The Opelousas courier., 1892-05-14
SCIENTIFIC AND INDUSTRIAL.

Electric Welding is now applied to
the work of manufacturing iron wheels.
Zinc expands up to the melting point.
A bar of hammered zinc six inches long
will expand 1 LOO of an inch in rails
ing the temperature 100 degrees F.
The average mortality of unmarried
men between the ages of twenty and
twenty-five is 1874 in every 100, 900,
while that of married men is only
597.
1t is stated that a German firm has
perfected a means of making a profitable
disposition of sawdust. An acid is
mixed with the sawdust and the whole
mass nodded into blocks or any other
form, resulting in a fine material for
building purposes.
A new machine is being used in
England to level the tips and nails in
the bottoms of boots and shoes and to
produce a fine polish and finish hitherto
impossible by hand work. The machine
is arranged to run by power and is firmly
placed on an iron base, with Counter
shafting and pulleys.
A design of an electric boat, pro-
PEELED by a sea>water battery, has been
exhibited before the French Academy Of
Sciences. The battery plates are under
the boat, in the form of a keel, and the
current generated drives a motor oper-
ating the screw. The plates "copper" or
zinc) are raised or lowered by means of
pulleys.
In the Electricity Building at the
Worlds Fair, Chicago, there will be
forty thousand panes of glass, or more
than in any other exposition structure.
This building will be especially cor
spicuous at night, as, owing to It's ex-
tensive glass surface, the brilllaucy OF
its electrical exhibit will be strikingly
visible from the outside.
Thomas Meehan says that striking
variations in plants occur at times sui.
denly by bud variation as well as by
seeds. The curled- leaved weeping
willow suddenly assumed this character
on a tree of the ordinary kind; the red
sweet potato is also a bud variation from
the ordinary white variety; the double
lowered tuberose is believed to have
originated by bud variation.
One of the most attractive of the ex-
hibits at the Frankfurt Exposition is
that in which the process of manufacture
ING the celebrated Seyres china is shown
to the public. Bohemian girls, attired
in their national costume, manipulate
the plastic clay and wax into life-like
leaves and birds. The mass is then
placed in a furnace aud the heat is Sc
regulated as to solidify the substance
without the least fracture. A second
furnace evaporates all that Is left of the
wax, leaving a very friable dead white
china flower. On this the coloring artist
reproduces the delicate shading of the
natural flower and the article is again
placed in the furnace to burn the color.
A Philadelphia scientist has made an
analysis of the brains of a gorilla, and
the results of his investigation are calcu-
lated to give little comfort to those who
have maintained there is only a ttmisslng
link" between man and the gorilla in the
chain of evolution. 1t was found that
the brain of the gorilla was really of a
much lower order of development than
that of the o~urang-outang or the chin
panzee. The gorilla's frontal lobe, in.
stead of being round and convex, was
pointed and c~oncave, and the lower
portion of the brain, visible in the
chimpanzee as well as man, is missing.
The gorilla, instead of standing at the
head of the monkey tribe, is lower than
at least two other members of it.