Griggs courier., 1892-04-22

SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY.
-Conch shells, when ground, enter
into the manufacture Of porcelain. The
rose-colored pearls of the pink conch
are very valuable and have beautiful
wavy sheen like that of watered silk
The record of the immense wheat
crop in the Dakotas last year is incom-
plete yet. Because the elevators were
full to the roofs. and not enough cars
could be had to carry the grain out Of
the state, thousands of bushels of wheat
were piled up in the streets of several
North Dakota towns during the winter.
The metallurgical works in France
in 1889 produced the following amounts
OF the various metals: Pig iron, LISA
600 tons; zinc, 1889 tons: lead, 5,373
tons; copper, 1892 tons; nickel, $50 tons;
antimony, s16 tons; gold, 400 kilos; sill
yer, so,942 kilos; aluminium, Il. $40 kilos.
I'm recent work on the bee, Mr.. T.
w. Cowan states that the insect can
draw twenty times it's own weight, can
fly more than four miles an hour, and
will seek food at distance of four
miles. BY a beautiful mechanical
adaptation its wings bear it forward or
backward, with upward, downward or
suddenly arrested course.
1t is said that large milk company
is to be formed in Denmark for the pur-
Of
milk than hitherto. and they describe
plan of running all their milk through
a series of sponge before delivery. The
result, they tell us, out of 5000. 900 gal
Ions of milk run through, they obtain
five tons of filth, no doubt the result of
unclean milking.
1t is proposed to cast glass, not nec-
essarily transparent into large blocks
for buildings This material is practi-
cally indestructible. perfectly non-ab-
sorbent and therefore damp-proof in
manner which few bricks are, and in
this way coarse glass of this kind could
be made nearly as cheap as concrete,
stone or baked clay.
The construction of the worlds
longest railroad is progressing rapidly
along the river valleys and across the
steppes of Siberia. The western ex-
tremity of the road is the mining town
of MASK, on the eastern side of the
Ural range, and its eastern terminus is
Vladivostols, on the Sea of Japan, maxi
ing total length of 4,7s5 miles, which
is nearly twice the length of the Cana
dian Pacific twill cost Sls3, $50, ,0O0-
N. Y. Press
Two little islands furnish four fifths
of the cloves consumed by the world.
The islands are Zanzibar and Pemba,
and little while ago Arabs found it
very profitable to bring slaves from the
African lake region to the coast and
smuggle them in the night over to
Pemba to work on the Glove planta-
tions. These farms We're very rcmu-
nerative once, but the market has been
overstocked and the price has fallen so
low that the Glove raisefs have decided
to diversity their crops.
Though Brazil now produces few
diamonds and little gold, it is declared
to have measureless wealth in iron,
copper, marble, saltpeter, rock crystal
and graphite, with fair amounts of
coal, silver, bismuth and antimony.
The state of Minas Gereas is probably
the richest, for there are found gold,
silver, diamonds, the beautiful red and
green tourmalines, priced by collectors;
copper, lead, iron occurring partly as
magnetic, salt and graphite. te.-Minerals
The discovery of gold in meteor
ite, which has just been made by Fed
eral Government Geologist Turner in
California, is tf unusual interest The
meteorite in question is about the size
of a mans fist and around good por-
ton of it is a solid film of gold. In one
part the metal is about an inch square
Gold has never before been found in
connection with meteoric iron, and it
demonstrates. says Mr.. Turner, "that
there is gold in the woslds of space."-
N. Y. Recorder.
Very excellent authority says: sit
is fact that such fruit as the apple.
the pear and the plum, taken when
ripe without sugar, diminish the acidity
of the stomach rather than provoke it
The vegetable sauce and juices are con-
verted into alkaline carbonates. which
tend to correct acidity. A good ripe
apple, raw, is one of the easiest of veg
etable substances for the stomach to
deal with, the whole process of diyes-
ton being complete in eighty-fve min
utes." In the French hospitals an
apple poultice is applied to inflamcd
eyes; it is probable that such fruits
taken as food also serve as allayers OF
Inflammation in the stomach and other
alimentary organs. This is peculiarly
true of cranberries and grapea-St
Louis Globe Democrat.
A New Kind of Plaster.
Samples of a new composition known
as liegine are exhibited at the museum
in the royal botanical garden at Kew.
This substance consists Of powdered
cork mixed with fine plaster in the pro.
portion of >.n per cent The cork con-
fers upon the plaster solidity, dura'
bility, and, above all, a liehtness which
it does not possess when used alone
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