow and form
on an entire new body. It is this simple
advantage or property which is availcd
of, the process being to cut the sponge
into pieces, fasten each portion to a pile
and immerse it in the aea The p;ocao
then grow, and eventually from each one
a spherical sponge is Obtained. Accord.
ing to the statistics published, a small
piece of sponge at the end of three year.
will represent a value of about ten cents.
The total cost of raising four thousand
sponges in the three years is said to real.
ize to the grower the very fair profit OF
some $50.