The Opelousas courier., 1892-12-17
~sClENTIFIC AND INDUSTRIAL.

There are fifty species of electric fish.
A year on Mars is two years and 49B
days long, earth time.
Harvard's new star photographing in
strument has been tested, and the results
are satisfactorily.
If cork is sunk 200 feet in the ocean
it will not rise again on account of the
pressure of the water.
y Divers in deep water are hereafter te
use telephones to talk to the serface with,
and to hear talk from it.
The new German army tent is divisible
into two portions, sach of which can be
converted into an %overcoat in case OF
rain.
The most recent trustworthy investiga.
ton is that of NJ. De Chatelier, who fixes
the effective temperature of the sun al
1880 degrees Fahrenheit.
A single glass eye can rarely be worr
more than a year without being polished,
for the surface becomes roughened by
the action of the tears, etc., and irritates
the lids as they rub over it.
A project is at present on foot to con,
struct q railway to the summit of Der
Nevis, Scotland. It is intended to make
ut like to the Right Railway IN -switzer.
land, IN the cog-wheel system.
When nearly asphyxiated by dro wning,
the patients head should be held down
wards. Rub the stomach and back
freely, and apply ammonia tothe nostrils.
| Give plenty Of warmth and friction.
Sudden prolonged and violent hic-
coughs can often be checked by acid
drinks, cold douches, musk opium and
finally if the others fail an administration
of ether or Ahloroform internally, or by
inhalation.
A new method of quickly rendering
glass transparent curing the process OF
manufacture consists in forcing into the
melted materials a stream of oxygen gas,
the enormous heat generated oxidizing
all deleterious materials.
A small observatory is to be erected
soon on the very summit of Monte Rosaq
which has an altitude Of Is, 581 feet,
and is, next to Mont Blanc, the highest
peak in the Alps. The station will be
named the "Queen Margaret" after the
Italian queen, and will consist of a three
roomed hut containing the necessary
scientific instruments and a bedroom
and kitchen. AS the summit of the peak
Is frequently struck by lightning the life
Of the observers will not lack variety.
Swedish iron, which if soft, yet strong
and ductile, is almost free from phos-
pborus and sulphur. It is held TO be
practically inexhaustible, though taken
out at a rate of about q million of tons a
year. It is found all through the couu-
try, though mined chiefly in central
Sweden, in the Daunemora district.
Several of the heights as truly deserve to
be called iron mountains as those in
Missouri, and there is ons in G~ellivare,
in Swedish Lapland, beyond the Artic
Circle, where the ore occurs in four gil
gantic strata, that would supply nearly all
the iron that the country wouA require
in a century.
There is a curious snake (hydraci Yeti
in South Africa that lives wholly upon
BIRDS eggs. It has no teeth or signs of
teeth in the mouth, the dental array being
located in the stomach. Buckland says
that they are not true teeth, but that
they serve all the purposes. They grow
from the centre of each vetebra. They
pass through the walls of tine stomach
and are covered with enamel, just like
true teeth. This is natures provision
for breaking eggs without running the
risk of losing the precious contents, as
would be the case if this egg-eating Ser
pent had its teeth in the proper place.
When the egg is safe inside the abdom.
inal walls contract and crush it against
the long row of vertebral teeth.