The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1905-11-25


Passing Of the SOFIA Big Fish-A sweet
Plant-The Longest Lffe-Meta1 Scene
xy-Prolonged AnesEhessa Trains
Without Engineers Poisonous Dyes
Bees IN the German Fuel-A
Standard Candle.
The preservation Of the soil itself as well as It's
fertility seems to be problem TO which man
must give early attention. Prof. N. s. shaler,
in calling attention to this. points out that under
savage life the undisturbed roots and stems of
the wild plants bound the soil to the rocks, and
the average washing away in four or i've CEN
turtles would not equal the inch that may be car
ried to the sea from modern plowed field by
single rain-storm. To this latter-day waste
must be added cropping that takes away soluble
minerals faster than they are formed. The soil
is thus being reduced both in quantity and In
quality, and the results are to be seen in the les
sened productiveness Of lands in Italy, Greece,
Spain and most other parts Of the world. The
remedy to be sought is some means Of prevent
ing the loss Of the soil at greater rate than the
decay Of the rocks restores It.
-.
The most gigantic Of the sharks, the largest of
al fishes, is so little known that DIR. Thee. Gill
reports difficulty in finding any information
about It. The creature is the great whale shark.
or mhor. and is not uncommon in the Indian
Ocean. where 1t reaches length Of sixty feet,
living lazIly near the surface and rarely ap
preaching land. With mouth sometimes four
feet wide It has very small teeth, its food being
mostly minute crustaceans. occasionally up
sets boat By rubbing against it, but is other
wise harmless to man.
~
The new sugar plant from South America,
which has been named "Eupatorium rebandE-
um," is pronounced by Bertoni, the German
chemist, to be Of great industrial value. It
grows or 10 inches high, and is found to con-
tain from 20 to 30 times as much saccharine mat
ter as sugar-cane or the beet.
-
The distinction Of being the Oldest living thing
undoubtedly belongs to some giant tree. and
many attempts to locate it and determine its age
have been made. A century ago De Candolle
found two trees-one at Portugal, in Perth
shire, and one at Hedsor. in Bucks-that were
estimated to be respectively $500 and S,24O years
old. Both are still fourishing, and the older
tree has trunk ~ feet In diameter. gigantic
baobab of Central America, with trunk 20 feet
through, was thought by Humboldt to be not
less than 5.150 years old. Mexican botanists be-
Iieve they have now discovered life-span even
greater than this. and from the annual rings
cypress Of Chepultepec. whose trunk is 11S feet
in circumference, is assigned an age of about g.
200 years.
The hre-proof scenery of NJ Moissan, which is
being tested in several of the Paris theatres.
consists of a framework Of iron tubing upou
which wire gauze is stretched for the design.
Besides incombustibility this scenery has the
49,
Of handling, and its weight is not only no greater
than wood and canvas but short pieces are even
lighter. The first cost is little more than that
the gauze remain invisible, and trees, flowers,
ETC., are given very realistic effect
-
stovaine. the new an@sthetic of DR.. Fourneau,
is injected into the spinal fluid. and within FIVE
minutes gives complete insensibility below the
point Of injection, while the patient does not
lose consciousness. The effects last foran hour
and half. No unfavorable results have been
made in France, but fears Of lack Of control and
danger Of blood-poisoning have been expressed.
s'4
Salt from the mines at Stassfurt is carried on
trains Of thirty half ton trucks, each train hav-
ing "a horsepower electric locomotive. No
engineer rides on the train. which is stopped and
started instantly by an attendant at each of the
five stations along the line.
-.
Experiments with fifty of the coal-tar dyes
have shown that fifteen are positively poison
Gus, and twenty others caused harmful disturb
ances Of digestive organs, kidneys or general
health Of animals. Only two colors proved
harmful to the skin. The most poisonous colors
are not among the greens, though the noxious
character of the arsenical greens has given that
impression, butamong the coal-tar dyes the most
seriously poisonous are yellow and orange colors
such as aurantia, mandarin. metanil orange and
butter yellow. Next in order Of numberare the
blues, browns and blacks, very few among the
violet and green colors having proven at all
harmful.
Apiaries are the novel addition to the drawing
room proposed by Miss Baden-Powell. sister of
the hero of Mafeking The bees are not found
Objectionable in any room Of the house, and the
one hive in the home of Miss Baden-Powel at
Princes Gate, London, last year yielded sixty
pounds of honey. A specially contrived hive is
used. The bees readily find their way through
little aperture in the house-wall, and they re-
quire no attention in summer, food being given
them in winter.
The worlds peat centre is not in Ireland
which, however. has more than 1900 square
miles of bog-but in the north of Germany and
the adjacent parts Of Denmark and Holland. A
square mile of bog ten feet deep is estimated to
have heating power equal to more than 100000
tons Of coal. Single boys in Friesland are found
to cover 1900 square miles, and Germany has
more fuel in peat than in coal.
Ass
The acetylene fame burning in free air at the
end of capillary tube is the standard of light
proposed by NJ. Oh. Ferry. The intensity is very
uniform at constant pressure, and the light has
the advantage Of spectrum very similar to that
of sunlight.
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