The age-herald., 1897-09-26

T1sa grtat London end Northwestern Railroad company has lately introduced, with much satisfaction to the traveling public on that important pouts, a new description Of sleeping car. These cars were built at Wolverhampton from de- signs by A. c. Park, the we'll known expstt in this branch, each car being seventy feet 4sng and having six-wheel trucks and th= end platforms are de- scrlbed as being completely inclosed, so as to prevent the dgaughtiness of side doors-in cthsr words, presumably the usual American vestibules. There are corridors the who'll length of the car on one side and eleven "cabins" or com partments, six containing double barths and five single; enly two of these cabins have upper berths, while in all of them except one the beds are placed so that the occupant lies crosswiss of the car. The smoking compai tment is in the middle of the car, and lavatories are ar ranged at each end. The interior wod- work finish is in great variety of styls and material, satinwood, maple, Italian walnut, and other rarer sorts making up the combination. Each occupant can light or extinguish his gas jet at any Vime by means of a hinged globe.
 Extremely satisfactory results from firing with coal dust, according to the Cornelius system of operating, continus to be reported from Berlin, though with out designating the particular establish mants. The coal dust used in the pro- cess is contained in @ hopper, the nec- essary quantity b=ing fed out by means of a toO.hed mensuring wheel, and, as it drops out of the hopper, the dust en- couD!ers current of air produced by fan and is sucked into a tube which conveys it to the furnace; the latter, lined with fire brick, is of funn=l shape in section. The mixture of air and fuel enters the Ildtom of the funnel and bursts into flame, when t. passes up- ward in a vertical direction and meets the red-hot firebricks. At the upper part Of the furnace chamber is a fire brick arch to break up the flame be- fore 1t reaches the boiler flues. The bridge is placed a considerable distance behind the arch, and owing to ,.he di- mansions of the fire chamber and the bottom flues the draught is checked the effect of this being, it is asserted, that the ash is deposited in front of the bridge and the melted clinker runs back to the lowest part of the funnel-shaped furnace chamber, whence it may from time to time be withdrawn. An ordi- nary boiler furnace provided with bars, btu capable of being shut off with a damper, is employed to start the process and to get up the requisite hsat in the furnacG chamber to fire the coal dust.
 The comparative durability of differ ent flooring materials is sslt fonh in an article in the Scientific American based upon careful and accurate inyestiga- tions. In these tests an ordinary iron rubbing wheel was used, like that em- ployed by stone workers for rubbing @ smooth face on marble or sandstone, and the samples po be tested to blocks of sandstone, laid face downward on the rubber wheisl, which r=Yolved at the rate of seventy-five revolutions a, minute, being supplied with sharp sand and wa ter. The blocks to which the fioor.nss were cem ntsd were of equal weight, so that the rubbing was effected under nearly the same pressure in all cases. Curiously enough, the material which resisted best this ssvere trial was India rubber tilng, which, after an hours rubbing lost only One-Sixtyfourth of an inch Of its thickness; and, next to this, English encaustic tile gave the best results, losing only one-eighth of an inch in an hours treatment The arti- ficial stone known as ''granolithic" was third, losing thr5e-eighths of an inch; while North river bluestone lost nine SiNteenths of an inch. All the marbles wore away very rapidly; piece of mar bie fosljac disappeared entirely in thirty five minutes, whila solid white Vermont marble lost three-fourths of an inch in an hour. Most of the wood hoorings resisted abrasion better than the mar ble; thus white pine lost only seven sixteenths of an inch under treatm5 mt that removed nearly twice as much from solid marble; yellow pine about like white, and oak lost more than eith- CT of the pines.
 A most ingenious method has b en de- vised by Col w. H. Bell. San Francisco, for the effective restoration of smooth bore cannon, this invention, as claimed, securing tine necessary rotary twist in the air without the trouble of being firad from a rified gun, and there is no liability to tumbling. In shape, the device for accomplishing this purpose is that of an ordinary conical shot, and