The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1893-07-20
SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY.

Exports of wheat from India, be-
tween April, 1899. and February, 1893,
amounted to q, ,104 bushels, being but
one-half the quantity exported during
the corresponding eleven months of the
preceding year.
"A coatimondi, a species of ant-eater,
which is owned by Joseph Wallace, of
Brunswick, Ga, does not confne itself
to destroying ants, but has committed
several robberies of jewelry, money
and other articles of value. All the
articles, however, have been recovered
in out-of-the-way places, where the
animal had hidden them.
In spite of the fact that emigration
last year was against the Argentine
Republic, and that the country was
undergoing financial depression, the
total area under crops was S,S62,000
acres, against I, 7,4S7, 900 acres in 1891, an
increase, within a year, of 1878, 900
acres. The only woods which come to
the United States from the Argentine
are the Cordova carpet woods from ma
tive sheep, shipped mostly to the Bos-
ton mills.
"A timber expert makes the inter-
esting statement that the spruce lands
of Maine are to-day worth more than
were the pine lands of fifty years ago,
mainly because of the development of
the pulp business. He estimates the
value of wild lands at $50 per acre,
reckoning only eighty-fve cords to an
acre. There are nearly $500, 900 acres
of wild land in Maine, and assuming
that only quarter of this is covered
with merchantable growth, the total
valuation would be something like
| S47, 100000.
America had, in 1890, 2, 100000
| bread-winning women and girls work.
| ing outside of their own homes. There
were 110 lawyers, 165 ministers, 800
authors, 5SS journalists, 2,051 artists,
2,136 architects, chemists, pharmacists;
2,106 stock raisers and ranchers, 5,135
government clerks, 2,43S physicians
and surgeons, Is, 1872 professional musi-
clans, $4,000 farmers and planters,
21,071 clerks and bookkeepers, IA, 465
heads of commercial houses, 155, 900
public school teachers (based on the
census of 1SS0.)
The following careful statement by
Prof E. S. Holden on the power of the
eye and the telescope, as they are con-
trasted in actual experience, Is of spe-
cial and permanent interest: II the
brightness of star seen with the eye
alone is one, with a 2-inch telescope 1t
is one hundred times as bright, with a
finch telescope it is four hundred times
as bright, S-inch telescope it is 1000
times as bright, 16-inch telescope it is
6,4OO times as bright, 32-inch telescope
it is 25, 600 times as bright, 36-inch tele-
scope it is 80, 400 times as bright. That
is, stars can be seen with the 36-inch
telescope which are 80, 600 times fainter
than the faintest stars visible to the
naked eye.-Chicago Herald.
Photography has been introduced
into the clinical laboratory of DIR. Char
cot, the Partisan specialist. 1nstanta-
neous pictures have been taken of pa
tients. One shows woman just at the
point of being hypnotized. The condi-
ton is being produced by mere look
and the sight of diamond. Other pho
tographs present patients in various
lethargic and cataleptic conditions.
One of the most remarkable of these
photographs shows hysterical contrac-
ton, and in this strange phenomenon
is apparent One of the middle fingers
of the patient reaches far over the
wrist. Under hypnotization the pa
tient appears to develop the faculty of
lengthening the middle finger abnor-
mally
Bees and birds court the society OF
man-that is, they seek the locality
where fields and gardens abound, for
they fare better when human industry
extorts from the soil the products upon
which they subsist. A Maine bee ertl'
turist says it is the rarest thing in the
world to find bees away from the set
Elements, or from openings where
flowers grow 1t is in the small patches
of forest they are oftenest found, and
generally not far from the edge OF the
woods 1t is the same with birds. There
are no song birds in the northern Maine
wilderness, and scarcely anything thai
can be called bird life. Birds cluster
around towns and villages.
"A lecture on the Photographic study
of the spectra of the stars was recently
delivered at the London institution
After describing the methods by which
the light of star as seen through ;
prism is photographed, the lecturer
gave some account of the additions q
our knowledge of stellar physics which
have been thus obtained. The mos
interesting related to the probable
comparative age of the sun. There i
reason to think, he said, that our SUI
and the star Capella are about equal.
old. Arcturus and dAldebaran-the typ
of yellow stars-are younger. On tn
other hand, Sirius, the dog star, Rige
and Vega, are regarded as older tha1
the sun.
Women and Cards.