The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1893-08-24
SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY.

French doctors are finding that Dr.
Brown-Sequard's 'elixir," which sew
eral years ago was pronounced useless
after creating much newspaper contro-
versy, has very valuable properties for
the cure of certain diseases which here
tofore have been considered incurable
Although an ant is a tiny creature,
yet its brain is even timer. But, al
though it is necessarily smaller than
the ants head which contains it, yet it
is larger in proportion, according to the
ants size, than the brain of any known
creature.
Snoring isn't confined to sleep; per.
sons with some forms of nasal catarrh
snore continually. But healthy man
snores, as rule, only when asleep, be-
cause then he does not control himself.
He gets into some position with his
mouth open and inhales through his
mouth. If the mouth were shut he
wouldn't snore.
DIR. Koeppen, in his "Annals of Ma
rine photography and Meteorology,"
published by the Observatory of Ham
burg, details the effects upon the waves
OF the sea of different sorts of oil, and
comes to the conclusion that soap pro-
duces still far superior effects. He rec
ommends the use of black soap dis
solved in 1000 times its weight Of
water.
Chemists now turn scrap iron into
ink, old bones into lucifer matches, the
shavings of the blacksmith's shop into
Prussian blue, fusel oil into oil of APP
Piles and pears, the DRAWINGS of cow
houses into fashiona BILE perfumery, beg
gars' rags into new pilot coats, cesspool
filth into ammonia and tar waste into
aniline dyes and saccharine.
-Corals increase by eggs, spontane-
Gus udivision and termination. The
rate of growth has not been fully de-
termined. Prof. Agassiz indicates the
growth of reefs at Key West at the rate
of six inches in one hundred years, and
adds that if we doubled that amount it
would require 1000 years to form the
reefs in that place, and hundreds of
thousand years for the grow tn of Flor
ida.
AT the speed of an electric current,
which is nearly the same as that of
light, 100000 miles per second-sup-
pose message to be sent at this speed
from point on the earth's surface, it
would go seven times around the earth
in one second. In eight minutes a
message would get to the sun, but to
reach Alpha Centauri, the nearest of
all the stars, it would take three years.
People who are interested in know
ing what the temperature of their feet
was after travelling over street car
| tracks and other places where salt was
used to melt the snow during the past
winter should remember that d mix
ture of two parts of pounded ice and
one of common salt will reduce the
temperature of a body surrounded by
it from so degrees to zero.
Prof. Fl. NJ. Ward states that there
are probably more than 800 species of
oaks (Quercus), of which the majority
| belong to North America. Europe,
| China, Japan and other parts of Asia.
There are none in Africa south of the
Mediterranean region, nor in South
| America or Australia. Some remark
able species are found in the Hima-
1ayas, and many in the Malayan archi-
pelago.
An important industry has arisen
in France, the selling of milk frozen
solid in cans. 1t has been discovered
that milk can be kept perfectly fresh
in frozen condition for more than a
month. 1t is frozen by means Of an or
dinary ice-making machine, and des-
patched by road, rail or steamer to its
destination. The customer who pur-
chases the frozen milk has simply to
thaw it when it is required for use.
| Nicaragua, which is attracting so
much attention just now, has a popu-
lation of about 100000, and is one of
the richest countries in the world in
natural resources. Besides valuable
mines of gold, silver, copper and quick
silver, it produces all kinds of tropical
fruits, as well as cedar, indigo, coffee
and sugar. Its sugar cane grows to
enormous proportions and often attains
such size that the plantations resemble
groves of trees.-Aberdeen Is. d.
News.
The area planted in cotton the
present year is estimated at 10, 701, 1856
acres, an increase over last year of 7.20
per cent and about the same as in 1887,
also showing very little difference from
1888. The total acreage for 1892 was
1s, ,362, 900; in 1891 it was 1865, 900; in
1890, 2O,910,o 900; in 1889, 9O,173, 900; in
1888, 10, 7S1, 900; and in 1887, 19, 42S, 000
The average yield has varied from 1863
pounds of lint cotton to the acre to 203
pounds, the greatest yield being in
1S91-92, when the crop was 9,039, 900