856 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The works are at Besan9on, and utilize a 

 process devised by M. de Chardonnet, which 

 is as follows : The pulp, thoroughly cleansed 

 and looking very much like thick gum, is 

 put into cylinders, from which it is forced 

 through pipes into the spinning department. 

 Here the machinery is very similar to that 

 of the ordinary spinning shed, except that 

 one of these pipes passes to each machine. 

 The pipes are supplied with small taps, fixed 

 close together, and each tap has a glass tube 

 about the size of a gas burner, at the ex- 

 treme point of which is a minute aperture, 

 and through this the pulp is forced. These 

 glass tubes are called the silkworms, and 

 some twelve thousand of them are in use in 

 the factory at Besancon. The pulp appears 

 as a minute globule. This a girl touches 

 with her thumb, to which it adheres, and 

 she draws out an almost invisible filament, 

 which she passes through the guides and 

 onto the bobbin. Then, one by one, she 

 takes eight, ten, or twelve other such fila- 

 ments, according to the thickness of the 

 thread to be made, and passes them through 

 the same guides and onto the same bobbin. 

 The subsequent details are practically those 

 of ordinary natural silk spinning. The chief 

 difference in appearance between the natural 

 and the artificial silk is in the greater luster 

 of the latter. The new product is said to 

 take dye much more readily than the natural 

 silk, but not to be quite so strong. It is 

 stated that a factory for the manufacture of 

 this material is to be erected near Manches- 

 ter, England, which will cost $150,000. 



Old Madagascar War Customs.- Descrip- 

 tions of curious war customs that prevailed 

 in Madagascar are quoted by M. A. Gran- 

 didier from Mayeur, who visited that country 

 in 1785, or more than a hundred years ago. 

 The hostile bands usually agreed on the day 

 and place of the battle, and at the appointed 

 time the opposing parties marched to the 

 designated spot. When all was ready, some 

 of the soldiers of one host advanced, fired 

 their guns, and ran back to the protection of 

 their army. While these were reloading, the 

 soldiers on the opposite side went through 

 the same manoeuvre ; and this was continued 

 till one of the hosts got so much the worse 

 of the fight that it retired. Both armies 

 would then go home and return to the occu- 



pations of peace, to resume their odd hostili- 

 ties at some future time. The first battle 

 that Mayeur witnessed lasted from ten o'clock 

 in the morning till four o'clock in the after- 

 noon, with twelve thousand soldiers in line, 

 without victory to either side, while there 

 were twenty -two killed and wounded. Ten 

 days afterward, one of the chiefs having ob- 

 tained re-enforcements, the fight was resumed 

 and hotly contested till, in the very thickest 

 of it, a cloud of locusts suddenly darkened 

 the sky and alighted on the neighboring rice 

 fields. Firing was stopped at once, and all 

 the combatants went pell-mell to picking 

 the destructive insects, of which they were 

 very fond as food. Women, children, and 

 old men hurried out of the villages, where 

 they had hidden themselves, and mingled 

 with the soldiers ; and in less than a quarter 

 of an hour the plain was covered with more 

 than twenty thousand people, squatting on 

 all fours and capturing the insects. It was 

 the custom, M. Grandidier observes, to sus- 

 pend hostilities in the presence of a plague, 

 which, as the king said to Mayeur, threatens 

 a whole people, while war generally interests 

 only the chief who makes it. 



The Year's Polar Expeditions. Dr. 



Frithiof Nansen, who started from Christiania, 

 Norway, in June, 1893, in the little vessel 

 Fram, to reach the north pole if possible, has 

 returned, after having attained latitude 86 3 

 14' north, within about two hundred and 

 fifty miles of the pole, the highest point yet 

 reached. (An excursion twelve miles farther 

 on ski is also mentioned.) Dr. Nansen started 

 with the expectation of meeting a current in 

 which his vessel would be borne along with 

 the ice to the pole and past it, basing the 

 expectation on information which has since 

 been found to be false. The Fram was con- 

 structed in a peculiar manner, so that when 

 it met the heavy ice it should be lifted up and 

 borne upon it instead of being crushed by it. 

 In latitude 78 50' north, longitude 138 31' 

 east, and in the latter part of September, 

 1893, the ship was allowed to be closed in 

 by the ice, and was then drifted north and 

 northwestward during the fall and winter 

 months. A sudden increase in the depth of 

 the water at latitude 70 to from sixteen 

 hundred to nineteen hundred fathoms seems, 

 according to Dr. Nansen, to upset the theories 



