Richland beacon. [volume] (Rayville, La.) 1869-1890, 1888-07-21
SCIENTIFIC AND INDUSTRIAL

Paper railway cars are suggested as a
posslb .lty of the near future.
Leather is being made waterproof bv a
A steel car-wheel is expected to run
$4,000 miles. but very few of them ever
! make that distance
Science has not explained why a base.
ball IN own 10y a pitcher curves in so
many different ways.
English chemists have made tine n.
teresting discovery that ilourine will
dissolve metal of any sort; even gold.
Tin-ware is made of sheets of iron
covered with a thin coating of tin, by
dipping them into melted tin. Bride
Is. small nails, ETC., are timed in the
same way.
Railways are said to consume more
than half of the worlds production of
iron, the IL, 600. 00J car wheels required
in the United States alone taking more
than 1000, 900 tons.
The average age of all the people in
France is given as thrty-two years two
months and fifteen DAYS The average
in the United States is only twenty four
years ten months and twenty. four days.
1t has been asserted that the rotation
Of the wind in "a cyclone is always from
right to left, or against the hands of
clock, in the Northern Hemisphere, while
the rotation is directly opposite in the
Southern.
A scientist has discovered a curious
regularity in the geographical distribu-
tion of certain virtues and vices. In
Temperance is found north Of the forty
eighth PARALLEL; amatory alterations
south of the forty-fifth; financial ex-
travagance in large seaports thrift in
pastoral highland regions.
A series of experiments lately made by
a French machinist are said to have
proved that steel loset weight by rust
twice as rapidly as cast iron when ex-
posed to most air. Aci3ulated water
was found to dissolve cast iron much
more rapidly than steel. From this it
would seem that steel bridges ar,- less af-
fected by the acids contained IN the
smoke OF the locomotives than are iron
ones.
The attention of the French Academy
of Sciences has been drawn by NJ. Faye,
the EN- ncnt astronomer, to the apparent
geological law that the cooling of the
terrestrial crust goes on more rapidly
under the sea than with land surface.
From this he argues that the crust must
thicken under oceans at a more rapid
rate, so as to give rise to a swelling up
and distortion of the thinner portions of
ha in lie ho
tion of mountain chains.
1t has generally been believed that the
reduction in average height of French
soldiers which followed Napoleon's wars,
due. of course, to the immense slaughter
in those campaigns, made all of those
soldiers the shortest in Europe. But,
according to high medical and mill
tary authority in Russia, the minimum
height of the Russian and the French
conscript is about equal-fve feet; while
in most other European countries the
minimum ranges from five feet one inch
to five feet three inches.
Thr Spanish correspondent of the
Porgres -MHi'aire reports that General
Pando, who has been experimenting for
some time, has invented new projectile,
which will probably be applicable to
guns up to twenty-four centimetres.
The principle of the new shells depends
upon the reaction OF two substances, both
liquid, or one liquid and the other
solid, which, separated, are harmless,
but which, being brought together by
the shock of the projectile striking any
object, cause violent explosion. AL
though General Pando keeps the nature
of his explosive secret, several substances
are known which act in the manner de-
scribed, and this property has been made
use of in the ''land torpedoes' of the
Italians at Massowah, in Hart's explo-
sive cartridges and in some mining
powders used in this country.