The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1902-10-11
Correspondence Baltimore County Union.
SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.

6OlENIlFlC MlSCELLAN l..
An Automatic acknowledgements
to Poisons-Future Timber-Fuel After
Coal-Balloon Ascents for Health-A
New Electric Car-The Brain Coherei
Another Kind of Rays--Hardened
Aluminum-Meat Evaporation.
The unnamed IiRhtship at the Otter Rock
near Islay, on the west coast of Scotland, has 8
steel hull of extra strength. divided into three
steel gas-tanks. The powerful light, mounted
IN lantern supported on steel tower at 9
height of % feet above water-level, is visible
from eight to twelve miles. The gas IS stored
in tanks at pressure of $50 to $50 pounds pei
square inch, is fed to the burners by an efficient
regulating apparatus, and single filling OF the
burning night and day for several months. A
fog-bell is kept ringing by the gas burners.
~
Brain and nerve poisons, such as morphine and
atroptne, are much less poisonous to animals
than to man, states Prof. V. X. Chestnut. In
proportion to their weight, dogs and horses can
endure ten times as much morphine as man,
while doves can stand 500 times and frogs even
1000 times as much. The herbivorous animals
have the digestive tract of much greater length
than the carnvorous. This causes the food to
remain in the body several days instead OF
twenty-four hours. and the longer time for alb
sorption into the blood probably explains why
metallic poisons are much more fatal to the
herbivorous than to carnivorous animals
-.
Considering the worlds timber supply, DR..
Schlich has found that plenty of hard wood is
still available. but that coniferous wood, which
forms IS per cent. of the total demand, can be
eOd sUp &
Sweden may meet one-sixth of the total de-
mand.
The 10000 tons of beetroot crushed in Ger
many in 1910 yielded but 5K per cent. of raw
sugar, while last years 100000 tons gave ID per
cent.
The world may still have fuel after the coal is
gone, in the opinion of d. E. Hutchins, Cape
Colony scientist. The Eucalyptus trees of South
Africa and Australia have wood producing
maximum five times as great as that of German
spruce, and the heating value of an equal bulk
is three times as great. The annual tre-wood
yield of an acre In South Africa thus appears to
be fifteen times as great in heating power as
that of an acre in the forests of Central Europe.
Experiment has proven that on tropical noun
tains the growth of twenty tons of dry wood
fuel per acre, fully equal in heating value to
the same weight of coal, and 1t is reasonable to
suppose that by selection this yield could be
doubled. About 5000 million acres out of the
total land surface have sufficient rainfall and
sun heat for the growth of these trees. If one
half of this area were in forest, it seems posi-
BILE to obtain the equivalent of 161 900 million
tons of coal yearly; and with forest area of
only one-fourth, as at present in Germany and
an average forest yield of only one-half of the
present maximum, the output would still equal
than thirty times the present consumption of
coal.
Ballooning is now receiving attention as a
possible remedy for pulmonary affections. The
conditions are not the same as those of noun
taineering, the change of altitude being more
rapid and muscular fatigue being absent. In
the trips Of the French Society of Physiology,
DIR. Henocque proposes to regard the atmos-
phere as divided into three zones. Up to about
three miles the surrounding air supplies all the
fUn mi q
are held to require closed car as was first sug-
gested in 1871, or an aerial diving suit.
"a
A novel type of storage battery car which in
English tests has run 100 miles single
charge, has motors that when travelling down
hill are reversed and become generators for re-
storing the battery charge. An interesting
feature of this change of motors into genera
tors is braking effect that is usually sufficient
to check the cars speed without applying the
mechanical brakes.
An explanation of the influence of electric
storms upon sufferers from nervous disease has
been sought by A. Frederick Collins. A section
of the brain of a freshly killed animal was
placed in circuit with pair of resonating
plates, a dry battery and a telephone receiver,
and when electric waves were sent from an
emitter ten feet away, momentary cohesion of
the brain cells resulted, reducing resistance. and
giving click in the telephone. The same effect
was then obtained with living brain, that of an
etherized cat, the sound of cohesion being clear
though feebler than before.
The new form of radiation brought to notice
by M. Albert Nodon seems to have properties
intermediate between those of X-rays and those
of radium rays. 1t is produced on the dark side
of thin metallic plate when luminous or ultra
violet rays fall upon the opposite side, and it
has the effect of discharging an electrified body
such as brass sphere-enclosed in light
tight box. The radiation does not seem to pro-
duce fuorescence or act upon Photographic
plate. Itpenetrates wood and glass. and differs
from cathode rays in passing through metals
and black cardboard.
Alloys of aluminium and magnesium are
known to work better than pure aluminium with
certain TOOLS but they are less malleable and
ductie. Some German metallurgists have dis
covered that the addition of two to ten per
cent. of magnesium scarcely changes the ap-
pearance of the aluminium. but that this alloy
acquires new qualities after rolling several
times at temperature of 400 to 50OoC. 1t can
be cut and filed with the greatest facility, while
it retains the ductility and malleabiity of pure
aluminium.
Meat In cooking loses much bulk from evapo-
ration-small pieces more than large. In late
experiments a pound piece of lean beef lost
45.6 per cent. in weight but a five-pound piece
was reduced only 1913 per cent. Loss in nutri-
tion was much less than this would indicate