MISCELLANY 



6 37 



have been in the ground previously, and 

 been quickened by the deposit of the mud. 

 Mr. Meehan thought that perhaps the seeds 

 of these plants, protected from air while 

 buried under water, might germinate after 

 exposure to the air. He referred to other 

 cases of the springing up of new plants after 

 the deposit of fresh earth, and suggested a 

 mode of testing the origin of the seeds. 



Education and Invention. There exists 

 a very general belief that great inventions 

 usually come from uneducated men. How 

 erroneous this belief is, at least as regards 

 the art of metallurgy, is well shown by Mr. 

 G. F. Becker, in a lecture delivered in the 

 College of Mines, University of California. 

 Nasmyth, for instance, invented the steam- 

 hammer, without which neither the met- 

 allurgist could turn out sound masses of 

 metal of sufficient size for the fabrication 

 of the vast machines now in use for steam- 

 ships and other purposes, nor the machinist 

 forge them into shape. The crystallization 

 process, and the zinc process for the desil- 

 verization of lead, not only enable us to ex- 

 tract at a profit very small proportions of 

 silver and gold, but also produce an ad- 

 mirable quality of lead. Formerly the qual- 

 ity of lead used to depend almost entirely 

 on that of the ore, and the best brands were 

 exported to all parts of the world ; now the 

 best of lead may be made from almost any 

 lead- ore. The inventor of the crystalliza- 

 tion process, Pattison, was a professional 

 assayer and metallurgist ; and Karsten, who 

 invented the zinc process, was a man of 

 great learning and a metallurgist of the 

 first rank. The inventor of the Rachette 

 furnace, " the furnace of the present and 

 probably of the future for lead or copper 

 smelting," is the engineer who controls the 

 whole governmental smelting and mining 

 interests of Russia. Bessemer, the invent- 

 or of the process which bears his name, is 

 a man of extensive scientific acquirements ; 

 and Siemens, whose most ingenious appa- 

 ratus for producing very high temperatures 

 has vastly increased our powers of heating 

 iron and steel, of producing all grades of 

 steel, and of distilling zinc, received as per- 

 fect an education, scientific and technical, 

 as the world had to offer. It was Faber du 

 Faur, an accomplished Bavarian metallur- 



gist, who first made practical use of the 

 gases which formerly escaped in immense 

 quantities from the tops of blast-furnaces ; 

 and the enormous blast-engines, the hoist- 

 ing-engines, pumps, and hot-blast stoves, 

 often even the roasting-kilns of such estab- 

 lishments, nowadays require no fuel except 

 this long- neglected waste product. Bischof, 

 another engineer, and metallurgical author, 

 was the first to produce gas artificially for 

 smelting purposes ; and this was one of the 

 greatest advances ever made in metallurgy. 

 Lundin, a thoroughly educated Swedish met- 

 allurgist, has shown how gas may be pro- 

 duced from wet saw-dust, of such power 

 that wrought-iron may be melted with it. 



The Temperature of Germination. Herr 

 F. Haberlandt has published three tables, 

 showing the maximum and minimum germi- 

 nation temperature of all the more impor- 

 tant agricultural seeds. He gives the mini- 

 mum for by far the largest number, includ- 

 ing wheat, barley, rye, oats, buckwheat, 

 sugar-beet, linseed, poppy, clover, lucern, 

 peas, rape, and mustard, as below 40.5 Fahr. 

 The minimum for sainfoin, pimpinella, car- 

 rot, cumin, sunflower, Sorghum saccharatum, 

 S. vulgare, and maize, is between 40.5 and 

 51 Fahr. ; for tobacco and gourd, between 

 51 and 60.4 Fahr. ; and for cucumber and 

 melon, the minimum lies betweeen 60.4 

 and 65.3 Fahr. The second table shows 

 the percentage of seeds germinating at the 

 temperatures 61, 47, 88, 100, 110, and 

 122 Fahr., and the number of hours elaps- 

 ing before the rootlets reached a length 

 of two millimetres (0.07874 inch). The 

 maximum limit for coriander and marjoram 

 is between 77 and 88 Fahr. ; for wheat, 

 rye, barley, oats, English ray-grass, vetches, 

 horse-bean, peas, chick-peas, white-mus- 

 tard, woad, cabbage, late kohl-rabi, turnip, 

 radish, madder, fennel, carrot, cumin, pars- 

 ley, poppy, linseed, tobacco, and anise seed, 

 between 88 and 100 Fahr. ; for the com- 

 mon bean, lupin, clover, lucern, early kohl- 

 rabi, summer-rape, buckwheat, chiccory, 

 sunflower, and some varieties of cabbage, be- 

 tween 100 and 110 ; and finally, for maize, 

 Sorghum vulgare, panic-grass, turnip-radish, 

 hemp, teasel, gourd, cucumber, and sugar- 

 melon, between 110 and 122 is the maxi- 

 mum. The third table shows the average 



