The citizen. (Frederick City, Md.) 1895-1923, 1895-08-30
written Tor the Citizen.)

Dlu DlORItSS III ultdDS vi lIaus-
portation has caused the need of light
and inexpensive railways for certain
places and uses to be more keenly felt.
In lecture the other day TO the Brit
ish Balloon Society, Mr.. w. J. Brewer
described the suspended galloway
which has been put into operation
near Brighton. The cost of a light
railway of this kind is said to be about
$3.50 per mile, exclusive of cars and en-
CINE. Such line is vastly cheaper to
construct than an ordinary railway of
equal capacity, there is practically no
interference with the land, and there
are neither locomotives nor level cross
ipgs. The system is capable of enor-
NOUS development. There is no reason
why whole trains of railway carriages,
wagons, ETC., may not be taken across
rivers by it, and mountains may be as
cended by zigzag lines. 1t will be es-
pecially important to many manufac-
turing districts, affordiag cheap and
ready transport for goods from the
manufacturers to the railways.
Mirror writing-that is, reversed
writing, which must be held before
mirror to be reads said to be culti-
waited by many persons for private cor
respondence by postal cards. II is not
difficult TO do, especially with the left
hand, aud left-handed persons some
times write in this way naturally. An
English physician, DIR. Crochley Clap
ham, mentions the case of a partially
paralyzed female, who taught herself
to write with the left hand, and who
wrote toward the left, or mirrorwse,
at first, and afterward learned at
school to write in the usual way. Ia
moments of forgetfulness she would
write one line toward the left and the
next toward the right.
New facts in welding by pressure at
temperatures below the melting points
of the nt tails have been reported by
the Royal Society of Belgium. Pressed
together by hand-screws, cylinders of
gold, lead and tin were well united in
heat of 200o to 400o for to II hours,
bismuth and autimony less perfectly
so. The more crystalline the metal the
less was the softening.
An investigation by Prof. Bunge, a
German Psychologist, shows that spin
ach contains considerably more iron
than the yOlk of eggs, which is follow
ed in this respect 10y beef, apples, len
ills, strawberries, white beans, peas,
potatoes and wheat, in the order
named, cow'5milk being near the bot
tom of the list of ordinary food sub
stances. The small proportion in milk,
the chief food OF infant life, led to eX-
periments to determine the quantity
of iron in animals Of different ages 1t
was found that young animals contain
more than older ones-the body of
rabbit or guinea pig an hour old, for
instance, having four times as much
as similar animal two and a half
years old. Prof. Bunge believes it to
be unwlse to continue an exclusive
milk Giet for infants for long time.
He also concludes that u great amount
of iron is prescribed in tonics unueces-
sarily, and that in many cases it may
only serve to cause digestive derange-
ment.
The idea of boiling solid is some
what bewildering, but Prof Dewar
points out that we have such sub
stance solidified in caroonic acid, which
has the singular property of boiling
at a temperature lower than its melt
ing point. To illustrate this before an
audience, some solid csrbonic acid was
pressed into a ball, suspended by
cord in water in glass trough, and an
image of it is projected on a screen.
Gas was then seen to be given off
freely. The frozen carbonic acid was
no colder to the fingers than common
snow, because in reality it never came
in contact with the skin when being
handled. Another striking expert
ment-never exhibited before-was the
burning of diamonds in liquid oxygen.
When two or three red-hot crystals
were thrown into the liquid they were
at once cooled and sank to the bottom,
but diamond made extra hot by the
blowpipe caught fire and burned on
the surface of the oxygen with
steady flame.
The Danes and Swedes now send to
Newcastle each week about 100 barrels
of frozen milk, each of 1000 pounds.
The milk is treated by patent pro-
cess. being first heated to about l65 de-
grees F., then cooled to so degrees, and
afterwards frozen for three hours A
half-barrel of this product is placed in
each barrel, which is then filled up
with unfrozen milk. Thus barreled
the milk keeps fresh rs days.
Il
1t has been noticed that workmen
attending pans in saltworks do not
have u olera, smallpox, scarlet fever
or influenza.
The thunderstorIns of Madras have
been studied by Prot. Niche Smith,
who tells the Scottish Meteorological
Society that the first striking fact he
observed was that at certain seasons of
the year sheet-lightning was seen al
most every night, always in west or
southwesterly direction, and always
near the horizon. He suggests that
these discharges occur in the region
where the moist and dustless sea wind
meets the dry and dusty land wind,
one being perhaps positively electrified
and the other negatively. 1t is not
easy to explain exactly lightning dis
plays in which as many as 300 flashes |
per minute have been counted, this !
rate being kept up for an hour or an |
hour and half The idea that sheet
lightning is a reflection from distant |