The citizen. (Frederick City, Md.) 1895-1923, 1896-04-17
written for the CITIZEN,


written for the CITIzENl
A striking difference in the mental
qualities of the natives of different
parts of France has been discovered by
DIR. K. Collignon. Enumerating for
each department the men born in it for
any way distinguished, he finds the
proportion to the million inhabitants
to range from 691 Ill the department of
the Seine, including Paris, to Ii in
Charente, Normandy having 1O6 per
million. Prominence in science has
been marked in Normandy, while in
the South the tendency is to poetry
and works of the imagination. The
Investigator is led to conclude that the
difference of race, which is purely
anatomical fact shown by the shape of
head and the color of the hair, has a
corresponding difference in the brain,
which is revealed by special tenden-
cy of the thoughts and particular apti-
tudes.
The rapidly increasing use of gases
compressed in cylinders has made it
important that safety be insured in
every way possible. A British Com
vestigate tue causes of accidents to
cylinders, and from report just
made it appears that the risk of explo-
sion are of two classes-one due to neg
ligence in the manufacture, annealing
and testing of the cylinders, and the
other due to neglect in filling the cyl
ipders. 1t is recommended that the
precautions laid down in the report be
enforced by some kind of official in
spection of the factories.
The deepest bore-hole-that at Pa
ruschowitzin Upper Silesia-has reach
ed "a depth of $3.50 feet, at cost of
Sis, 045, and penetrates so coal seems,
with u combined thickness of 293 feet.
The temperature has increased one
centigrade degree for every Ill feet.
The rod, tools, ETC., weigh IA tons, and
have bored IL feet per day.
The poison of fatigue is stated by
Prof. Wedensky TO be exactly similar
to the deadly vegetable poison known
as curare. The former, it is maintain
ed, is capable of inducing fatigue in
fresh ANIMALS inoculated with it.
x x
In his search for a lamp filament
nearly twenty years ago, Edison tested
not less than twenty varieties of bam-
boo and three thousand kinds of vege-
table fbres. His experiments with
the Roentgen rays have been made
with the same wonderful patience and
thOroughness, but with the advantages
of the best equipped laboratory in the
world. An almost endless number of
trials has been made with different
sizes and shapes of Crooks tubes, and
with different glasses and arrange
ment of electrodes, his final selection
being an ellipsodial tube about five
inches long, with internal electrodes of
aluminium slightly inclined to each
other and metallic caps forming out
side electrodes at the ends. About 40
per cent. of the effect is attributed to
these external electrodes. In his eff
forts to improve the method of bring
ing ROentgen shadows into direct
view, he has tested some 1880 chemi-
calls, finding that about 40 fluorescence
III the Roentgen rays, but that calci-
um tungstate is by far the most fiuo-
resent and eight times as powerful as
platino-cyanide of barium. His fiuO-
resent screen is made by coating a
sheet of card board with this salt and
celluoid varnish. The best form Of flu
oroscope yet made is an apparatus re-
sembling a stereoscope, with one end
fitted closely to the face about the eyes
and the other closed with the
huOrescent screen, coated inside. The
eCrOOkes tube is enclosed in a
wooden box, aud connected with an
air pump to keep the exhaustion at the
degree of maximum effect. When the
Horoscope is brought over hand or
All arm laid on the box containing the
tube-which is best excited by an in
duction coil with rotary circuit-breaker
and al air-blast to blow out the arcs
the screen CLOVIS, shadow is seen, and
in few moments the outline of the
ZONES flashes into view. 1t is said that
the shadows may he seen through
three feet of cork. The new focus"
designed by one on the professors at
Kings College. London, is claimed to
produce exceedingly sharp shadows,
even with no more expensive appara-
tus than two-lnch spark coil, and to
be one of the few sO-called improve
ments that represent real progress in
the new photography. The cathode is
a concave plate of aluminium, from
which the rays are focused upon an in
clined anode of platinum foil, and
thrown downward upon the object to
be photographed.
A curious property of potassium
uranyl sulphide has been reported by
M. Becquerel to the French Academy.
When excited to phosphorescence, this
substance emits rays which last a long
time-more than 100 hours-after phos-
phoresence ceases, which pass through
paper, aluminium and copper, and
which discharge electrified bodies like
the Roentgen rays.