The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1893-04-09
ITEMS OF INTEREST.

INVENTION is sometimes thought to have
reached its limit, says the Philadelphia Press,
but OF the energy in a pound of coal when
burned only per cent. is used In moving q
passenger and only half OF per cent. in in
candescent electric lighting; the rest goes in
friction and waste generally. The problem OF
the next century is going to be saving this
wasted SO or 9913 per cent just the problem
OF the last century has besn-to secure the use
or the per cent. which moves trains and the
- per cent. which makes an electric light.
ACCORDING to c. c. Hawkes., the veteran
builder of the great iron water towers which
grace nearly every city in the United States
the largest stand pipe the. world is that at the
corner of Seventeenth and Crocker streets. Des
Moines, Ia 1t was built during the early months
OF 1891, and is situated on the highest ground in
that portion OF lowa's capital. The tower ls
twenty odd feet across aud is l5S feet ia hight.
made of twenty courses of great iron plates the
l-bottom tier being an inch In thickness, gradu-
ally thinning out" until the last course is
scarcely the fourth of an inch through. The
pipe" has caIacty Of $4,000 gallons, and
is provided with a winding stair IRON bottom to
top.
"a sNAILs PACE" need no longer be used as a
term more or less indefinite, says the Philadel-
phia Press; those skilled in the science of
'snailology'' can tell you Just to a dot the
snail's rate of travel These interesting facts
were Gscertaiped by some wonderful expert
ments at the Florence, Its,y. Polytechnic in
sttute in 1889, and those inclined 10 be exact
can now use figures to support their arguments.
IL was al done in this way: A half dozen Of
the mollusks were permitted To crawl between
two points ten feet apart. Exact time was
kept from the start to the finish, and thus the
average pace ascertained. The expert
mentors reduced their figures into tables OF
feet, yards, rods, furlongs ETC.. and thus found
that 1t would take snail exactly fourteen days
to travel q mile.
AN observer writes that he is satisfied that
il itlGt ri hafu bnr mir o
birds and bees 10 their quest for honey as there
is between nemEerS of the human race in their
struggle for the good things Of life, and de-
scribeS q recent quarrel that he saw in Port
land garden, where humminR bird with an
angry dash expressed its disapprOval OF the
presence of biz humble bee in the same tree.
The usually pugnacous bee incontineutlv fed,
but did MT leave the tree, He dashed back
and forth among the branches aud white bios
some. the humming bird in close pursuit.
Where will you find another pair that
could dodge and dart equal to these? They
we're Ike flashes of light, yet the pursuer fol-
| lowed the track Of the pursued, turning when
the bee turned. In short, the bird and the bee
controlled the movements of their bodies more
quickly than he could control the movements
of his eyes. The chase all over in less time
that it has taken to tell it, but the excitement Of
a pack OF hounds after fox was no greater.
The bee escaped, the bird giving up the chase,
and aliShting on a twig. 1t couldn't have been
chasing the bee for food. and there is no pos
sible explanation of its unprovoked attack ex-
cept that it wished to have all the honey itself.
SPEAKING of the death of Jules Ferry, the cor
respondent of the London Times in Paris says:
That the mala6y OF which NJ. Ferry died is
traceable to the attempt on his life by the mad
man Aubertin on Dec 10, 1887. is shown by the
fact that a fit of slffocation supervened in Sep
TENDER, IS3S-that is, after the usual interval
between the lesion Of an iDtercostal nerve and
its reaction on the heart Tnis told his doctors
what had happened, AID from that time he lost
strength and became thinner and thinner When
he went last year at the head OF "a senatorial
committee to Algeria, his friends remon-
strated against the imprudence, but lie
replied, / do what l can; if there is
no way of escape, so much the worse
The excitement occasioned by the senatorial
election aud by the Panama trial is thought to
have brought on the final attack. There had
been two previous Attaoks-the first during a
tour in Switzerland, and the second and graver
one year later The change is his appearance
had long disquieted his friends although o
himself, as his brother told me- made light of
1t with characteristic philosophy and seemed
to drive 1t from his mind In this state Of health
any strong emotion was necessarily dangerous.
and the bitternesses which he mad for years ex
perienced certainly fastened his end"
The discovery OF the oxygen blast rendered
great service to chemistry. The apparatus is fed
with coal gas and oxygen, and temperature
Of 1000 degrees has been obtained. Nothing
except Quicklime mas been found to resist this
heat, according to the st. Louis POs-D Dispatch
1t is, however sometimes necessary to submit
substances to temperature exceeding 2.0CO de-
grees and Henri Molssan, French chemist has
designed a furnace which by employing the
heat yielded by the electric arc, has given
a temperature of 1000 degrees. He uses
50-horse power machine, and the arc
measured up to 450 amperes and 20
volts. When the temperature approaches
1880 chromium desquioxide and magnetic nom
oxide melt rapidly. When the temperature ia
close upon 800 lime, strontia and magncsia
crystalize In few minutes Uranium oxide.
which cannot be reduced by charcoal at the
highest temperature of our furnaces is quickly
reduced at 1900, and in ten minutes it is easy to
obtain an ingot Of 100 grammes of seraniim
AT 5000 even the material of TIE furnace tduck-
lime melts ana flows like water, while carbon
quickly reduces calcium oxide and the metal ia
liberated in abundance. While this is going on
In France English chemists are work
ing n at J. the other extreme, Prof.
new scientific agency, uncomfortable cold Air
has been reduced not only to a LIQUID hut to a
solid, two or three times within the past fort
night Prof. Dewar mas succeeded in PRODUCING
in his laboratory piece of solid air He has
not yet tested the nature of the solid which is
almost as clear as crystal. 1t may be "a Jelly of
the solid nitrogen, containing liquid oxygen
much as calves foot jelly contains water dff-
fused into gelatine, or it may be a true ice of
the liquid air in which both oxygen and nitrogen
exist in solid form. doubt arises from
the fact that Prof. Dewar has not been
able by his utmost efforts to soljdffv
pure oxygen, which, unlike other gases resists
cold produced by its own evaporation. Under
the air pump nitrogen, on the other hand can
be frozen with comparative ease. II has already
been proved that in the evaporation of linuid
air nitrogen escapes first Consequently the
liquid is constantly becoming richer in that con
stituent, which has hitherto resisted solidi6ca-
tion. 1t thus becomes a question whether cold
produced is sufficiently great to solidify oxygen
or whether Its mixture with nitrogen raises its
freezing point, or whether it is really frozen st
all, but merely entangled among the particles
Of the solid nitrogen.