252 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ately planted on the spot, in consequence of which the beach was 

 again raised to a sufficient height, and in various places into hills." 



At Sea Girt, N. J., there is a strip of beach covered with cedar 

 bushes. These have raised a natural dike. The sand, blown up 

 the beach, is caught by the bushes and arrested, forming a long 

 irregular bank of considerable height. The hollows behind this 

 bank, protected from the surf, from the sea-breeze, and from de- 

 structive sand showers, could readily be reclaimed, fertilized, and 

 made productive. For some years clover has been planted just 

 above another part of the beach, and has produced a heavy crop. 

 Those who, not many years ago, first beheld with wonder beauti- 

 ful rose bushes and honeysuckle vines springing from the sands 

 at Ocean Grove, will think little of the difficulty of covering these 

 sands with vegetation sufficiently strong to withstand the inroads 

 of the encroaching sea. 



Thus, as' the slight chain forged by the swart elves securely 

 bound the savage wolf Fenrir, so may his brother, Jormungund, 

 the great ocean monster, be bound by a rope of sand. 



NICKEL AND ITS USES. 



By J. T. DONALD, M. A. 



CONSIDERABLE interest attaches to the metal nickel at the 

 present time, principally for two reason : In the first place, 

 experiments recently made in France, England, and America have 

 shown that steel alloyed with a small percentage of nickel forms 

 an alloy possessed of great strength and remarkable resisting 

 powers. In the second place, the past few years have witnessed 

 the discovery and initial development on a large scale of what are 

 said to be practically inexhaustible deposits of nickel ore in what 

 is known as the Sudbury District, of Canada. 



Nickel may be said to be a modern metal, for its history goes 

 back no further than a century and a half, although the word is 

 much older. The origin of the name is curious and interesting. 

 The men working in the German copper mines often came upon 

 an ore which, though looking like copper ore, did not yield cop- 

 per when smelted. Such ore they called kupfer-nickel — i. e., gob- 

 lin copper — because they thought the nickels or spirits of the 

 mine were deluding them with bad ore. 



In 1751 the Swedish mineralogist Cronstedt discovered a new 

 metal, which, some three years later, he succeeded in isolating in 

 an impure state. Finding that his new metal was most abundant 

 in kupfer-nickel, he allowed it to retain the name suggested by 

 the old superstition of the German miners. 



