Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1886-02-12
SCIENTIFIC AND INDUSTRIAL.

A Belgian treats textile fabrics with an
alcoholic solution of the green tar of the
birch, which he expects to render them
almost indestructible.
The London Lancet SAYS that ''the pres
cnce of heat centre in the brain has
apparently been demonstrated by the OBJ
servations and experiments of Oft, Richet,
Aronsohn and Sachs, though its precise
position is still open to question:
SKINNED milk, according to Professor
L. B. Arnold, is poor food for either in
fants or adults, and is very hard to di-
gest, owing to the removal of the volatile
oil contained in the butter globu,e
which is an important agent in assisting
the digestion of tie lacteal fluid.
The practibility of working coal at
much greater depths than hitherto has
been generally thought possible has been
ably advocated by Mr. W. E.. Garforth,
at a meeting of the members of the Man
chester Geological society. The last gener
alton of colliery managers had expressed
doubts about mining coal at 500 yards.
DR.. Joseph Leidy lately had submitted
to him spongy ice from tie vicinity of
Morristown, N. j., which contained great
quantities of living worms, some an inch
in length. They proved to he "A new
spe lies of lumbricus, to which the COM
mon earth worm belongs. No living or
ganisms have ever Len found within
clear. dense ice, such as is usually served
for drinking purposes.
A mixture of zinc white with zinc
chloride is found to furnish a paint of
great value both for wood and metals, as
it becomes very hard, and can be washed
or brushed without injury, which quail
tics are, of course, of prime importance.
An essential precaution, however, to be
observed in regard to this paint is not to
apply it in rainy or frosty weather, as it
then becomes mealy and scales off.
A notable example of the utilization of
smoke is afforde | in the case of char
coal furnace at Elk Rapids, Mich. In
| this furnace, as stated, are manufactured
fifty tons'of charcoal per day; there are
twenty five charcoal pits, constructed of
brick, each pit being filled with 100 cords
of hard wood, and then fred The vast
amount of smoke thus produced is made
to yield acetate of lime, alcohol, tar and
gas.
In paper on the size of the brain in
extinct animals, Professor Marsh, of Yale
College, has brought forth the remarka-
bic fact that in the race for life during
past ages the survival Of any particular
group of animals depended on the size Of
their brain as compared with that of their
contemporaries of the same class Brains
won then, as now, and the brain of ami
mails crushed out of existence was always
found to be relatively smaller than those
OUTLYING them.
English naval constructors are investi
eating the jarrah wood of western Austria
liza, which is said to resist completely the
attacks of the teredo and all other ami
NAL pests to which timbers planted in salt
water are exposed. This is said to be
due to its containing a highly astringent
acid, something like tannic acid. Jarrah
piles half a century old in Australia are as
yet untouched by tcredo, and engineers
have suggested importing enough of the
wood to wall up the Suez canal. In
Florida the wood of the palmetto is
equally impervious to the boring mollusks
but in this case the fact is due fo the
endogenious grain.