The San Saba weekly news. (San Saba, Tex.) 18??-1???, 1892-01-08
POPULAR SCIENCE.

In the new disc overy for photography
In natural colors when the prints are
viewed By transmitted in place of re-
Elected light, each color is re olaced by
its complimentary one.
A Swedish engineer claims to have in
vented a new machine for making horse
shoe nails out of iron rods, the machinery
making 40 strokes per minute, each
stroke producing two nails.
Scientific men say that the earth's age
is about half a million years for the nebu-
lar and stellar periods, and about 25,-
600, 000-of which Is, 900, 900 are past
for the period of organic beings.
Cork covering for steam pipes has
proved very successful in England, and
in some cases it has been found to make
a difference of 100 degrees to 124 de-
grees from the temperature of uncovered
pipes.
1t is stated that the muslrat is enabled
to travel under the ice of frozen river
or lake for a considerable distance by re-
spring against the ice roof where the
bubbles of gas collect, and getting a fresh
supply of oxygen.
Small articles made of malleable iron
are now finished aud polished bright by
being placed in revolving drums with
curriers' shavings, from which they
emerge with all of the rough edges
smoothed and the surface highly pol
ished.
Professor Thomson has recently shown
very plainly that between tine carbons of
an arc light there pours a steady stream
of carbon vapor, and the light is derived
almost exclusively fIom the enormous
heated surface at which the evaporation
takes place.
The effect which living at high alti-
tudes has on the blood of animals has
been recently investigated, and the re-
suits show that the proportion of oxygen
in the blood of men and animals acclima-
TIED there was the same as that Of dwell
ers at lower levels
A selt-acting electrical balance has re-
Gently been invented. The object to be
weighed is to be placed in the pan, which
closes the circuit, starts a motor, aud
moves the weight out on the beam OF the
balance. When the equipoise is estab-
lished the circuit is broken.
A quart of water recently taken from
typhoid infected district in France was
found to contain upward of twenty mil
lions typhoid germs. 1t was the result
of scientific investigation, and shows
how extremely necessary it is to destroy
the execreta of typhoid patients.
There are any number of sweet water
springs in the ocean. One of these is
of the coast of Florida, in the Gulf of
Mexico. 1t sends its waters upward in
such quantities that sailors dip it up in
the midst of the salt water Of the Gulf.
Another of these springs is on the eastern
shore of Florida opposite Matanzas.
DR.. P. Moreau, of Tours, gives some
very curious information as to suicides.
In Europe strangulation seems to have
the greatest fasciuatisu-;s1I,.Ss. comes
suicide by drow
ing. 1t appear
propensity among b
than among the inhfoec
country to throw thd
height.
A kind of moth or buttt said to
have becomes SO very troublesome and
destructive in Bavaria that every possible
means his BEEN taken to destroy it.
The most effective method consists of
attracting the pest by means of an
electric light in connection with blow
fan, which draws the insects iGto the
suction pipe by air draught and results
in millions of them being destroyed.
An ingenious French e1gineer has dis
covered a device for ascertaining the
speed of train, so that check can be
had on the engine driver as he runs
around curves and other difficult parts Of
the line. The instrument is a tuning
fork, having point which inscribes a
curve on a rotating cylinder. The
mechanism is set in motion and also
stopped By the wheels of the train pass
ing over treadles at known distances
apart.
A new apparatus for measuring the
mean level of the sea has lately been IN
stalled at Marseilles, France. 1t is based
on the principle that when a liquid wave
traverses a capillary tube or a porous
partition, It's amplitude diminishes and is
retarded in its phrases without the mean
level of the wave changing. 1t consists
of a glass tube, the lower end of which
communicates by a flexible pipe with a
plunger which is lowered beneath the
lowest water level. There are two cells
in the plunger, the lowest being filled
with sand and open to the sea, the result
being that the column of water in the
tube rises and falls very little with the
tides, and the mean sea level can be reaG
from a graduated scale.