THE ALUMNI JOURNAL. 



19 



vast mines every twenty-four hours. 

 This means at least 36,500 tons per an- 

 num, or an aggregate equivalent to one- 

 third the entire consumption of the 

 United States. Such an amount, how- 

 ever, under the new conditions, can be 

 increased to any amount necessary to 

 supply the United States, 



Sulphur at, say, $5 per ton delivered 

 in Cleveland, is a very different thing to 

 sulphur at $20 per ton, and the demand 

 will increase. The new sulphur com- 

 pany will increase the output to supply'- 

 the demand of the market, whatever it 

 may be, and as it will cost about 50 cents 

 or $1 to produce it, we may expect a 

 tremendous drop in price and a corres- 

 pondingly enormous increase in consump- 

 tion. 



If nothing unforeseen happens to this 

 industry in Louisiana, within a fevv^ 3'ears 

 the Sicilian sulphur industry will be 

 wiped out, and the United States will 

 supply not only the home market, but 

 the world with sulphur, at a price which 

 will quadruple its present consumption 

 and be beneficial to a thousand branches 

 of manufacture. 



Oil of Peach-Kernels. — It is sometimes diffi- 

 cult if not impossible to distitjguish by physical 

 tests between this oil and true oil of sweet 

 almonds. Dr. A. Schneegans says that there is 

 always as much bromidehyde present in the 

 former as will react with sodium bisulphite 

 solution. The plan is to shake up a small 

 quantity of the oil with a saturated solution of 

 the bisulphite, separate the solution from the 

 oil and add alkali to the solution, when the 

 odor of bitter almonds will appear. 



Soap Berry Tree. — In a pamphlet recently 

 published, Prof. L. J". Trabut, of Algiers, de- 

 scribes one of the soap-berry trees, sapindus 

 utilis (s. mukorossi, Goertner, var. carinatus, 

 Radlk.). The fruits of this plant contains 38 

 per cent, of saponin, more than four times as 

 much quillaia bark, which contains 8 to 9 per 

 cent. only. An adult tree will yield fiom 25 to 

 100 kilos, of fruit, and is, therefore, a plentiful 

 source of saponin. 



A NAUGHT OF SODA. 



The little girl came into the drug store, sayS 

 the Philadelphia American. 



"Pleath, thir," she said, "mother thayth 

 have you a naught of soda ? " 



" A what," repeated the clerk. 



"A naught of soda," reiterated the littlegirl. 



" Do you want a glass of soda water? " asked 

 the clerk. 



" No, thir. Mother thayth I can't have that 

 till evenin'. She thayth have you a naught of 

 soda?" 



" What can she mean," muttered the puzzled 

 clerk. The child grew impatient. 



"A naught of soda," she said, sharply. 

 "Why, it ith a funny bottle wif a thquirter to 

 it, and it goeth 'siz' when you work it." 



" Oh ! You mean a syphon of soda," exclaim- 

 ed the clerk. 



"Oh! Thyphen? Thyphen ? Yeth, thir, it 

 wath thyphen. But typhens and naught ith the 

 thame, ain't it? " 



And the cleik said that cipher and naught 

 were the same. 



Eggs., Wags and the Druggist. — "Yes, I 

 had to move the eggs off the counter," said the 

 Indiana street druggist to a Chicago Record re- 

 porter. " There are too many bright men in 

 this neighborhood; that's the reason. A dish 

 of nice white eggs sets oflF a soda counter, but I 

 can't put mine out without getting them dated. 



' ' What ? You never heard of dating eggs ? 

 See that real estate oflSce over there ? Well, 

 that fellow would come over here for a drink, 

 and as soon as I turned my back he would pick 

 up an egg and mark it with a lead pencil, 'April 

 15, 1895,' and set it back in the dish so that any 

 one who came up to the counter could see it. 

 Of course I couldn't see it behind the counter. 

 I've seen a man come in to order an egg phos- 

 phate, but when he glanced at the eggs and saw 

 one on top dated four or five months back, he 

 would weaken and take a plain five-cent drink. 



"The real-estate man was the first to do it. 

 He started the others, and they had all sorts of 

 fun with those eggs. I didn't mind it much so 

 long as they dated the eggs 1492 or 1776, but 

 when they dated them about a year back or 

 wrote ' feathers ' on them I thought the joke 

 was going a little too far. The trouble was 

 some people who came in didn't know it was a 

 joke. They thought the eggs were six or eight 

 months old That's why I have to keep the 

 eggs on the back shelf. 



" Too many humorists in the neighborhood.'' 



