The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1904-02-20

addition to his remarkable rapidity Of
speech, Mr.. Conway's voice has a
range of nearly four octaves, the aver
age range of the human voice being
about two octaves. Mr.. Conway's
claim for unparalleled rapidity of
speech is almost incredible, but hun
dreds of his friends and reporter Of
the Sun can testify as to his wonder
full vocal powers. He says that by
actual count he can speak s., 040 words
an hour. This is at the rate of 1884
words minute, or about Is words a
second. Should anyone accept Mr..
Conway's challenge to a talking bout,
the contest will probably be the most
unique competition in the history Of
modern times.
"A party Of biologists recently made
an interesting find in the Arbuckle
Mountains. They struck a small creek
in the mountains, followed down its
course and came finally to place where
they saw some smoke issuing from
the foot of a tree near the creek bed
and from streak running up the side
of hill When the party came op-
posite the place they saw that the
smoke was issuing from the ground.
Upon, careful Investigation the follow
ing was found: There had been a land
slide from the top of the hill, whleh
was here like cliff, and ran I'D 200
feet or more. The cliff was composed
of shale rock, dark, churt-like sub
stance. In falling this had lodged below
and piled against the side of the cliff.
while the outer edge ran out to the
cage Oh the creek. The distance from
the cliff side to the creek bed was
nearly 100 yards. An enormous quaint
1ty of this shale had by a slide been
placed in the position described. From
the foot of the tree smoke issued from
crevice about two feet wide and
running about 100 yards up the slope
to the side Of the cliff. Another small
Iork projected before 1t reached the
cliff. The shale on top, whence the
smoke and steam were issuing, was
light in color. Upon digging down two
feet or more the shale was found to
be red hot.
Very few people IMMERSED in the
mysteries of science are aware of how
the new substance radium, the proper
ties of which have astonished the
world, is obtained in the minute guam
titles that are as yet available. says
an exchange. That the element is OBJ
tanned from pitch blende is generally
Known but some details of the exact
process will be of interest. Operations
for the extraction are commenced by
crushing the pitchblende and then
roasting the powder with carbonate of
soda. After washing the residue is
treated with dilute sulphuric acid;
then the sulphates are converted into
carbonates by boiling with strong car
Donate of soda. The residue contains
radium sulphate, which is an exceed
ingly insoluble salt. The soluble sui
phates are washed out and the residue
or insoluble portion is easily acted up
on by hydrochloric acid, which takes
out, among other things, polonium and
actinium. Radium Sulphate remains
unattached, associated with some ba-
rum sulphate. The sulphates are then
converted into carbonates by treat
ment with boiling strong solution Of
carbonate Of soda. The carbonates ,
OF barium and radium are next dis
solved in hydrochloric acid and precip-
itated again as sulphates by means Of
sulphuric acid. The sulphates are
further purified and ultimately con-
verified into chlorides, until about fif-
teen pounds of barium and radium
chloride are obtained by acting upon
one ton of crushed pitchblende Only
small fraction of this mixed chloride
is pure radium chloride, which is final
ly separated from barium chloride by
crystillization, the crystals from the
most radioactive of the solutions be-
ing selected. In this way the crystals
ultimately obtained are relatively pure
radium chloride Of a very high degree
of radio-acttvity.