The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-09-12

SCIENTIFIC.

SCIENTIFIC.
The ostrich has been successfully ac-
cimatized in Russia, those born there being
less sensitive to cold than Others
Powdered pumice stone has been found
by a German chemist to be effective
altering medium for liquids containing pre-
cipitates-like barium sulphate-likeIy to
pass through paper
The luminosity IF the incandescent gas
light is increased about 60 per cent, it is
stated, by the deviCe5 OF DIR. Schott of
jena, who feeds the air into the flame at
right angles instead of nearly parallel
The ''acid drops" of the confectoners are
suggested by a British pharmaceutical
writer effective cure for the tobacco
appetite smoking while the acid taste re-
mains in the mouth being peculiarly nau-
seating.
Porous bricks of good quality are made
near Kladno, Bohemia, from a mixture of
clay with bituminous SLATE waste from a
coal mine. The product is claimed to be
cheap very strong, only about half as
heavy as ordinary bricks, and a bad con-
ductor of sound and heat
Ossalin is a grayish-white fat prepared
from beefbone marrow and recommended
as an ointment base. 1t is claimed to be
capable of taking up as much as 200 per
cent. of water, thus rendering the ointment
easily abSorbable. 1t produces no irrita-
neutral.
new worm, living in colonies in the
roots of asters, and popularity known as
'aster worms has been described by Rev.
Hilderic Friend, of Upton England, under
the scientific name of enchytraeus parvulus,
Friend. 1t is the most minute member
known of the order including the earth
worms. Its lengths is only Shout an eighth
OF an inch, yet it has thirty segments, the
hrst six or seven being pellucid.
ease of hliudpacS FROM ,-oro,rrdi,,o~
has been put on record by DR.. j. E. Gem
mel. A boy of eleven went to bed one
night with normal vision but awoke in the
lated, fixed and not influenced by light In
vestgation at last revealed the fact that
the teeth We're wedged and crowded to-
gether, when two permanent and four
temporary molars were extracted. Sight
returned in few days without other treat
ment.
A metallurgist states that a mixture of
equal parts of aluminium and iron casts
solid, but soon crumbles to powder spon-
taaeously, and that the useful alloys con-
tain but surprisingly small proportion of
aluminium. The amount added to steel
is usually but two to four ounces per ton.
This increases materially the soundness of
the 1ngotS and causes the metal to pour
much more quietly but Il slightly larger
and waste. "a ~
known to science is the sheet of chalk
which seems at one. time to have covered
the country from southern England to
central Asia beyond the Sea of Aral, hav-
ing an area about 5000 miles long by 1000
miles broad. This enormous ped was
formed entirely of the microscopic remains
OF minute sea animals. Isolated patches of
the great sheet now remain, that of Eng
land being more than 900 feet thick, and
covering the island southeast of a line ex-
tending diagonally from the North sea at
marlborough head to the coast of the
English channel in DOrsat
Delirum tremens has been studied by DR..
Jacobson, a Danish physician, from records
of 247 recovered cases. He finds that while
chronic alcoholism is a necessary condition
to the evolution of the disease, it is not
sufficient alone to bring about an attack,
which requires also some toxic agent, such
as may result from bacteria or from dis
eases of the digestive tract, the kidneys or
the liver 1t is especially liable to be COM
plicated by pneumonia 1t resembles itself
an infectious disease, having a stage OF in
cubation duration of about four days and
ending with a critical sleep. No treatment
appears capable of shortening the disease.
An electric railreadoaf Cape Town has
caused much trouble in the working of the
submarine cable of the Eastern and South
African Telegraph Company. To avoid an
chors this cable is looped around Table bay,
being brought in this way within about
nine hundred yards OF the tramway Tor a
mile or more, and the consequence has
been that whenever a car was started or
the wheels passed over sand or other OBJ
jectS on the rails the record OF the tele-
graph receiver became irregular. No effect
I've remedy was found until q second cable
was laid alongside the first for ten miles
and connected to the receiver at one END
and to earth at the other.
Spring and others have shown that
metals may sometimes alloy at tempera-
lures far below their melting points, and
another remarkable discovery of similar
kind is Berthelots recent combination of
oxygen and hydrogen at temperatures be-
low 800 degrees c. The action seems to
depend largely on the presence OF third
through the influence of spongy platinum
with baryta n per cent. OF a mixture of
oxygen and hydrogen soon disappeared at
250 degrees, and the whole of it had turned
to water in twenty-siX hours. The baryta
at first combines with. part of the oxygen
to form barium dioxide, which is then re-
duced by the remaining hydogen
Ambergris has been already shown by
Profs c. Gouchet and H. Beauregard to be
an interesting calculus which is developed
in the rectum of the sperm whale This
calculus is composed of crystals of am
brine mixed with Varying proportions of
black pigment from the rectal lining and
with star-coral debris, and when freshly
removed is soft and not at all pleasant in
odor. After preservation in an alright tin
case for some years, the faecal Odor is lost,
or transformed into an agreeable perfume
that gives the material a value of $3.50 to
$500 per pound. Little weight is lost and
this is not a case of slow desiccation which
can be initiated or accelerated BY the with
drawaI of water Continuing the researches
NJ Beauregard now finds that the change
is due to a microbe which he names Spiril-
lum recti Physeteris, and which appears
slowly to destroy the offensive odor and
to produce the delicate perfume. 1t has
rot been determined whether this microbe
- "a no HE of nrndllcine disease in the whale