The Bossier banner., 1891-09-03
SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY.

Pennsylvania makes ffty-two out
of every 100 tons of rolled iron in the
United States, and sixty-nine out of
every 100 tons of steel rails.
Professor A. Wouvermann, of
Vienna, in examining the permanence
of watercolors, finds the most unalter-
able to be yellow ochre, terra sienna,
sepia, and various blues; carmine lakes
and the carmines generally bleach al
most into unrecognizability.
-Dr. Grant Bey, a distinguished
Scotchman living in Cairo, has dis
covered that the ancient Egyptians, of
the earliest dynasties used smokeless
light, equal in intensity to our electric
light, for lighting their temples and
prosecuting the fine work in the inte-
rior of their dark tombs
"A skin of a very rare and remarka-
BILE bear-like animal has been brought
from the Chinese province of Kansu to
St Petersburg by two Russian explor-
ers. The only other specimen is in the
Paris museum. 1t lives in Western
China at an elevation of from 10000 to
$4,000 feet, where it inhabits the Bam-
boo thickets, and is known by the ma
tives as the white or spotted bear.
The South Metropolitan Gas Com
pany, of Salisbury, Eng, is conceded
to have the largest gas holder ever con-
structed, and the company is planning
to build one even larger. The one now
in use is about 256 feet in diameter, by
18O feet high, and will contain over
@ 81 "a
| of the new holder will be about IL, 900,
| 600 cubic feet
"A new explosive, ecrasite, has been
added to the number of formidable
agents of modern warfare. Ecrasite is
the invention of two Australian engi-
neers, named Siersch and Kubin. It's
power is stated to be in relation to dyna-
mite as 100 to 20, and the new explosive
is said to be capable of being carried
from place to place with perfect safety.
1t is not smokeless.
DIR. Merriam, of the government ex-
pedition exploring Death Valley in Cal
ifornia, says of the animal life in that
desert of horror that the scorpion
mouse lives almost wholly upon scor-
pions and like delicacies. This lively
mouse knows enough TO keep clear of
the business end of the insect. In the
same region is found the chaparral
cock, which subsists upon scorpions,
centipedes, tarantulas, lizards and
horned toads.
There is a little machine which
turns out fish hooks in six strokes.
Stroke number one bites off a morsel of
steel wire, number two makes the loop
where you fasten your line, number
three hacks the other end, number four
flattens and bends back the barb, num-
Der five makes the point, number six
bends the wire, and your fish hook
drops into little bucket ready to be
finished. Then it is either japanned-
these are the common black fish hooks
Or they are tempered to the delicate
blue you sometimes see in cutlery. For
this finish, they are heated red hot and
then cooled in oil.
81 expect" said New York fisher
man to a Sun reporter, "that we will
get some information this year from the
Princeton college explorers who will
soon be out at sea trying to discover the
reason for the movements of the schools
of fish in the waters of the Atlantic
seaboard and the laws of the distribu-
ton of fish there. The Princeton expe
ditions of the last two summers did
good work in this line, but they have
more work yet in finding out how diff
ferent kinds of fish are affected by the
changes in temperature through the
Gulf stream. 1t will be great thing
for our fishermen when all these ques.
tions are cleared up"