Voi,. XXn. No. 9.] 



POPULAE SCIENCE NEWS. 



137 



€I)e popular ^timtt |^ettiia(. 



The perennial Keely with motor attach- 

 ment has bobbed up serenely once more with 

 a new application of his " etheric force." He 

 now uses it as a " disintegrator ; " and by hold- 

 ing his machine in his hand, and pressing it 

 lightly against a piece of auriferous quartz, 

 the mineral is at once reduced to an impalp- 

 able powder, leaving the gold contained in it, 

 in the form of easily separated grains. A 

 fascinating newspaper article relates how Mr. 

 Keeley accompanied a " sj-ndicate of solid 

 capitalists" to the Catskill Mountains, and, 

 in exactly eighteen minutes, bored a tunnel 

 twenty or thirty feet in length into a solid 

 ledge of rock. The article further relates that 

 the capitalists were so moved by this proceed- 

 ing, that they showered unlimited funds upon 

 the inventor, to enable him to carry on his 

 experiments. Of course this story is entirely 

 imaginative ; but it is a fact that certain per- 

 sons still believe in the invention, and are fur- 

 nishing the inventor with money. It would 

 seem as if the proverb ought to be changed so 

 as to read, "A S3'ndicate and its monej' are 

 soon parted." 



An unusually high tide recently occurred in 

 [ Boston Harbor, at the time of a new moon ; 

 and a leading daily paper the next day gave 

 the remarkable explanation, that it was due 

 to "the simultaneous rising of the tide and 

 new moon at midnight." Without criticising 

 the remarkable behavior of the new moon in 

 rising at midnight, the " simultaneous rising " 

 of the moon and tide is a delicious piece of 

 absurdity. It would be hard to compress more 

 scientific errors into one sentence than the 

 writer of the paragraph succeeded in doing. 



Another enterprising newspaper of this 

 city, thinking to make a sensation among the 

 medical profession, sent a reporter, who pre- 

 tended to have certain symptoms of disease, 

 to consult a number of ph3-sicians, although 

 in reality he was in perfect health. The 

 symptoms which the reporter selected to afflict 

 himself with, consisted principally of back- 

 ache and tenderness of the spine. The med- 

 ical men stood the test remarkably well, nearly 

 all of them diagnosing rheumatism or lum- 

 bago, and prescribing the proper remedies 

 therefor. It is no discredit to the skill of a 

 physician, to believe the false statements made 

 by a supposed patient ; and if such a person 

 says that he is suffering from certain symp- 

 toms, the doctor is bound to believe him, and 

 prescribe for the disease indicated by them. 

 The intended " sensation " can hardly be said 

 to have been an eminent success, as far as the 

 newspaper was concerned. 



they were of no value as a protection against 

 lightning, and that future generations would 

 consider a rod on a house as much a relic of 

 superstition as we should a horseshoe nailed 

 over the door. We think these assertions are 

 altogether too sweeping, and consider a prop- 

 erly applied lightning-rod of great value. It 

 is true that we do not fully understand the 

 laws which govern the passage of a lightning- 

 stroke ; but there are too many cases on record 

 where a rod has carried off the discharge with- 

 out harm, to say that thej- are of no value what- 

 ever. It is a fact, however, that very few rods 

 are properly applied ; the most important point, 

 a good earth-connection, being nearly always 

 neglected. Unless this is properly attended 

 to, a rod is of little or no value. 



The " drop-a-nickel-in-the-slot " scheme has 

 reached the gas-companies ; and a meter has 

 recently been patented in England, which, 

 when a penny is dropped into it, will allow 

 a certain number of feet of gas to pass into the 

 pipes. When the amount paid for is nearly 

 exhausted, the gas burns low as a signal for 

 another penny. If the warning is unheeded, 

 the supply is shut off altogether. This singu- 

 lar device appears rather ludicrous at first 

 sight, but there are many occasions when a 

 limited supply of gas at a fixed prepaid rate 

 might be found very useful and economical. 



Dr. George Hat of Pittsburg, Penn, sends 

 us an account of an analysis made by him of 

 the metal composing a tin can holding pre- 

 served fish. He found it to consist of 13.76 

 per cent of tin, 61.92 of lead, and 24.32 of 

 iron. The large proportion of lead present 

 shows that the material of which the can was 

 made was the terne plate wliich is usually used 

 for covering roofs. As it is supposed that 

 only the pure tin plate is used in making cans 

 for preserving food, this analysis is worthy of 

 notice. Although the terne plate is slightly 

 cheaper than tin, it is a very dangerous sub- 

 stance to be brought into contact with food, 

 and only a criminally careless or reckless per- 

 son would make use of it in the manufacture 

 of cans. We do not believe, however, that it 

 is generally used, and think the cans examined 

 by Dr. Hay must have been exceptional ones. 

 The large amount of iron present is noticeable, 

 but it was probably removed from the iron 

 plate in scraping off the more fusible alloy 

 with which it was covered. 



The Electrical Review recently published 

 an article upon lightning-rods, claiming that 



New discoveries in the photographic art 

 continue to be made almost daily, and the 

 sensitiveness of the plates is constantly in- 

 creasing. Pictures are now taken at night 

 by the light of an instantaneous flash of mag- 

 nesium powder, which is especially rich in 

 actinic rays. The light from a large variety 

 of South-American firefly has been used to 

 copy a transparency from a negative ; and the 

 photographs of a moving pistol-ball, illustrated 

 in the August number of this paper, must 

 necessarily have been taken in an inconceiv- 

 ably small fraction of a second. Photography 



in natural colors is, however, still an un- 

 discovered art, notwithstanding numerous 

 announcements of its discovery in the news- 

 papers, which are probably due to a misun- 

 derstanding in regard to the process of 

 isochromatic pliotography, or the i)hotograph- 

 ing of different-colored objects in their proper 

 values of light and shade, — a very diflierent 

 matter. 



The statements made by an alleged Ger- 

 man scientist about tlie "gas-caverns" and 

 " oceans of boiling rock," situated beneath the 

 town of Findlay, O., have been telegraphed all 

 over the country, and have caused considerable 

 anxiety to many credulous persons. We can 

 assure our readers who reside in the natural- 

 gas regions, that these statements have no 

 basis whatever in fact, and that it is abso- 

 lutely impossible for any person to determine 

 what the ' condition of afliairs is so far below 

 the surface of the earth. We do not believe 

 that the "professor" ever made the state- 

 ments credited to him ; but, if he did, he is 

 simply a scientific humbug, with a much larger 

 reservoir of " natural gas " underneath his 

 hat than any that exists below the town of 

 Findlay. __^ 



A CURIOUS EXPERIMENT. 

 Take a water-flask, or a wide-mouthed de- 

 canter or bottle, hold it in a horizontal posi- 

 tion, and place a small cork in the neck. It 

 will then seem an easy matter to blow the 

 cork into the bottle ; but upon trial, it will be 

 found almost impossible to do so, as, the 



harder one blows, the more forcibly it is 

 ejected out of the bottle, and into the face of 

 the experimenter. 



The explanation of this peculiar behavior oi 

 the cork is very simple. The bottle is already 

 full of air, so that no more can be blown into 

 it ; and the only effect produced by blowing, is 

 to compress the air already inside. When the 

 pressure is removed, the air, being elastic, 

 expands again quickly, and, in so doing, forces 

 the cork out of the neck, apparently' in a re- 

 verse direction to the current from the lungs 

 of the experimenter. The neck of the bottle 

 must be perfectly dry, or the cork will adhere 

 to it, and interfere with the success of the 

 experiment. 



