West Virginia argus. [volume] (Kingwood, W. Va.) 1877-1946, 1889-03-28
SCIENTIFIC AND INDUSTRIAL.

Practice in looking at distant objects
improves the eyesight.
The crab is adancing insect, and four.
ffths Of its moves are made TO amuse
itself.
Seymour, Ind, has the largest wooden
butter dish mill. Its capacity is 45O, 600
per day.
Steel rails now weigh 100 pounds to
the yard, an increase from ffty.six
pounds.
A Bangor, (Me.) firm recently shipped
1000, 600 feet of spool wood to Scotch
threadmakers.
New England makes 100, 900, 900 of
the 16O, OOO,0 900 pairs OF shoes used In
the States annually.
The Russian Government has decided
to plant several thousands of acres in the
Caucasus with olives.
OF the threads spun by the full grown
spider 10, 900 are not equal in substance
to the size of single hair.
Pulp mills have so multiplied in Maine
that there Is fear of an over-supply un-
less new mills are put up to turn the
pulp into paper.
The Baldwin Locomotive Works last
year built 1877 locomotives, the largest
number ever turned out in one year by
any establishment.
The process of electric bleaching now
used in the big paper plants is from forty
to seventy per cent. cheaper than the use
OF chloride OF lime.
DIR. Caro- Cuban chemist aud pro.
lessor In the Havana University, has dis
COVQFp6 n hu ~.wl;o6 Ill
ton In wines is Immediately detected.
Thirty years ago there we're near one
hundred lightning-rod factories in the
United States. Now there are but four,
yet they turn out as many rods as came
from their so numerous predecessors.
The most valuable marble mines in
America are at Tate, Pickens county. Ga.
New England capitalists own more than
1000 acres there, and are rapidly grow
ing richer by the extending use of their
product.
The Paris Academy of Science is lust
now excited over plant called Colocssia.
This plant often exhibits a trembling or
vibrating motion without any appar-
ent cause, and as many as 100 or 1870 vi
brations have been observed in a single
minute.
At the intelligence bureau of the
United States Navy Department large
map shows by colored tags the present
location of the worlds war vessels.
which include about $50 belonging to
Great Britain, 100 to France, 40 to
Germany, and 40 to the United States.
One of Scotland's rare marshy plants.
genus of the order of arrow grasses.
has, according to Professor Hiilhouse,
become extinct. 1t was to be found
only on the moor of Methven in Perth
shire; but some 300 or 400 black headed
gulIs have settled down on this moor
and annihiliated every trace of vege.
tation.
Some electric motors made by M.
Irouve for 0ronautical experiments ore
remarkable for their lightness. One
made OF aluminium, except the magnets
weighs but a little more than three
ounces, aud develops One-fortieth of
horse power, lifting itself seventy-two
feet in one second. Constructed on the
same scale, one-horsc motor would
weigh less than eight pounds
Experiments are, it is stated, being
made on the Prussian railways with
axle-boxes In which the bearing surface
consists of sheets of vegetable parch-
mehI SET on suSe, ana strongly COM
pressed together. The fabrication of
these bearings is said to be very perfect,
as, owing to the capillary attraction be.
tween the different sheets, the whole
becomes thoroughly saturated with oil.
There is a water wheel in use at Bow
doinham, Me-, which is probably tn only
one ofits kind in existence It is twenty
seven feet diameter, with foot of its
rim out of water at high tide; the spokcs
are wide aud set diagonally, like the
vanes of a windmill. 1t turns eighteen
hours of the day by tide power, running
one way with the flow, the other with
the ebb. With one foot fall of tide this
wheel gives about fifty horse power.
At recent meeting of the Royal So
ciety Of Edinburgh, Professor TAFT
showed theoretically that water could
be compressed to about three fourths of
its original bulk. The compressibility
of sea water is 90 of that of fresh
water. II the water of the ocean were
suddenly to be ONE incompressible,
four per cent. of the habitable land of
the globe would be submerged, because
the mean depth of water would be in
croaood nc foak