762 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ing over the shoulders and attached to the 

 poles by ropes. These ropes are so ad- 

 justed that when the men stand still, and 

 the chair is loaded, the poles are bent about 

 three inches. In carrying, the easy swing 

 of the ordinary chair is lost, for, just as the 

 Formosan chair is coming down gently, it 

 is brought up short by the men close to it. 

 The motion is exactly the same as is used 

 for jigging crushed metallic ores. 



Chinese Medicines. The Chinese phar- 

 macopoeia contains instructions for prepar- 

 ing sundry very curious medicines, as, for 

 instance, various animal " wines " mutton- 

 wine, dog-wine, deer- wine, tiger-bone wine, 

 snake-wine, tortoise-wine, and so on. These 

 " wines" (chiu) are employed instead of al- 

 cohol as a solvent for articles used as medi- 

 cines. The mode of preparing mutton-wine 

 is described as follows by Dr. D. J. Mac- 

 gowan, of Shanghai : The ingredients are 

 one sheep, forty catties (a catty equals 1^ 

 pound) of cow's-milk wine, a pint of sour 

 skimmed milk, eight ounces brown sugar, 

 four ounces honey, four ounces fruit of 

 dinocarpus, one catty raisins, and about one 

 catty of half a dozen other drugs. The 

 utensils employed are a large cast-iron pot, 

 a wooden barrel {boorher) about two feet 

 high, and tapering, open at both ends, a 

 smaller iron pot, an earthenware jar ; felt 

 belts and cow-dung are used for making the 

 apparatus air-tight. The boorher is set on 

 the large pot, the joining being first calked 

 with paper, and then daubed on the outside 

 with cow-dung and ashes ; the boorher, too, 

 is made air-tight in the same way. Then 

 pour in the wine, add half the raisins, cut 

 or crushed, half the sugar, the milk, and 

 the bones of the sheep's legs, from the knees 

 down, after breaking them open. From the 

 other bones strip all the fat and most of the 

 flesh, and hang them inside the boorher 

 beyond the reach of the wine. Put in the 

 medicines, the honey, and the remainder of 

 the sugar and raisins. The earthenware 

 jar is then suspended in the centre of the 

 boorher, and the smaller iron pot is set on 

 top, the joint being made air-tight by paper, 

 cloth, and felt bands. A fire is now made 

 under the great pot; when the upper pot 

 feels warm to the touch, fill it with cold 

 water. When this water is too hot to touch, 



it is ladled out, and the pot filled again 

 with cold water. When this in turn be- 

 comes hot, the fire is slackened, the upper 

 pot taken off, and the earthenware pot, 

 which is now found to be full of a dirty- 

 brown liquor, is taken out, the liquid poured 

 off, the vessel replaced, and the upper pot, 

 filled with cold water, again set upon the 

 top of the boorher. When the water on 

 top is again heated, the whole operation is 

 completed. The earthenware pot is now 

 again found to be about half full, and its 

 contents are poured off, allowed to cool, and 

 put up in jars. 



Utilization of Blast - Furnace Slag. 



Within a few years great progress has been 

 made in the utilization of blast-furnace slag, 

 and that material is now applied in many 

 ways with great advantage. Thus, slag 

 " sand " is employed for making concrete, 

 building-bricks, mortar, and cement ; slag 

 " shingle" for concrete, also for roadways ; 

 slag " wool " for covering steam-boilers and 

 pipes, ice-houses, etc., also for filtering-pur- 

 poses ; blocks of slag-concrete are used for 

 paving, for curbstones and the like ; finally, 

 by Britten's process, slag is used in the man- 

 ufacture of glass for roofing, and for other 

 purposes not requiring pure glass. In mak- 

 ing building-bricks of slag, the slag-sand is 

 mixed with selenitic lime, with the addition 

 of iron oxide, and pressed in moulds. The 

 cement is made from the slag-sand, common 

 lime, and iron oxides. It is little inferior to 

 Portland cement in strength, while it does 

 not cost one-fourth as much. The concrete 

 made from this cement, mixed with the 

 " shingle," is an excellent conglomerate for 

 use in monolithic structures. It is stated 

 by Mr. Charles Wood, in a paper read be- 

 fore the British Iron and Steel Institute, 

 that " it took two good men, with steel bars 

 and sledge-hammers, as much as four days 

 to cut through a wall of this concrete about 

 twenty-six inches thick." Mr. Wood exhib- 

 ited to the Institute bottles of slag-glass, 

 also specimens of slag-wool. The latter 

 product, according to Mr. Wood, is ob- 

 tained as follows : A jet of steam is made 

 to strike a stream of molten slag as it falls 

 into the slag-bogies or wagons. This jet 

 scatters the molten slag into shot, and as 

 each shot leaves the stream it carries a fine 



