720 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



I860, and new discoveries were made in 1862, 

 giving additional stimulus to the industry. 

 In 1865, by the utilization of appliances for 

 removing gold from low grades of ore, the 

 mines became extremely lucrative. The aver- 

 age yield per ton for thirty-three years was 

 thirteen dollars, and it was estimated in 

 1895 that Nova Scotia had produced gold to 

 the value of $11,500,000. In the province 

 of Quebec, gold was fiist discovered in 1847. 

 Prof. Hardman made an examination in that 

 province in 1895, when, after running a tun- 

 nel six hundred feet long, he struck the bed 

 of an old river, and in three weeks removed 

 enough gold to pay the entire expense of his 

 operations. There was, consequently, fever- 

 ish excitement in the province. 



NOTES. 



Mr. W. Baxter, Jr., writing in Cassier's 

 Magazine, gives the total amount of capital 

 invested in electric lighting in the United 

 States as $500,(100,000, and the number of 

 plants, public and private, as more than 10,- 

 000. About 500,000 motors are in use, and 

 they are valued at $100,000,000. The elec- 

 trical apparatus used in mining is estimated 

 to be worth $100,000,000. The value of the 

 electric elevator industry is supposed to be 

 about $15,000,000. The electric railways 

 are believed to represent a capital of more 

 than $700,000,000, and the aggregate of 

 capital invested in electric railways and light- 

 ing, exclusive of the value of the establish- 

 ments that manufacture the machinery and 

 apparatus, is about $1,500,000,000. 



A NEW railway between the Russian Asi- 

 atic towns of Nertchinsk and Vladivostock, 

 crossing Manchuria to imite the two branches 

 of the Trans-Siberian Railway, is to be con- 

 structed with French capital and by French 

 engineers, under the control and with the 

 guarantee of the Russian Government to 

 be, nevertheless, a Chinese line, administered 

 by Chinese. 



A Swiss society of popular traditions has 

 been formed at Zurich for the collection of 

 anthropological and ethnological notes rela- 

 tive to the several cantons, documents on 

 the manners, dwellings, costumes, festivals, 

 working tools, musical instruments, industrial 

 arts, family celebrations, religious solemni- 

 ties, weather lore, popular literature, games, 

 names of places and persons, and other items 

 in folklore. A special review will be pub- 

 lished, to embody the results of the inquiries 

 made under the society's auspices. 



Mr. H. Harries has shown, in the Royal 

 Meteorological Society, that hail and thun- 

 derstorms are not, as has been supposed, ex- 

 tremely rare in the arctic regions. He has 



examined one hundred logs of vessels which 

 have visited those quarters, and seventy-five 

 of them gave records of hail having been 

 encountered at some time or other. Thun- 

 derstorms were not so frequently mentioned 

 as hail, but they were observed in seven 

 months out of the twelve, most frequently 

 in August. 



Leo Brenner, of the Manora Observatory, 

 Tstria, has acknowledged a gift of $1,650 

 from Miss Catherine W. Bruce, of New York, 

 for the use of the observatory and addi- 

 tions to its equipment. Herr Brenner is en- 

 gaged in the study of Mars, and reports the 

 discovery of several interesting features, in- 

 cluding twenty new canals, "very broad, and 

 consequently probably double," and a new 

 "oasis" or '"lake." 



An American locomotive works is in course 

 of erection at Nijni Novgorod, Russia, to 

 have capacity for turning out one hundred 

 and fifty locomotives a year, and employ 

 about one thousand men. 



Proof regarded by him as abundantly 

 satisfactory has been collected by Mr. N. T. 

 Bonner, of Cincinnati, from study of Pom- 

 peiian boilers, that the principle of the water- 

 tube boiler was fully understood and appre- 

 ciated by the people of Pompeii two thousand 

 years ago. The Pompeiian boilers, being 

 used principally for heating water and wine, 

 the shells and covers were only such as would 

 offer a slight resistance to the escape of the 

 steam. 



Formalin, a solution ^f formic aldehyde, 

 has been recommended to the London Ento- 

 mological Society as a preventive of mold. 

 An object once sprayed with it never be- 

 comes moldy afterward. It is much used 

 in the color industry, and is therefore pro- 

 duced on a large scale. 



Besides the common early belief in spirits 

 of the forest, sea, and mountain usually 

 needing propitiation, Mr. Henry Ling Roth 

 finds among the natives of Sarawak and Brit- 

 ish North Borneo a conception of a well-dis- 

 posed beneficent Petara. A system of omens 

 exists for the regulation of life, and with it 

 is combined a sort of worship of the birds 

 with whose movements the omens are asso- 

 ciated. The medicine men or medicine wom- 

 en pretend to extract disease in the form of 

 bits of stick or stones, and rags are hung on 

 bushes by the roadside to turn away or carry 

 off disease. Cairns are built up by passers- 

 by, each adding a stone, and tabu prevails, 

 as in the Pacific Islands. 



Messrs. Petermann and Graftian, of the 

 Belgian Academy of Sciences, find that hoar- 

 frost is peculiarly rich in nitrogenous com- 

 pounds, and therefore plays an important 

 part in increasing nitrogenous matter in the 

 forest and in purifying the air. 



