386 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



pounds of hyposulphite of soda, in four gallons of water, is to 

 be heated with two and a half hundred weight of raw soap. 

 The product obtained is lighter in color than the common 

 article, hard and firm, and of superior quality. 15 (7,1871, 

 256. 



EAST INDIAN METHOD OF BLOWING A FIRE. 



Mr. H. Schlagintweit, the celebrated traveler, tells of a pe- 

 culiar way of blowing the fire in India. When, in damp 

 weather in the mountains, there was a difficulty in starting 

 a fire, his native attendants were in the habit of taking a 

 bamboo cylinder of about one and a half or two inches in 

 diameter, and a foot and a half long, and blowing into it, 

 not directly, but from a distance of six inches. This caused 

 a whirling motion of the air around the edge, and more air 

 was carried to the fire than from a tube held close to the 

 mouth. Our traveler always found this expedient successful, 

 and believes that the application of a similar tube might es- 

 sentially increase the efficiency of the common bellows. 8(7, 

 1871, xii., 96. 



mode of removing the skins of animals. 



Among the latest novelties in industrial operations apj)ears 

 to be a method devised in South America for loosening the 

 skin of dead cattle, by the insertion of a pipe at some point 

 between the skin and carcass, through which air is forced. 

 The distention produced by the air separates the entire skin 

 in a very short time from the subjacent fat and flesh, so that 

 the hide can be taken off, and the whole operation completed, 

 according to our informant, in the space of one minute. It 

 is not impossible that some such application as this may be 

 employed to advantage by the taxidermist for the purpose 

 of more readily removing the skin from mammals and birds. 

 Some species, at least, would be susceptible of this treatment, 

 although in others the adhesion would probably be too great 

 to admit of it. 3-4, April 28, 1871, 291. 



AIR-CUSHION FOR THE FEET IN KAILWAY TRAVEL. 



A writer in the Medical Times and Gazette refers to the 

 fatigue of the limbs produced after a long railway journey 

 as due mainly to the trembling motion of the floor under the 



