The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1902-09-20

SCIENTIFIC

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| Sleep is produced by NJ. stephane Le-
due through the action of electric cur
rents on the nerve centers, respiration
and circulation being unaffected Az
complete general anaesthesia can be
thus obtained without any unpleasant
! after effects.
OF the 100000 acres in the Philip
pine Islands, it is estimated that more
than 5000 600 are under cultivation and
about 50,09O,0O0 in FORGET. The native
| trees thus far enumerated embrace COS
species, and 100 different native woods
entered the market last year.
! A mechanical sculptor, a machine aus
! tomatically duplicating statuary. is u
remarkable adaptation of the pauto-
graph. The statue to be reproduced is
placed upon a pedestal. where it is gone
over by a small wheel on the end of a
! long arm, which connects with mechan-
| ism driving a cutter. A ball of clay
Is thus made into an exact copy.
| The remarkable zebra hybrid from
! South Africa. lately acquired by the
British Geological Society is a pony
| bred from a cross between a zebra and
pony. 1t resembles a small pony.
| It's body is brown, and the stripping is
peculiar, the marks on the body being
nearly vertical. while those on the limbs
are horizontal to the hooks, below
which the color is black.
"A self-lighting cigar is tipped with
a cap of ground glass, satpetre. potas-
SUM chlorate and gum arabic. and a
FRACTIONAL igniter is placed on the sur
| face of the cap. On scratching the ig-
inter, the cap burns freely and cannot
| be extinguished by an ordinary wind.
| The cap is rendered incandescent and
| the ground glass fused, so coveringSthe
end of the cigar that no unpleasant
taste results.
In view of recent literary success:
What are you going to do with that
boy of yours?" inquired the intimate
friend. II don't exactly know" an
swered the puzzled parent; The evinces
the most obstinate aversion to the usu-
al forms of industry, and he uses lam
guage and expresses sentiments very
shocking to the sensibilities of our
friends. If he was a girl 1 would be
tempted to put him at literature
Washington Star.
The terror of the sea: "Save us,
Save us!" shrieked the bathers, rush
ing to shore. Thinking that the sea
serpent had appeared the hotel pro-
prietor and newspaper men rushed to
the beach armed with cameras and pen
ellis. But the citation turned to alarm
when it was seen that the object Of
terror was Mr.. M. Jeerpoint Porgan,
who had arrived in His cruiser, and or
dered the bathers out of his ocean
Baltimore American.
In q new synthesis, Prof. Zinno pro-
Guces tartaric acid by passing over
potassium glycerate a current of car
, bonic acid gas under a pressure of
about three atmospheres. The POTASH
um glycerate is easily obtained by OK
/ idizing glycerine by means of lead d.
oxide or minimum and nitric acid, and
Their adding potassium carbonate to the
boiling solution of the lead salt 1t is
thought that the new process should
prove important on a large scale for
the manufacture of cream of tartar.
The natural history student finds still
many mysteries to solve. The whole
question of the consciousness and in
telligence of animals, says Lord Ave
bury, requires careful study, and there
is hardly a single animal whose life
history is fully known to us. The many
problems of the flowers scarcely eX-
coed in interest those of leaves and
seeds. In fact, the problems which ev-
cry pond and stream offer us are end
less and most fascinating. There is no
single substance in nature whose prop
critics are fully known, and we seem to
be on the threshold of great discover
les.
curious growth on trees in TERRA
del Fuego is known to the natives as
wooden flowers" 1t is produced by a
parasitic plant, allied to the mistletoe
which develops from sticky seeds de-
posted by birds. and penetrates the
bark and wood of the host. The flow
er-like excrescences, from an inch to
two feet in diameter. are wood of the
tree itself, as forced through the bark
The parasitic plant, unlike the mistle-
toe, weakens and often destroys the
branch on which it lives, and it makes
SO intimate union with the tree that
in transverse section it is almost i'm
possible to tell where one plant ends
and the other begins. The parasite lives
not more than three or four years, its
traces remaining much longer.
Chemical union through the mere
presence of an apparently inactive sub
stance is given renewed interest by the
growing Importance OF catalysis in the
arts. In the new process for making
| sulphuric acid, the combination of sui
| phurous acid and oxygen depends upon
platinized asbestos, and it is a curious
fact that this catalytic agent soon ceas-
es to act unless the gases are carefully
purified. BY Deacon's chlorine process,
| the chlorine is liberated in great guam
! titles by passing hydrochloric acid and
air over hot copper chloride, which I'M
dergoes no change. In oxidizing sui
| nh fad