The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1909-07-31
Newest Notes of Science.

eminent mint at Calcutta is electrically
driven.
The coal bill of the navy last year
including handling and storage, was So
544, 945.
Electric lights, fed by storage bat
teries, have been installed in new Lon
don ambulance
German East Africa has been raising
sisal hemp since 1893 from plants i'm
ported from Florida.
Drinking tumblers of ice, which may
be frozen in simple moulds in any
household, are novelty.
The total number of prizes now being
contested for by aviators number thir-
| ty-eight, valued at over 100000.
Siberia exported nearly $4,000 tons OF
butter last year, chiefly to Denmark,
Germany and England.
Leaf and twig diseases, difficult to
combat, are gradually lessening India
annual production of coffee.
! Illinois, Kentucky, Colorado and Ari-
IONA are the only states that produce
| fiuorspar in commercial quantities.
Investigation of the nutritive values
of the various varieties of potatoes
shows that the violet tinted tubers
stand highest.
Ecuador exports about 10000 tons of
vegetable ivory annually, of which Ger
many takes about one-haf and the
United States one-fourth.
The department of agriculture expects
this years sugar beet crop to total more
than 100000 tons, the greatest on rec
ord.
An electric fan has been devised to re-
move the feathers from chickens. It's
blast is said to clean one completely in
few seconds.
Brazilian scientists have succeeded in
developing a new variety of coffee, with
unusually large, fine berries, which ripen
very early.
To aid in the study of high voltages,
a short experimental transmission line
has been built in Sweden to operate at
100000 volts.
The United States holds the record
for the highest telephone line in the
world with the one at Camp Bird, Colo.
$4,000 feet above sea level.
Known as the kleptograph, a burglar
alarm invented by an Italian ignites a
fiashlight and photographs an intruder
who invades the room in which it is set.
In novel bridge nearing completion
at Philadelphia a concrete flooring 262
feet long is suspended from arches
which are steel boxes filled with con-
crete.
An emergency rope tire that can be
packed in small compass has been in
vented to replace a damaged rubber one
for an automobile that has met with a
mishap.
New vanadium steel handsaws, which
will cut iron pipe, are capable of being
rolled into spirals, regaining their orig
inal form without injury when released.
A platinum famine is feared, as the
output of Russias mines, from which
50 per cent of the worlds supply is de-
rived, has been decreasing steadily since
1901.
Tests show that wind movement of
fifteen miles an hour against the side
of g building will force 1856 cubic feet
of air through one-siXteenth inch crew
ice in an hour
The largest movable bridge yet built
in Asia is a double-leaf roller lift af-
fair, with an opening 200 feet wide,
erected by a Chicago company for a
railroad in Burma.
A new gun carriage with which the
German army is experimenting has
pedrail wheels, the tire blocks of which
practically make and take up a load
for it as it advances.
To celebrate the first centenary of Ar
gentine independence an international
railway and transportation exposition
will be held at Buenos Ayres from May
to November next year.
In fuel tests by the geological survey
all but three of thirty-seven specimens
of coal from the Rocky mountain region
produced good coke, although several
had been considered non-coking.
A feature of a new shower bath ap-
paratus is pipe coil to be placed over
a gas, alcohol or oil burner by which
it is claimed the water may be main
tanned at an even temperature.
French scientists who have been in
vestigating. the subject say. electric fans
are injurious to health, as they stir UP
bacteria in nearby dust and circulate
them through the air.
To train apprentices 70 XIII cattle with
a single blow in German abattoirs there
is used an instrument that registers the
force and direction of strokes of a
mallet.
Tests seem to have supported the
claims of a Boston inventor to have per-
fected system of wireless telephony
which cannot be Interrupted by other
waves in the same zone.
Government figures place the coun-
try's production of pig iron last year at
1886, O1S long tons, a decrease in GUAM
tity of over SO per cent and in value of
aobut 50 per cent from 1907 The output
was the smallest since 1901.
Of all the Rocky mountain and Pacific
coast states, California and Oregon
alone increased their output of coal last
year over the figures for 1907. Decreases
were shown in all the others.
To leave marching soldiers hands
free, a Chicagoan has patented a rife
carrier, consisting of a pocket to sus-
pend the butt from the belt and a stran
to hold the barrel against the shoulder |
Marseilles is the leading vegetable oil |
center of the world, its forty-five mills |
$4,000 tons of seed annually |
Hundreds of thousands of barrels. of i'm
ported oils are also handled there each
year.
A new optical instrument consists of q
ligh-powered incandescent lamp which
IAN be taken into PERSONS mouth to
illuminate his eyes through the retinas
enabling them to be examined through
he pupils.
1t has been found possible to clear
weeds from the channels of shallow
waterways in Egypt, where they are a
great pest, by equipping a motor boat
With an enormous pair of shears. oper-
tied by belt from the propeller shaft
The requisite $250,000 has been sub-
crlbed to enable a party of Scotch sci
'ntists to carry ON extensive oceano-
work in the South Atlantic
N1F TO nj