The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1902-09-27


Seeds of a tropical grass lately shown
to the London Linnean Society are
2 pear-shaped bodies 1--WE inches long aESf
4 three inches in diameter. The enorrf.lEs
store of nutriment contained is prob
ably needed to give the plant a sac
s cessful start amid the dense under
growth of the jungle.
a curious phenomenon has been mo-
ticed in the tropics that can never be
5 seen at higher ATTITUDES. A mining
} shaft at Sombrerete, Mexico. is almost
exactly on the Tropic of Cancer, and at
noon on June 81 the sun shines to the
bottom lighting up the well for YER
teal depth of 100 feet or more.
OF the many wants now felt in tle
arts, few are more important than 5hat
of satisfactory paint for iron and
other metals. Thousands OF tons If
paints are used annually on bridges
and other structures, but it is pointed
out that no compound tried gives ger
feet protection. The perfect paint !: l.t
be tenacious pliable. adhesive. inert,
and proof against moisture, oxygen. ana
the fumes from burning coal.
An old dream of the chemist is the
!, artificial conversion into plant food of
nitrogen from the air. In the latest
development of the Bradley process. on
which the inventor has been at work
several years, special electrical ma
chine makes and breaks $4,000 arcs q
minute the nitrous gases thus formed
from atmospheric nitrogen and oxygen
being collected in water or directly
combined with potash or soda.
The novel fire pump of Robert Lee
febre, of Rouen, carries an electric mo-
tor, which is connected to a supply of
energy by throwing hooked pole over
street-car or electric-light wire. The
apparatus is so small that it can be
drawn by one horse on a two-wheeled
cart, and in a test made a jet was being
forced to height of more than 100 feet
within three minutes. To get an equal
stream steam pump required fourteen
minutes.
/ No pressure yet reached destroys all
bacteria. Milk has been subjected re-
Gently to pressures up to $50 900 pounds
per square inch, but IL was not COM
preston under 20 to 100 tons to the
inch delayed souring twenty-four to
sixty hours, and pressure of ninety
tons. per inch for an hour caused the
milk to keep from four to six days. AS
odd tastes and odors were soon acquir-
ed, it seems that some kinds of bac-
/ terra were killed while others survived
the tremendous squeezing.
r>t,,
Georges Joubert is stated to contain
specially compressed peroxide of call
cium or potassium, with permanga-
nate, a hyperchlorite, and some salt of
copper or nickel. When placed in wa
ter, it is decomposed without heat, CIV
ing off chemically pure oxygen. This
discovery supplies us with oxygen
tablets, of which a pound will yield
twenty to thirty gallons of oxygen, and
+ which can be used in a submarine boa ~
or other close space as needed to keep B
the free oxygen in the atmosphere at
its normal proportion of twenty-one per
cent.
The usual color of water-greenish
yellow to reddish browns now known
to be due to dissolved substances from
uspension-usually mineral and often
containing iron-may be a cause of the
color The depth of tint is estimated by
comparison with a mixture of platinum
and cobalt, states DR.. A. e. BostWick,
the unit being the color given to one
million parts of water by one part of
platinum. AS rule, water near steep
rocks, with few trees, shows less than
20 units of color, near steep wooded or
cultivated slopes, 20 to so units; near
similar but gentler slopes, to 100; and
in swamps, 100 to 500, or even more. In
the United States, northern waters are
more highly colored than southern. Fill
tering does not remove the color and,
as brownish water-though rarely
harmful-is objected to for drinking,
the coloring matter is often removed
by chemical means, as by coagulating
with sulphate of aluminium.
During the last few years much in
genuity has been expended upon appar-
atus for studying the operations of the
human body. The time of these opera
tons is measured by a chronoscope in
vented by Prof. ]. w. F'itz, of Harvard;
and he has also devised location re-
action apparatus for recording quick
ness in touching suddenly disclosed
object, the effect of baseball and tennis a
training being thus made evident. The
algometer of Prof. Cattell measures the
intensity of pressure causing pain.
Prof. Mosso's ergograph records the
phenomena of work and fatigue; and
his plethysmograph shows the varying
volume of the arm under different con-
ditions. Many forms OF apparatus have
been produced by Dr. E. W. Scripture,
of Yale. These record the time lost by
a runner after being signalled, the re-
actions in fencing, the least noticeable
pressure, the location of hot and cold
spots, the interval between steps and
Z IL. L. .. -.