The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1895-05-02
SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY.

There were l7,sG4,714 punches of
bananas consumed in the United States
last year. Jamaica, Cuba, Honduras
and Colombia supply most of the fruit.
1t is within the easy memory of people
of middle age when a banana was
great rarity.
In producing charcoal and its prod
ucts the fuel value of the former is ma
! terially deprecated when the carboni-
cation is carried on in retorts. 4 new
method of procedure is proposed
whereby this depreciation may be
avoided, and the cost of carriage of the
wood saved by performing the work at
or near the site of growth of the tim
| Der.
"A gold medal of the value of $500 is
offered by the Boulogna Academy of
1 Sciences for the memoir describing the
best system or apparatus for putting
out FIRES by chemical physical or me-
chanical means. The papers must all
be in by the end of May, 1896, and may
be written in Latin, French or Italian,
or in any other language if accompa-
MED by an italian translation.
Aluminium is not, as is quite gen.
orally supposed, in itself strong
/ metal. 1t is only half as strong as
I, wrought iron and has very low elias
tic limit. 1t is when combined with
other metals that its real value begins
to appear. With eight to twelve per
cent. of copper added, making
aluminium bronze, one of the densest,
q %, al-
lhown is developed.
Work is progressing steadily on the
Brooklyn bridge terminals, and it is
expected that the new system of oper-
alton will be ready for use by Septem-
Der. The new Brooklyn station and
roadways will have cost, when done,
! S270, 200; the reconstructed New York
station, $270,0O0; the car storage yard,
real estate and structures, SS6s, 1856;
New York roadways, Sl07 ,601; cable
driving plant, $l9s, 455; railway and
equipment, 1927, 500, making a total of
/ $2,041,013.
| -Ornithorhynchus paradoXus, the
unique Australian duck-billed water
! mole, has lost its character for harm
lessness, but has an added popularity,
sting like bee The male has on
its hind leg a powerful spur connected
with gland. When attacked it does
not scratch with the spur, but digs it
in; and now an Australian naturalist
has discovered that virulent poison
is elected from the spur. He has found
two men who were poisoned in hand
ling the animal, and number of dogs,
four of the latter dying.
The different species of ants are
pretty generally distributed over the
globe, and on this account the natural
lists infer that there is work for them
to do in the great economy of the uni
verse. In each colony males, females,
neuters and sometimes soldiers are to be
recognized. The males are invaria bly,
smaller than the females, and, like
those of the feminine gender, have
wings in their original state. The
neuters, which are the workers, are
without wings in any of their trans
formations, and the soldiers are recog-
nized by the armor plates ON their
heads.
That our opinion of the color of an
object is formed by our perceiving that
certain constituents are absent in it,
is the conclusion reached by Herr Vo-
gel in paper before the Berlin Phys
zeal society. Experimenting with oil
lamps provided with pure red, green
and blue color screens. he found that
when white light was rigidly excluded
the observers lost all sense of color,
! and po11ld diStjnUriSb opIv Sbo6aC of
black and white in objects in the room.
A scale of colors illumined by red light
| showed the reds as white or gray:
when blue light was added the reds
became yellow and could not be distin-
guished from the yellows on the scale.