Amador ledger. (Jackson, Amador County, Calif.) 1875-19??, 1906-12-14

er.-Fighting the African Scourge.
Panoramas of Sound. A Killer of
Pneumonia Germs.
The remarkable progress that has
been made in building powerful
engines of light weight tor air ships
is we'll shown by the 'Antoinette"
gasoline motors of NJ. Levavasseur,
the Paris engineer. The new 30 horse
power type has eight cylinders, this
number ensurlng great steadiness and
making a fiywheel unnecessary, while
the motor starts on simply switching
on the ignition current, and can be
reversed by simple cam shifting
device. The power is developed by
400 revolutions per minute. The
bore and stroke are each 13 inches,
the total weight including gasoline,
pump, piping, wires, plugs and spark
coils but 1917 pounds; and the
space occupied is 29.13 inches long
by 80 81 inches wide and high. This
motor has heen used on tie new
aeroplane of Santos DumoEt and by
other aeronauts, also giving good
results on launches. A $50 horse
power now being built will have six
teen cylinders, and is to weigh only
800 pounds, without gasoline, etc.
Walking on water was accomplished
a year ago by W. Ii. Llewellyn, an
English naval pensioner The appa
ratus has been improved, and now
consists of a pair of canvas-co 7ered
boots, about four feet long, with
large steering understandable by
lines hitched round the waist-attach-
ed to one, and wooden cross bars
fitted to the bottom of each to aid in
keeping the balance. In late test,
the inventor walked with and against
a running stream, at about two miles
an hour.
A novel English table lamp depends
upon petrol absorbed by porous
stone filling the container. There is
no wick, but air rising through per-
toratlons IN the stone carries enough
vapor to light the mantle. UpsettiDg
extinguishes the light, while there is
no free petrol, no odor and no smoke,
with small consumption of illuminant.
~ heating apparatus that is cheap
efficient, sanitary, and of light and
ornamental construction is claimed
by Prof. Junkers, Of Dessau, Ger
many, in his novel gas-stove for
hanging on the wall. The lower half
of the stove consists simply of
corrugated reflector, behind which is
passage for the cold air, which rises
into a series of fiat tubes over the
burners, becomes heated, and escapes
into an external casing surrounding
the upper half of the stove. One
series of openings in the casing allows
the heated air to rise TO the top of the
room, another series projects it for
ward, while the heat passing down
ward is turned by the reflector against
the floor. The gas is completely
burned; the heat is used to best adj
vantage, the strong circulation ensur-
Ing quick and uniform warming of the
room: and the products of combus-
tion are led from the burners to any
convenient chimney fue. The stove
is usually suspended at height of
II to 20 inches. 1t economies space,
dust does not collect beneath it, and
it does not heat the wall behind it.
Vesuvius proves to be fertilizer
factory of strenuous kind. DR.. Stok
lasa, of Prague. calculates that in the
late eruption the crater threw out
upon the surrounding ground about
80, 00U. 600 tons of mud, sand, ashes,
lava. ETC., containing an average of
Oh per cent of nitrogen. This pro-
duct of $4,000 tons of heterogeneous
fertilizer is more than is used in the
whole of England. In addition the
mountain has made enormous deposits
of potassium phosphate and other
fertilizing salts, and the vapors con-
stantIy rising from the crater are
laden with plant food.
The dreaded tsetse-fy of Africa is
supposed to breed in the banana
plantations. As the banana is the
staple food of the country, the planta-
tions cannot be destI Dyed, and 1t is
proposed to introduce the Jungle
fowl to extermiDate the flies, beginn-
ing the experiment on the fiyinfested
deserted island of klmmi IN the
Victoria Nyanza.
Photographs Of single vowel sounds
or musical notes have been made for
considerable time, but with the
improved recording system of &.
marble, a German Investigator into
the psychology of language, we may
obtain a continuous picture of an
entire speech. Using Konig's gas
fame, which oscillates in height with
the vibrations of the gas container,
he registers the sound motion in
smoke instead of by photography.
The gas is passed through tube into
| a capsule closed by a membrane and