The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-01-07
Complied Tor zAe ArkonsaW TraveIer. SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.

An Egllsh chemist has devised an economical process of retaining soap from washing solutions.
 In Germany very nearly twelve pounds of sugar are now made from a hundred pounds of beets, the cost of the product being only two cents per pound.
 In visits to nearly forty tribes of American Indians, Dr. J. $. Newberry has found twenty three kinds of native vegetable products included in the h. dian dietary, besides a great variety of nuts and vegetables.
 At French agricultural school wheat is soaked in acetate of lead so- lution six hours before sowing. The seed is said to germinate more quickly and grow more vigorously than wheat subjected to any other fertilizing treatment.
 PROGRESS OF DENTAL CARIEs.-Rus- sian observations have shown that teeth decay in a quite regular order, the lower third molar being the first attacked, then the upper, then the lower fourth molar, and so on, the lower incisors and canine teeth being the last affected. Upper teeth as rule are more durable than lower, right than left, those of dark persons than those of blondes, those of short persons than those of the tall. PARLoR PHYsICs.-An astonishing experiment may be performed with no apparatus but piece of string five or six feet long. A persons hands being held over his ears, this string is passed around his head by another person, who holds both ends in one hand, and by drawing the fingers or nails of the other hand over the cord, produces upon the tympanum of the subject impressions of almost startling intensity. Sharp peals of thunder, changing into distant and prolonged rumbling, are effects that may readily be given.
 DIAMOND BEARING METEoRs. bon has now been yielded by meteor ties in three stages of development. Uncrystallized graphite has long been known as a constituent of meteoric irons and stones, and graphite crystals were recently found ill a meteoric iron from western Australia, while the re- port has just been made that small diamond corpuscles have been ob- tained from meteoric stone which 1 fell in Russia in 1886. It is suggested that these discoveries may point out the road to the artificial production of the diamond.
 PETROLEUM FoRMATIoN.-The the- ory is held by Prof Mendcleef that petroleum is not of animal or vegetable origin, as is generally supposed, but is produced by water which penetrates the earth's crust and comes in contact with glowing carbides of metals, es- pecially of iron. The oxygen uniting with the iron, while the hydrogen takes up the carbon and ascends to a higher region, where part of it is con- densed into mineral oil, and part re- mains as natural gas to escape wher- ever and whenever it can ind an out let. If this assumption is correct, and sufficient store of metallic car bides is contained ill the earth's in- terior, petroleum may continue to be formed almost indefinitely and yield a supply of fuel long after the coal has become exhausted. Prof. Mendeleet supports his views by producing arti- ficial petroleum in a manner similar to that by which he believes the natural product is made.
 THE PROBLEM OF THE BooMERANG.- Some German scientists, seeking to discover the secret of the boomerang's flight, lately caused party of Aus tralian natives to give an exhibition of boomerang throwing at Munster. The instruments used were of two- sizes, the larger being slender cres- cent about two feet long, two and quarter inches wide, and quarter of an inch thick, made of an extraordi- narily heavy Australian ironwood. This boomerang was jerked up into the air about hundred yards, when it flew straight away, then turned to the left and returned in curved line to the thrower, whirling around con- stantly and whizzing unpleasantly. One badly directed projectile fell through spectators hat with cut as clean as that of a razor. A Weinar manufacturer, who has made some 11,000 toy boomerangs, believes that the mystery of the shape lies in a sharper curvature in the middle, with unequal length of the two arms, which must be made of equal weight by un- equal thickness. The peculiarity of motion is due to the difference in the length of the arms, which diverges the curve of rotation from the circu- lar.
 THE CAT TNBE-The true cats are embraced by the genus Felts, which includes some fifty of the species. 1 These are distributed oyer avery nnr-