Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-06-07
THE MILK OF A TREE.
Balata Found to Be a Very Good Sub
stitute for Gutta Percha.
LIBRARIES ON THE RAILROADS.
New Photography Which win ReprOducs
ColOrs on Screen.
A L1FEBoAr MADE OF STEEL TUBING
WRITTEN FOR THE DIsPArcH.l

WRITTEN FOk THE DiorAICn.J
The threatened failure in the supply Of
gutta percha has caused considerable an1-
iety among the manufacturers Of goods in
which it is employed, and they are now
turning their attention to balata as sub
stance that will meet many of the require
ments of their trade. Balata is the solidi-
fed milk of the bullet tree, one Of the most
striking objects in West Indian forest, or
on the banks of North American rivers
Balata collecting is a paying trade, al
though the life of the collector is hard
one. The ground he traverses is often wet
and swampy. In many cases he has to
wade long distances knee deep in water,
which may at any moment be up to his arm
pits. When the collecting ground is not
far distant, women accompany the men and
cook or assist in laying out the calabashes
and collecting the milk, while the men fell
andTing the trees.
The collectors..sen the milk to the agents,
and never dry it themselves. The price for
pure milk is 81 gallon, and for clean, well
dried balata Is cents pound. With fair
weather man can earn from 81 to So day
during the season, and an industrious and
expert collector has been known to make
$50 in three days The milk is dried by be-
ing exposed to the air in shallow wooden
trays, the inside of which are previously
rubbed with oil, soap or grease so as to pre-
vent the balata sticking. This product COM
mands higher price than gutta percha, to
which it is in many respects superior In
point of fact it has been the practice among
manufacturers to treat it as better class Of
gutta percha, and its name has consequently
never been prominent.
Automatic Railway Library.
An English journal states that the travel
ing English public have taken very kindly
to the penny-in-the-slot machines which
have of late come into general use in rail-
way stations in England, and the percent
age of loss by fraud or willful damage to the
various dispensers of matches, candles,
scents or other articles, is stated by the
companies interested to be remarkably low.
This fact has an important bearing upon
new enterprise in the same direction, which
is about to be carried out on an extensive
scale A company, under the style of the
Railway and General Automatic Library,
| Limited, has been formed, having for its OBJ
iect the furnishing the travelling public with
healthy literature, while passing from place
| to place, for the moderate sum Of 1 penny
per volume Boxes to the number of 1885,
| 600 have already been contracted for, and
are to be placed in 600 hotels, and in the
carriages of II railways, while 81 steamship
companies have agreed to allow their ships
to be fitted with these automatic Libraries.
The French patent is said to have been sold
for $50, 900, and negotiations are on foot for
the sale of other continental and the
American patents.
Steel Tubular Lifeboat.
Anovelty in hfe-saving apparatus is g
steel tubular lifeboat, which has been built
| for service on the coast of Wales. The
/ length of the boat is 35 feet; BREADTH 10
feet; depth amidships, feet. The hull is
formed of two tubes, which taper gradually
| to a circular section toward the stem and
stern, where they turn inward and upward
| toward each other above the water level,
thus forming one Homogeneous structure.
The hul1s are constructed of mild steel plates
| of 1-16 inch thickness, formed to the re-
/ ouired shape and afterward galvanized. The
| boat is divided by bulkheads into 18 separate
watertight compartments, so that even In
case of partial injury the floating capacity
| can always be relied on. A carriage is also
| provided, which the boat can be launched
| from or conveyed by on land to within the
shortest distance by sea to shipwreek- :,
| Improved Lawn Tennis Marker.
Tennis players will hail with gladness the
advent of tennis lawn. marker, which will
| do its work well and expeditiously. Such
a device has been patented in England, and
/ it consists of vessel to contain the color,
mounted like a wheelbarrow on a running
and marking wheel The delivery aperture
and spout by which the color is conveyed to
the marking wheel are normally closed by q
stopper or valve on a swinging arm, so
| weighted as to automatically swing away
| he vhpu he harrow Snd
In other words, all that is necessary is to
J run the wheel around the lawn, and the
marker, fed by selfregulating supply Of
| color chalks out the courts evenly and
clearly.
| An Easy Way to Silver Glass.
Glass may be silvered by dissolving crys-
talized nitrates of silver in distilled water
and adding ammonia and tartaric acid. It
is necessary to clean very carefully the
glass to be silvered, which is then placed in ,
| a vessel and the solution poured in. The
vessel is next put away in quiet place and
kept at a temperature of 400 to 500 cent?
grade. When the'glass is silvered it may be
carefully washed in a very gentle stream OF
| water, and then dried at moderate heat.
| As the silver would tarnish by exposure to
| the action of the atmosphere, 1T Is adv1sa-
BILE to varnish it. For this purpose, amber,
1
admirable preparation.
| Photography of Colors.
Closely following on M. Lippman Is an
inventor of another system Of photograph
ing in colors, who proceeds on the theory
that there are four primary colors, green,
red, blue and violet He accordingly takss
four distinct postures simultaneously by
means of four lenses, in front of which
respectively is a screen of one of the four
colors named. The negatives are developed
| in the ordinary manner, and in throwing
the pictures on the screen four lenses are
again used, having common focus, each Of
the pictures being projected through
screen of the color originally used. The re-
suit is that a picture is produced which IN
| cludes the colors of the original
Cheapening Gas by Blending.
Blending gas as a means of etfecting
special improvement has, it is well known,
long been used for raising the quality Of
wine, but new application of the process
is now being made. A new method of pro-
ducing gas from oil and mixing the same
with coal gas has been invented In Eng
land. 1t is said that the new process has
wonderful effect in enriching the gas as q
whole. 1t has the further recommendation
of considerahlv cheapeninQ the supply,