The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1900-03-25

soldiers of the Kilkenny garrison. An off,
Ger appearing, one of the troopers several
the tails with a blow from his sword. The
cats escaped and the officer was told that
they had fought until nothing but the tails
were left.
What is the lightest gas and how is 1t
made? 2 How can silk cloth be made air
tight or waterproof?-W. I.
Hydrogen, whose density is about seven
hundredths that of air. 1t is obtained by
the decomposition of water. OF many ways
of obtaining ii the most common employs
zinc and iron and dilute sulphuric or muri-
attic acid. 2 There are many published
methods. BY one the silk is passed through
a tank that has three compartments. In
the first is. a warm solution of alum, in the
second a warm bath of lead acetate, and in
the last is pure water. The idea of the
waterproofng process is to deposit within
the fibres of the cloth a substance that is
impervious to water-sulphate of lead in
this case.
What are the arrangements as to prizes,
and so on, for a whist party?-L. G..
The hostess plans for a number of guests
Nv - AOo%s oAh0 my Ott Il "AO
cannot attend should notify the hostess in
time for her to procure a substitute. She
provides a score card or device for each
player. and by numbers. designs or orna-
mentation on the cards are settled who are
TO be partners and the tables where the
players are to start. Winner remain at
the head table, losers passing to the lowest
table, while at all other tables losers re-
main and winners move TO the next table.
Partners change with each deal. First and
second prizes for women and for men are
awarded for highest and next highest
scores for the evening. "booby" prize, when
there is one, going with lowest score. These
are general rules and are modified to taste.
Would not a gun ten feet long shoot
farther than a gun forty feet long with
Would not the compression of air and
friction in the long gun reduce the veloc-
ity and would not the ball in the short
gun go swifter and farther?-T. ID.
Explosives that are safe for use in can
non are not so instantaneous in their action
as is dynamite and it's class. Thus it is
calculated that the projectIles of our
twelve-inch rifles in passing through the
thirty feet between it's seat i'm the cham
Der and the bore takes one-thirt Asixth of
a second. Were the bore to be shortened
some of the expansive power of the gases
liberated by igniting the powder would be
lost. The proper relations of weight of
charge to weight of projectile and length
OF bore constitute one of the fine problems
of what experts i'm gunnery style "interior
baiiistics." You will find the topic treated
in most encyclopedias.
What has been the average increase of
wages over those of 1S96?-T. y.
The increase in the iron industry has
been from Is to % per cent. In many
branches of the iron industry wages are
affected by the prices of iron. In the tex
tile industries the increase has been about
IS per cent. Common labor connected with
the great industries has not been advanced
as much as skilled labor. The real increase
is above the figures named, because all in
o%Ustries are running full time. The aggre-
gate amount paid as wages is much larger
than i'm 1896. because many thousand men
are employed who were idle then.