2U 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[Sept. 19, 1884. 



iHtgrrllanra. 



A cuEious barometer is said to be used by the remnant of the 

 Araucariau race which inhabita the southernmoBt province of 

 Chili. It consists of the cast-off shell of a crab, which, from its 

 curious application, is called the " Barometro Araucano." The 

 dead shell is said to be extremely sensitive to atmospheric changes, 

 remaining quite white in fair, dry weather, but indicating the 

 approach of a moist atmosphere by the appearance of small red 

 spots, which grow both in number and in size as the moisture 

 in^ the air increases, until finally, with the actual occurrence of 

 rain, the shell becomes entirely red, and remains so throughout the 

 rainy season. 



To Remote Toreign Bodies from the Eye. — Before resorting 

 to any metallic instrument for this purpose. Dr. C. D. Agnew 

 (American Practitioner, May, 1884) would advise you to use an 

 instrument made in the following manner : Take a splinter of soft 

 wood, pine or cedar, and whittle it into the shape of a probe, 

 making it about the length of an ordinary dressing probe. Then 

 take a small, loose flock of cotton, and laying it upon your fore- 

 finger, place the pointed end of the stick in the centre of it. Then 

 turn the flock of cotton over the end of the stick, winding it 

 round and round, so as to make it adhere firmly. If you 

 will look at the end of such a probe with a two-inch lens 

 you will see that it is quite rough, the fibres of cotton making 

 a file-like extremity, in the midst of which are little interstices. 

 As the material is soft, it will do no harm to the cornea when 

 brushed over its surface. When ready to remove the foreign body, 

 have the patient rest his head against your chest, draw the nppcr 

 lid up with the forefinger of your left hand, and press the lower lid 

 down with the middle finger, and then delicately sweep the surface 

 in which the foreign body is embedded with the end of the cotton 

 probe. When the foreign body is lodged in the centre of the cornea 

 it is most important not to break up the external elastic lamina, 

 for if you do opacity may follow, and the slightest opacity in the 

 centre of the cornea will cause a serious diminution in the sharpness 

 of vision. 



A Distilling Insect.— Livingstone met with a wonderful distilling 

 insect in Africa on fig-trees. Seven or eight of the insects cluster 

 round a spot on one of the smaller branches, and these keep up a 

 constant distillation of a clear fluid like water, which, dropping to 

 the ground, forms a little puddle. If a vessel is placed under them 

 in the evening, it contains three or four pints of fluid in the morning. 

 To the question, whence is this fluid derived .^ the natives reply, 

 that the insects suck it out of the tree, and naturalists give the 

 same answer. But Livingstone never could find any wound in the 

 bark, or any proof whatever that the insect pierced it. Our common 

 frog-hopper, which before it gets its wings is called "cuckoo-spit," 

 and lives on many plants in a frothy spittle-like fluid, is like the 

 African insect, but is much smaller. Livingstone considers that 

 they derive much of their fluid by absorbing it from the air. He 

 found some of the insects on a castor-oil plant, and he cut away 

 about twenty inches of the bark between the insects and the tree, 

 and destroyed all the vegetable tissue which carried the sap from 

 the tree to the place where the insects were distilling. The dis- 

 tillation was then going on at the rate of one drop in every 67 

 seconds, or about five and a half tablespoonfuls every 24 hours. 

 Next morning, although the supplies of sap were stopped, supposing 

 them to come up from the ground, the fluid was increased to one 

 drop every five seconds, or one pint in every 24 hours. He then 

 cut the branch so much that it broke, but they still went on at the 

 rate of a drop every five seconds, while another colony of the insects 

 on a branch on the same tree gave a drop every 17 seconds. — The 

 World of Wonders. 



INTELLIGE^•cE OF THE Oriole. — On the Western side of Central 

 Park, very near 103rd-street and Eighth Avenue, stands a row of 

 elm-trees, diflicult to approach on account of a heavy growth of 

 ayringa bushes around them. On a branch of one of the trees, 

 about 16 ft. from the ground, a pair of Baltimore orioles set to 

 building a nest a few weeks ago. They chose the extreme end of 

 the bough, with evident intention of making it a hazardous experi- 

 ment lor any bird-nester to attempt to molest them. But in their 

 excess of caution they appeared not to observe what the few per- 

 sons whose eyes were keen enough to see the first labours of the 

 little architects saw — that the branch was much too slender to 

 support so large a nest as the oriole builds. When the nest was about 

 two-thirds finished the birds saw their mistake. The branch had 

 bent so low that it was getting perilously near the grass. Work 

 was at once stopped, and the builders sat close together for a long 

 time, and seemed to be discussing the situation. Finally, they 

 flew side by side to a bough about 15 in. over the one on 

 which their nest was, and, leaning over, inspected the distance. 



They seemed to be satisfied, and, though it was growing rapidly 

 dusk, the birds flew away in opposite directions. In the morning 

 it was found that they had firmly secured their habitation, and 

 prevented the branch from bending lower, by passing a piece of 

 white string, which they had found somewhere in the park, over 

 the upper bough, and fastening both ends of it securely to the 

 edges of the nest. The building then went rapidly on, and the 

 orioles are now engaged in hatching their eggs. Very few persons 

 have seen the nest, and there is a fair prospect that their skill and 

 ingenuity will be soon rewarded by a brood of young orioles. — Hew 

 York Sun. 



A Mountain of Alum.— Mr. G. M. Shaw, of this city, has just 

 returned from a month's trip to the Gila River country, in the 

 south-western portion of Socorro County, where he went with 

 Messrs. Brown and Bergen to survey and report on the recent 

 alum discoveries there, which have been located by a company of 

 Socorro citizens. Mr. Shaw reports almost a solid mountain of 

 alum over a mile square, some of the cliffs of which rise to an 

 elevation of 700 ft. above the river bed. Most of the alum is in an 

 impure state, and tasting very strongly of sulphuric acid, but of 

 which there seems to be an inexhaustible quantity. Some of the 

 cliffs, however, show immense quantities of almost pure market- 

 able alum. This alum-find, Mr. Shaw tells us, is on the Gila River, 

 about two miles below the fork of the Little Gila, and four miles 

 below the Gila hot springs. Mr. Shaw reports numerous hot 

 springs in that section, most of them gushing out of the rocks 

 that form the river banks, some of them hot enough to cook 

 in, and moat of them too hot to hold the hand in. The main 

 hot springs referred to above are reported to have effected 

 wonderful rheumatic and other cures. The country is abun- 

 dantly watered and wooded, and is covered with the finest of 

 grass. The Gila is full of trout and other fish. Game, while still 

 moderately plentiful, has been mostly scared away from the region 

 of the hot springs by professional and other huntera, as well as 

 ranchmen, who are beginning to locate in this difficnlt-to-get-at 

 section of the Gila. At present the only way to get into this sec- 

 tion is with pack animals over a precipitous trail of several miles, 

 waggons having to be abandoned in the gorge of the Little Gila on 

 the North Star Road, about two miles from the hot springs and 

 about seven miles from the alum find, going from Socorro or from 

 the Black range. By the way of Silver City and Georgetovm 

 wagons are abandoned on "Sapio" Creek, with about eighteen 

 miles of pack animal trail to the hot springs. Mr. Shaw being an 

 amateur photographer also, invariably carries his '* outfit " on his 

 surveying trips, combining pleasure with business, and bringing 

 back with him photographs of all objects and scenes of interest 

 that he meets with on the way. He brings back from this trip 

 over sixty photographs of the Gila country, among which are a 

 number of exterior and interior photographs of some interesting 

 cliff-dwellers' ruins he encountered in a cave about four miles west 

 from the hot springs. — Socorro Bullion. 



Ameeican Exgixeeeing Models foe a Japan UsrvESsiTY. — The 

 Imperial University of Tokio, Japan, reorganised in 1860 as the 

 successor of the old Imperial Observatory, founded in 1744, is 

 evidently pushing forward in that full accord with the spirit of 

 modern progress which the Japanese Government has shown in so 

 many ways since the old exclusive barriers were broken down. A 

 notable instance of this is found in a recent order for models, sent 

 by the authorities of the Tokio University, to be built at the 

 engineering school-shop of Vanderbilt University at Nashville, Tenn. 

 The order embraces the following : — A model of wrought- iron high- 

 way truss bridge, G feet in length, to be built in brass ; a small 

 working compound steam-engine, with expansion gear and reversible 

 gear ; a small working iron turbine waterwheel, with water governor 

 and sluice-gate; two differently constructed cast-iron models of 

 steam-engine pistons with metallic packing rings ; a working 

 model of engine's slide valve and expansion valve with adjust- 

 ments and appliances for indicating the relative positions of 

 piston and valves at any part of the stroke ; a working model 

 of a surface condenser for a compound engine ; a working model 

 of an improved pendulum governor for steam-engine, with adjust- 

 ment for regulation of throttle-valve. The order for the truss 

 bridge was accompanied by working drawings in blue print, but 

 the other pieces are to be designed as well as constructed at the 

 Vanderbilt University. The work will be commenced at the 

 school-shops with the opening of the fall session, and will afford 

 the best of practice for the engineering students, of whom the 

 class is so large that it is proposed to make duplicates of the 

 articles ordered, that one set may be kept. Instruction at the 

 Tokio University is in Japanese, except in the Schools of Law, 

 Chemistry, Engineering, Polytechnics, and Mining, in which the 

 instruction is in English. The School of Engineering is under 

 the charge of Prof. J. A. L. Waddell, an American engineer. — 

 Scientific American . 



