The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1897-03-28
ITEMS OF INTEREST,".

- writer III OCrlDlefS describing some eA-
periments with such an elevator-well in a
famous and altitudinous store says the
car was taken to the top of the building
and allowed to fall with the brake off
1t fell to the top of the pit with tremen-
dous force. and struck the cushion of air
with sound as if it had struck soft
earth; it seemed to stop suddenly at the
top of the pit and then slowly settled
down to the bottom. 1t was clear that
the pit was too small at the top; that the
slope of the sides was too slight; that if
the escape of air had been freer at the
impact, the stopping would have been
sensibly gradual. The stop was really
gradual, as was shown by the fact that
a half dozen eggs in a paper bag chat /
had put on the elevator floor for the triaD
survived the fall without injury
The old question of whether people are
ever buried alive is revived by the recent
assertions of a well-known man of science.
He may prove the feat that such cases are
unknown to the satisfaction of himself
and some few others, but the testi-
mony in contradiction is too volumi-
nous to be overthrow by a mere declara-
ton of a personal opinion. The most an
cient writer's refer to the subject, showing
that their attention had been called to it
through some cause or another. Pliny
has chapter, ION those who have revived
on being carried forth for burial" Lord
Bacon records that there have been many
such cases" Bruher, a French writer,
mentions fifty-four authenticated cases of
persons buried alive-fifty-three after be-
ing coffined; seventy-two of mistaken pro-
nouncement that death had taken place,
and four persons dissected before they had
ceased to live. A noted case occurred I'M
der the hands of the distinguished Vesa-
Illus, who having opened a body, found the
heart still beating. The fact is that pre-
mature burial happens only very, very
rarely-but it happens.
"A trial in Vienna which ended in
sentence of death last week showed, says
a cable to the New York Sun, what an
important part arsenic plays in the do
nestle economy of the inhabitants of
Syria. A peasant named Schmallefoer
began shortly after his marriage in 1891
to have intimate relations with a servant,
Marie Penisipp, with whose assistance he
poisoned his wife by mixing arsenic in
her food. He married his paramour, and
on her foster sister, Katharine Millek,
then only 10 years old, entering his SER
vice in 1926, he also became intimate with
her and murdered his second wife as he
did the first, by sprinkling arsenic over
pieces of meat on her plate, which, while
she was away, were turned over in order
that she might not see the powder on her
return to the table. The two children,
girls of two and three years. asked their
mother for more meat, and as she gave
it to them from her own plate the father
had to sit by and see his children cat
poison. He managed, however, to keep
silent in order not to betray himself. The
children recovered, but the mother died.
Suspicious being aroused the exhuma-
ton of the first wife took place, and,
speaking of II in court, a chemist made
the remark that all the village cemeteries
in Syria were full of arsenic
1t would be a remarkable thing If
little insect should be the means of COM
polling the Westinghouse Air-brake Com
pany to remodel the exhaust port of their
pressure-retaining valve says the Pitts
burg Post, but it appears that the neces-
sity for such change confronts them at
present, or rather confronts the railroad
companies who use the brakes. The in
sect that causes all the trouble is the COM
mon mud wasp-a transient inhabitant of
the west and rthwest-which, like the
genus tramp, appears to have a penchant
for travelling. The wasp builds his mud
home on the exhaust port of the valve
named, and closes the vent. causing no
end of trouble and expense. Supt.
Rhodes, of the Chicago, Burlington and
Quincy railroad, was the first to describe
the new enemy of the air-brake, and after
an exhaustive treatise on the subject re-
commends the alteration of the shape of
the valve and form of the vent as the only
means of getting rid of the difficulty. AS
the insect which causes all the trouble is
rarely seen in the eastern states the rail-
roads around here have experienced no
such annoyance, but as long as eastern
cars are run over western roads to any
extent the removal of the present form of
exhaust-port on the western cars alone
would not help matters very greatly, as
the wasp is apt to build his house in trans
1t, and close up the port while car is
going twenty or fifty miles.
New machinery to transmit power to
a steamer propeller so as to reduce vibra-
tion is the invention of Timothy c. Van
Wyck of Brooklyn. Mr.. Van Wyck de-
scribes his invention as follows: 1t is
simply a disk with grooves cut into its
face. The disk is twice the size of the
main shaft on which it Is placed. Into
the grooves on the disk fit rollers fastened
to cranks. With the revolution of the
shaft the rollers move to and fro in the
grooves and communicate motion to the
cranks, and they in turn revolve the shaft
or shafts as may be arranged according
to the size of the boat propelled. For ev-
cry revolution of the main shaft the disk
send its cranlxs around twice, making a
gain of 80 per cent in the revolutions of
the propeller without the aid of cog
and doing away entirely with the ordinary
jarring motion in a boat. Mr.. Van Wyck
calls his invention a wheel and roller
bearing movement, and it acts very much
on the same principle as the bail-bearing
mechanism of bicycle. The diameter of
each circle described by a crank pin is
equal to only one-half the diameter of the
grooved disk or driving wheel, thus OBJ
tanning two revolutions of the cranks for
one of the shaft. In the case of large
boat 1t will be necessary TO apply one disk
to each main shaft or propeller but in
small launch two propellers may be
run by one shaft.
Ever since the lamentable mistake was
made of putting that most worthless and
troublesome of fish. the German carp, in
American ponds and rivers, says the New
York Times. energetic and usually fruit
less efforts have been made to get rid Of
him again. He multiplies at an astonishing
rate in our waters, deprives his betters Of
the food upon which they were accustomed
to depend and is himself such wretched
eating when dead and so spiritless when
alive that he is detested alike by the men
who fish for the sake OF fish and by those
who do it for the sake of fishing. Where
the carp lives he creates a piscatorial
desert, for reputable fish will not associate