116 
POPULAR SCIEKCE NEWS. 
[August, 1S90. 
[Original in Popular Science JVeiPS.J 
GRASS OF PARNASSUS. 
BY S. E. KENNEDY. 
This plant of exalted name is said to have 
originated upon Mount Parnassus, but the speci- 
men before me is of much lowlier birth. It grew, 
with hosts of companions, upon a sunny slope in 
the town of Killingly, Conn., some fifteen miles, 
perhaps, from my valley home. It was brought to 
me in September of last year, and, as I had never 
seen one, it was examined with an unusual degree 
of interest. 
I found that the five creamy-white petals were 
curiously marked with many green veins, extending 
from base to apex, and that upon the margin — 
where they were much less distinct — they run in 
the opposite direction, that is, toward the edges of 
the petals ; — an arrangement I had not noticed in a 
flower before, adding to its beauty as well as inter- 
est. Another characteristic I found to be a row of 
stamen-like appendages at the base of each petal, 
three in a group, cleft nearly to base, and tipped 
with tiny round heads, not at all like the anthers of 
the inner row of true stamens. These are alternate 
with the petals, and fall between each in such a way 
that they may be seen from the under side of the 
flower. 
Wood says that this flower is remarkable for 
having the four stigmas placed over the parietal 
placenta as if each stigma was compounded of the 
two adjacent halves of the two divided stigmas. 
The long, naked scape bears but one flower, which 
is about an inch in breadth. The smooth, broad 
leaves are chiefly radical, there being but one 
cauline leaf, which clasps the stalk a few inches 
above the root. 
This species is Parnassia Caroliniana, the only 
one found in the Northern States, I believe, P. 
palustris and P. asarifolia belonging to the South 
and West. 
Mdosup Valley, R. I. 
SCIENTIFIC BREVITIES. 
An attempt has lately been made in the United 
States Navy to light the binnacles of ships by 
electricity instead of oil ; but it was found that 
by bringing an incandescent lamp close to the 
compass, a deflection of the needles could be pro- 
duced. 
Ink for Writing on Photographs. — The fol- 
lowing answers very well for numbering and mark- 
ing proofs, the writing being executed on a dark 
portion : Iodide of potassium, 10 parts ; water, 30 
parts; iodine, i part; gum, i part. The lines soon 
bleach under the strokes by the conversion of 
the silver into iodide. 
Fast Time. — A special train on the Philadelphia 
& Reading, and the Central Railroad of New Jersey, 
on March 10, made the run between Philadelphia 
and New York, a distance of ninety miles, in eighty- 
five minutes. This is at the average rate of 63.53 
miles per hour. At times the train is said to have 
exceeded eighty-five miles per hour. 
Fluid Crystals is the appellation given by Dr. 
O. Lehmann to certain products, such as benzoate 
of cholesteryl, first prepared by M. Reinitzer, which, 
although apparently melting at 145° C, behaves 
towards polarized light between 145° and 178° as 
if it still had a crystalline structure. Between these 
temperatures the compound in question is perfectly 
fluid. 
The Applications of Photography are becom- 
ing very varied. In a law suit in Germany, Dr. J. 
M. Eder was called upon to see if he could deter- 
mine the writing upon a document which had been 
rendered illegible from ink spilled over it. By 
using an erythrosine plate properly exposed by 
gaslight, and developed with pyro and soda, he was 
able to show the hidden characters beneath the 
blot that covered them. 
A PK.\cricAL Use of Chemistry. — An explosion 
and fire at Antwerp reduced to a charred mass a 
bundle of one-thousand-florin Austrian obligations. 
Without presentation in some identifiable form 
there could be no payment. The imperilled obliga- 
tions were given to a chemist, and he succeeded in 
separating the whole of them and finding out the 
numbers ; and upon his report the money has been 
paid. Capitalists owe innumerable obligations to 
science. 
A VERY simple apparatus for obtaining an electric 
spark is made by a German physicist. Round the 
centre of a common lamp-chimney is pasted a strip 
of tin foil, and another strip from one end of the 
chimney to within a quarter of an inch of this ring. 
Then a piece of silk is wrapped around a brush, and 
the interior of the chimney is. rubbed briskly. In 
the dark a bright electric spark may be seen to pass 
from one piece of tin foil to the other each time the 
brush is withdrawn from the chimney. Many other 
experiments can be tried with this apparatus. 
Electrical Base Ball. — A veteran base ball 
player, who is now on the Pacific coast, writes as 
follows concerning an electrical device which is 
to be introduced into the game: "In our game 
yesterday we tried the new first-base bag. It is 
made of rubber, with an electrical attachment, and 
the minute the fielder or runner touches it, a bell 
rings in the grand-stand. It is hoped that this 
arrangement will assist the scorer or reporter in 
deciding whether the umpire's decisions on close 
plays are correct; but, to my mind, there is nothing 
that can be invented that will be an improvement 
on the old canvas bag." 
Cork Rope. — A cork core floating rope has been 
invented. The inventor claims that his floating 
rope of one inch thickness will stand a strain 
of more than one thousand pounds. The rope con- 
sists of a core of small round corks about three 
quarters of an inch long, placed end to end, around 
which is braided a network of cotton twine. This 
is surrounded by another layer of strong cotton 
twine, braided in heavy strands, which is about a 
quarter of an inch thick. The rope is very r.oft and 
pliable, and even after being tied into a small knot 
will return to its original shape. It can be used in 
life lines or life rafts, and as a heaving line to tie 
heavy hawsers to. At a life saving station such a 
rope would be very valuable. 
A New Use for the Microphone. — Capt. du 
Place has devised what he calls the schiseophone, 
a modification of Prof. Hughes's sonometer, but 
which may be useful in the shops in detecting con- 
cealed flaws in, say, crank-axles of locomotives and 
propeller-shafts of steam vessels, especially as 
experiments made in the Ermont shops of the 
Northern Railway of France are reported success- 
ful. The instrument comprises a striker and an 
audiometer. A steel rod is moved to and fro in front 
of a microphone, periodically striking the metal bar 
under examination. Two coils, one moveable and 
connected to the microphone, the other fixed and 
connected to two telephones, are arranged on a 
graduated rod. Having placed the movable coil so 
that the telephones are silent so long as the hammer 
is striking a solid portion of the metal, the hammer 
Is moved along the bar, and should there exist a flaw 
in it, the increased noise given out causes more 
powerful currents to flow in the microphone circuit, 
with the result that the telephones are no longer 
silent. 
Practical Cljen^istry ai^d tlje j'lrts. 
AN ANCIENT CHEMICAL LABO- 
RATORY. 
An interesting department of the late 
Paris Exposition was that illustrating the 
conditions of diflerent industries in former 
times. Among the exhibits was a reproduc- 
tion of a chemical laboratory of the seven- 
teenth century, as shown in the engraving on 
page 117, — a period when the science of 
chemistry could hardly be said to exist, 
except in connection with the superstitions 
and absurdities of the alchemists. Although 
in the light of our present knowledge we can 
but smile at the theories of the medi;eval 
chemists, yet there were many among them 
who were genuine seekers after truth, and 
we owe much to their patient investigations, 
which often led to the discovery of important 
truths, although their true value was not 
perceived at the time of their discovery. 
When we remember that it is scarcely a 1 
hundred years ago that the doctrine of phlo- 
giston was universally held, and that even 
Faraday could not at first accept the theory 
of the conservation of energy, we should not 
insist too strongly upon the absolute truth 
of many of our modern scientific conce])tions 
— such as the existence of atoms or the ether, 
which, as yet, remain in the border-land 
between theory and fact. The chemist of a 
hundred years hence may look upon both 
ether and phlogiston as the products of a j 
disordei-ed scientific imagination, and treat 
the theory of elementary atoms with as little 
respect as that of the philosopher's stone. 
When we consider the limitetl and imper- 
fect apparatus with which the chemists 
of former times performed, in many cases, 
such excellent work, our respect for their 
ability is greatly enhanced. A modern chem- 
ist would feel lost without gas-lamps and 
furnaces, balances which will weigh the frac- 
tion of a hair, and an unlimited quantity 
of glass vessels and utensils of every conceiv- 
able size and shape ; but without the aid 
of these ingenious devices, and with only a 
few dishes and bladders, from the stock of a 
Swedish country pharmacy, Scheele not only 
discovered oxygen gas, contemporaneously 
with Priestl}-, but also a large number of other 
chemical substances, solid, liquid, and gaseous, 
and described their properties so accurately 
that no change has been foiuid necessary up to 
the present day. With Schcele's facilities few 
modern chemists could have equalleti, and 
none excelled him. 
There are two thousand engines on the London 
and Northwestern Railway that will take the same 
boiler. A change of boiler from one engine frame 
to another can be made by taking out eighteen 
bolts. The superintendent believes he could run an 
engine around the world without a hot box or 
losing a pin. 
