The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1900-01-19
ITEMS OF INTEREST.

of Dawson City have adopted a novel and
effective cure for crime 1t is a monster
woodpile of a size to awe the most hard
ened offender. A man convicted of any
offense is competed to saw wood He
saws ten hours a day steadily, day after
day until his sentence expires. He must
saw regardless of the weather In the
most intense cold the hardest rain, the
fiercest snow storm, he is compelled to
continue saving; and if the day has not
ten hours of light. lanterns are provided
10 enable him to put in full day. When
the pile of sawed wood begins to get low,
the authorities sentence men for very
slight offenses, and the natural result is
that everybody is kept on his good be-
havior.
Sir William White has stated before
the British Association of Science his be-
lief that the maximum of speed in steam
navigation has by no means been reach
ed yet and that both increase in length
and weight faVors the better maintenance
of speed at sea, and, this being the case,
the tendency will be to even greater reg
ularity of service than at present, and
thus quicker passa ges will, 10 some eX-
tent, diminish risks. As indicating the
progress made in this line. he instances
the fact that in 1910, the sdewheel ship
Britannia, 207 feet long, $50 horse power.
maintained sea speed of about eight and
one-half knots on a coal consumption of
forty tons a day; speed has been in
creased from eight and oue-half to twen-
ty-tWo and one-nalf knots. and the time
of the voyage reduced 10 about IS per cent.
of what was in 1910: steamers have more
than trebled in length. about doubled in
breath, and Increased tenfod in displace-
ment; che entire power has been made
forty times as great, and the ratio of
horse power to the weight carried has in
creased fOurfod.
The question of hquid-air power is sue
emily presented by a writer in the Forum.
who argues that it is virtually an initial
compression of air to ten thousand pounds
square inch which gives a great adj
vantage as regards storage and trans
port; and then, as by expansion and heat
ing it can be brought to precisely the
same pressure and temperature as in the
case of ordinary compressed air, it fol-
lows that, if there IS an advantage in us
ing the latter it is obviously more ad-
vantageous TO employ liquid air. Fur
Their, this writer asserts that, as the
great increase of efficiency of steam en-
gines during recent years has been owing
TO the employment of higher initial pres
sures, it is but The part of reason to adj
nit that the discovery, by means of liquid
air, of a way to attain vast initial air
pressure, opens the door to higher eff
ciences and greatly extended utilities in
the use of air power. AS is we'll known,
of course, the common practice is TO COM
press air to pressure of, say, 1000 pounds
a square inch for convenience of storage
and transport, and then allow it to eX-
pand to a much lower pressure, and to
become heated in a hot-water apparatus
before it enters the working cylinder.
One of the most interesting exhibits
which will be sent from the United States
to Paris will be a huge map of New York
city, which is now in progress of con-
struction under the chief typographical
engineer of the board of public improve
ments. 1t measures 2S by p feet and is
on a scale of 500 feet to the inch, and in
Guides all the borOughs of the city and
considerable of the adjoining territory.
Twelve. draughtsmen are now working on
the map indoors and there is a field force
of eight men working outside. The map
shows all the trees, parks, piers, ferries
and railway lines; displays contour lines
and elevations of every point in the city,
and more than LOCO square miles of the
territory are embraced, and all buildings
of any Importance whatever are indicat-
ed, says the Scientific American. In each
corner will be a pen-and-ink drawing u
by 1S inches showing some notable view
of the city, and around the edge are to
be smaller sketches of various public
DulluIlSS. y HdTu WOOu platform anu
bronze brackets and ratings make up
the mounting of the map In connection
with it there will be exhibited a copy of
a relief map in the museum at Albany
showing Manhattan Island in 1875 and
also two charts of the city as it looked in
1641 and 1890. The four maps will form an
opportunity for the study of the city's
growth during the last 300 years.
The plan and details are now pub
lished of the vessel which is being built
a Kiel for the German Antarctic expedi-
ton. The ship in question will be built
of wood, the only material strong and
elastic enough to resist the pressure of
the ice. In form she viii be somewhat
FOUNDER than the Fran and VIII not fall
away toward the keel in the same manner.
In order to strengthen the ship against the
pressure of the ice the middle deck win
be built very nearly on the level of the
water line. Protection against floating
ice will be afforded by a triple coating of
oak, pitch pine and South African green
wood, and the bow and stern viii be es-
pecially protected by steel bands. The
length of the ship will be about As meters
the breadth between 10 and II meters and
the draft about meters. She will be
constructed to carry coal and other stores
sufficient for three years. and will contain
accommodation for five scientific OBJ
servers five officers and a crew of about
twenty men. The engine and boiler will
be placed in the stern, between the living
rooms. The center Of the ship will be oc-
cupied by the rooms for scientific work
and the forecastIe will contain space for
fifty Arctic dogs. The ship will be rugged
as a three-masted schooner. Two steam
winches viii serve the anchor and viii
also be used for scientific purposes. The
snip will be Illuminated throughout with
electric light
Since the earth was first formed many
theories have been advanced as to its
shape and the process of its formation,
but no one until our day ever maintained
that its form was that of huge pyramid,
says the New York Herald. Centuries ago
Pylhagoras and Aristotle declared that it
was spherical, Anaximander that it was
shaped like a column, Democritus that it
was a concave disk and much resempled
a huge poTringer, Empedocles and AnaXi-
menes that it was plain disk, and Zeno-
faues that il had roofs like a tree, which
spread in all directions far into the in
finite. Now comes Mar. J. Greene an
ENGLISH scientist and a government off