Amador ledger., 1906-07-06

-Puzzling Horns. Firing Mines +,
Whistle. .-Radium Tinted Gems. =
Not Artificial Life.-Odd Skull
Mending.
So familiar a process as the rustin.
of iron appears to have been mis-
understood. The presence of moistur,
and oxygen has been regarded as tn,
condition necessary, and the old ide,
that carbonic acid plays part ha.
been quite generally discarded. A
different view has just been brought
before the London Chemical Society
by Mr. Gerald Moody. In very care
ful experiments, piece of polished
iron was exposed to distilled water
and continuous current of all
freed from carbonic acid and the
metal continued untarnished at the
end of six weeks. When air with
the normal carbonic acid was drawn
over the sample, however, and was
covered with deep red rust in seventy
two hours.
The bubble fountain is an English
scientific novelty, said to be capable
of blowing 10000 soap bubbles per
minute. Coal gas may be used, and a
very striking effect can be obtained
at night by firing the gas at the
fountain, when the flame Will run
up the stream of bubbles. Inter
mittent groups of bubbles are suggest
ed for gun practice, as they are
cheaper than bales of glass or clay,
and their use is more humane than
the murder of live pigeons.
Calcium cyanamide, known to the
Germans as kalkstickotf, is one of the
artificial fertilizers that is expected
to take the place of Chilean saItpeter
and Peruvian guano. 1t is a COM
pound of calcium carbide with atmos-
pheric nitrogen, and is made by
liquefying air, distilling off the
oxygen, and introducing the nitrogen
into lime and coke at high tempera-
tuIe
In two years French florists change
the violet into two foot tree, carry
Ing 25 to 300 flowers throughout the
year.
While glasses cannot fit the color
blind for observing signals at sea or
on railways, Herr Pichon, of Cologne,
finds that much assistance may be
given in distinguishing between
colors. Persons having the common
form of color blindness require red
and green glasses, as the led glass
absorbs green rays and causes red
objects to appear lighter than to the
naked eye, and the green glass alb
serbs red rays and adds to the. bright
ness of green objects. Those who are
color blind to yellow and blue can
be similarly helped by glasses of
yellow or blue. In cases of color
blindness to all colors, three dittel ent
glasses-red, green and violet-are
necessary, and these can be combined
in pairs so as to give twelve different
shades, making possible very accurate
determinations. In special kind of
color blindness, disease of the retina
causes utter inability to distinguish
blue, and an affection of the optic
nerve makes it impossible to see red.
A recently acquired abnormality of
the British museum is the skull of
an English horse, showing a pair of
rudimenta1y horns on the forehead.
Older specimens are portion of a
similar skull with the horns and
models of the toreheads of two Ethor-
oughbreds also having horns. The
skin extends uniformly over the
horns, with no sign of thickening or
hardening. Just what these horn
like growths signify is perpIexing
naturalists, as none of the ancestral
horses or Immediately related species
we're horned animals, and If there is
no hereditary influence it is remark
able that SO many freak appendages
should appear in the same place.
A curious new device for exploding
mines at some distance is operated by
waves of sound. In the interior of a
cylindrical resonator a disc is SO
mounted as to be free to turn about
its diameter, and when a certain note
is sounded this disc will place itself
in a plane perpendicular to the
cylinder. BY causing the turning
disc to complete an electric circuit,
mine can be exploded by means of
a signal given by warshlps' siren
tuned to the same note as the re,
senator
Many precious stones show a re-
markable change Of color in the pre-
sence of radium. In late German ex-
periments coIorIess diamond from
Borneo became pale yellow after an
exposure of eight days to impure
radlum bromide, deeper yellow in
eight days more, and was not wholly
restored to its original colorlessness
by heating to redness. The light
blue of a sapphire turned to green IL
two hours, then to yellow, reddish
yellow, and after fourteen days, tc