The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-07-07
Compiled for The ArkosSaW Traueier. SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.

COneptte0 TOT The ArkosaS0U TrdOeIeT.
 SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.
 Dr. Meunier mentions a case in which rats became tuberculous from eating the cast-off poultices of an in- firmary.
 In France specially prepared wood pulp is rapidly supplantiDg plaster of paris in the manufacture of all kinds of building ornaments.
 A list of the contents of the five royal botanic gardens of Ceylon has been compiled. It embraces about three thousand species, mostly trees and shrubs.
 A remarkable photo-engraved chart of the Pleiades, showing 2,326 stars from the third to the seventeenth magnitude, has been produced at the Paris observatory.
 Coal Is now found in about thirty different states of the Union and seven territories. In 1887 the little state of Rhode Island supplied 5000 tons out of the total product of 123, ,965, ,255 tons.
 A London company is reported to have secured patents for the chemical production of aluminium, sodium and potassium; and to be able to manu- facture aluminium at considerably less than one shilling per pound.
 A patented material said to have all the properties of lignum vita is pre- pared in Leipsic, by M. Stockhardt, from ordinary soft wood. The wood is first impregnated with oil, then Subjected to great pressure, causing considerable increase in density.
 Last year Algeria was ravaged by swarms of grasshoppers, which have been succeeded this season by a kind of cricket, not identical with either grasshoppers or locusts. The crickets form clouds hiding the sun, and are reported to have stopped railway trains.
 There are now in operation, accord ing to MT. W. H. Preece, twenty-two electric tramways in the United States, ten on the continent of Europe and eight ill Great Britain. MT. Preece predicts that the time is not far dis tant when electricity will have come into general use in place of horses for the cars of city streets.
 Quite number of cases of "smokers' vertigo" have been investigated by Dr. Decaisne. Of sixty-three patients, forty nine were between fifty and sixty six years of age. More than half of them suffered also from digestive troubles, sleeplessness, palpitations. etc. In most cases the symptoms dis appeared on removal or abatement of the cause, while thirty three out of thirty-seven cases in persons who ha- bitually smoked on an empty stomach, it was only necessary to refrain from smoking before eating.
 ASTEROIDS AS CoMETs.-Prof. Dan- iel Kirkwood points out that seven of the twenty known comets of short De- riod have disappeared, either bv breaking into fragments, like BilIa's comet, or by the transformat tion of the orbit by the influence of Jupiter. as in the case of Lexell's comet. He had already given reasons for thinking that two of the short period comets were asteroids drawn from their orb- its by Jupiter's attraction, and he now advances evidence tending to show that the entire twenty were originally small planets.
 FLAME PRIsMs.-Prisms are made of glass and other refracting solids and fluids-like carbon bisulphide-en- closed in glass; and they give spectra corresponding to the light dispersi pg powers of the material. A. Winkei- mann has lately gone further, making curious prisms of flame by using Bun sen burners of triangular section. He has thus been able to learn that light passes unaltered through prism of ordinary flame, and that an anomalous dispersion is given when the flame is charged with sodium or potassium vapor, though no effect has been ob- served when other vspors are intro duced.
 SOME ALLOYS OF GoLD.-A new al- Toy of gold and platinum, upon which MT. w. c. Roberts Au sten has been engaged for some time, takes tire on being thrown into water, and the gold is released as black powder, differing from ordinary geld in its property of readily forming auric hydride. This abnormal form of gold, which becomes normal metallic gold on heating, is said to have been long utilized by the l Japanese. They obtain it from its al- | Joy with copper, with which they form ornamental metallic designs upon knife handles, etc., and then release the dark-colored gold by pickling | process. In this way, they have pro- duced an appearance of transparency | in a metallic representation of water, | at place where in the design duck was represented plunging half its