The morning call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1878-1895, 1895-02-03

READINESS FOR F1RE.-lt is noted that
with all the innovations and improvements
made in apparatus for fire extinction the
Insurance companies and insurers still
count a good deal on the time-honored fire
pail. This device is said to put out more
fires than anything else, and to have the
great advantage that anybody can handle
it promptly and effectively without doing
any great damage. A visitor to a factory
recently remarks of what is perhaps more
common than it should be: 1--WE noticed
a hosehouse in the yard, which was al
legged to contain a hosewagon and some
fire hose; but, on account of the rush of
business and lack of room, there were
piled up in front of the hosehouse door
several tons of pigiron, which might be
useful for some things more than Others"
THE WAsTEFULNEss OF PICKING Up
NAILs-William Garrett made recently the
statement that wire nails are now sold so
cheaply that If a carpenter drops a nail it
is cheaper to let it lie than to stop and pick
it up, and it is claimed that one keg out of
five is never used, but goes to waste. A
statistician figuring this out, and assuming
that it takes carpenter ten seconds to
pick up nail and that his time is worth
80 cents an hour, remarks that the recovery
of the nail he has dropped would cost .OS3
cent TIL money value of an individual
sixpenny nail is .0077; that is, it would
not pay t 0 pick up ten nails if it took ten
seconds of time worth 30 cents an hour
Ordinary men who are not very quick
can, however, pick up nail on
moderately clean floor in five seconds.
Assuming that this is better average than
the ten seconds, and that we are paying
the carpenter only % cents an hour, it will
still cost to recover the nail .0347 of cent,
which is nearly five times the value of an
individual nail. There is, therefore, con-
siderable factor of safety in the original
calculation, and we are bound to believe it
will not pay to pick up nails. Such a cal
culation brings out clearly the marvellous
reduction in prices due to inventive genius.
The lurking fallacy is, that while it may
not pay to stoop for each nail, it still may
be worth while for an economical man at
the end of his work to stoop once and
sweep up in single handful the nails be
has been dropping all day.
INNOVATIONS IN UMBRELLAs.-One of the
later novelties in umbrellas is form that
can be carried in an ordinary gripsack and
adjusted to great variety of needs. For
instance, it can be hitched to bicycle in
six different positions. In general essen
tials it corresponds to a carriage top. The
handles are made in two or three sections,
and largely of aluminium. So popular has
the device become that large factory now
employs several hundred hands turning it
out in great variety.
THE IRREGULARITIES OF BIRDS TONGUES
Every naturalist is acquainted with the
elaborate spring-like mechanism by which
the woodpeckers and humming- birds are
enabled to protrude their tongues with such
rapidity for the capture of insect prey.
Herr Schenkling-P revot supplies guam
tity of interesting information on the form
of the tongue and hyoid apparatus of birds
in general. The old idea that the wood
pecker transfixes its prey with its sharp
tipped tongue is probably not yet extinct,