56 



POPULAR SCIENCE IS'EWS. 



[April, 1889. 



hardened, so as the better to protect the bud. Often 

 they are covered with resinous or waxv matter, to 

 keep out the wet more effectually, as in the horse- 

 chestnut. The balm-of-gilead has bud-scales thickly 

 covered with a yellow aromatic substance. 



Occasionally we find a plant with naked buds, 

 like the hobble-bush ( Viburnum Lanfatwides.) This 

 plant contrives to live without any covering at all 

 for its buds. 



The shape of a tree is better seen in winter than 

 at any other time. There is then nothing to hide 

 its outline, and the student of nature will find noth- 

 ing more admirable than these tree forms. He will 

 admire them none the less because lie connects the 

 growth of the buds with the form of tne tree, and 

 understands how the position, the number, the non- 

 development of some buds and the rapid growth of 

 others, have affected the shape of the tree. He sees 

 that after the elm has attained a certain height, the 

 terminal buds are uniformly undeveloped, and that 

 the axillary buds are exceedingly numerous. This 

 makes the branches dissolve into many shoots, and 

 tliese into finer spray, and helps to give the 

 tree its exquisite grace. When he looks at the 

 rough bough of a horse-chestnut, he recognizes that 

 the flower-clusters have continually interrupted the 

 growth of the branch, and that another bud has 

 grown from a leaf-axil to supply its place, while in 

 the straight branches of the beech, the terminal bud 

 has carried on each bough, year after year. He 

 knows that the roughness of the apple and cherry 

 twigs is due to the multiplication of bud and 

 leaf-scars, caused by the very small yearly growth, 

 and that the lilac-bush is continually forked, 

 because the axillary buds have grown and the ter- 

 minal buds have been suppressed ; and this under- 

 standing of the ways of growth should open his 

 eyes the more to the beauty they create. 



When the winter is safely passed, the first percep- 

 tible change that takes place in the tree is the con- 

 version of the dry, starchy food materials stored in 

 the branches into a sugary sap.* 



The chemical change is largely brought about by 

 the absorption of water. The liquid thus produced 

 occupies a greater space than did the dry starch, and 

 causes a pressure which forces the sap into every 

 twig of the tree. The most familiar illustration of 

 the flow of sap in the spring is the sugar maple. 

 The pressure of the sap forces a stream of liquid to 

 flow from holes bored in the bark of the tree. The 

 old idea that the sap descends into the root of a tree 

 in the fall, and rises in the spring, is erroneous. 



Then follows the most striking phenomenon of 

 the whole year. The mild days come. The supply 

 of food in the twigs is drawn upon by the buds ; they 

 swell, then burst, and the leaves begin to expand. 

 A single week has wrought a miracle, whose wonder 

 never grows less. It has always been the symbol of 

 spiritual renewal, and the source of poetry, and it 

 will ever be so, however far we may trace the phy- 

 sical causes of the change. 



*The stimulus to the movements of material, 

 however, is always given by the growth of 

 the young organs. The buds of a tree put 

 forth" shoots in the spring, by no means 

 because the nutritive sap enters into them, as 

 people are in the habit of saying, but exactly the 

 reverse ; the nutritive matters are set in motion be- 

 cause the buds begin to grow. (^The Physiology of 

 Plants, Sachs, p. 364.) 



Cork. — In experiments recently made in France 

 on the elasticity of cork, it was found that disks of 

 that substance, when submitted to a pressure of 

 sixty-six tons to the square inch, were com- 

 pressed to one-fifth their thickness, and recovered 

 their original dimensions in exactly ten minutes 

 after the pressure was removed. 



SELECTED RECIPES. 



Parsnip Balls. — Parboil six parsnips, and let 

 them get cold; then peel them and grate them. 

 Beat two eggs till very light, and mix with the 

 grated parsnip, adding enough flour to bind the 

 mixture. Make this mixture into small, flat balls. 

 Have some boiling lard or clarified dripping, and 

 drop the balls gently into it. Fry them till a golden 

 brown on both sides. Send to table garnished with 

 fried parsley. 



Swiss Eggs. — Spread two ounces of good butter 

 on the bottom of a dish, and lay on it six thin 

 slices of Gruyere cheese. Break six eggs upon this, 

 keeping the yolks whole. Sprinkle over some 

 mignonette pepper and salt. Mix a teaspoonful of 

 chopped parsley and two ounces of Gruyere cheese 

 together, and strew over. Bake in a quick oven for 

 ten or twelve minutes. 



Macaroni with Gravy and MEAx.^Take maca- 

 roni, some cold meat, and good gravy. Boil maca- 

 roni till soft; put cold water on it to preVent it 

 sticking together. Cut the meat into small pieces, 

 cover the bottom of a pie-dish with fine bread- 

 crumbs, then put on a layer of meat, a little salt and 

 pepper, a layer of macaroni, a layer of Parmesan 

 cheese, and repeat the layers again. Then put on a 

 layer of fried onions, cut in strips, cover with bread- 

 crumbs, pour over plenty of gravy, and then bake 

 for half an hour. 



Chocolate Cakes. — Take half a pound of castor 

 sugar, and mix thoroughly with it four ounces of 

 grated chocolate, eight cloves, a quarter of a tea- 

 spoonful of baking-powder, and a tablespoonful of 

 flour. Beat separately the whites and yolks of six 

 eggs, and beat the sugar and chocolate mixture into 

 the whites. Add to the yolks the juice of one lemon 

 and the grated rind. Stir now the white and yolk 

 mixtures together. Bake in two square pans, an 

 inch and a half deep. When baked, spread .some 

 preserve on the top of one, and place the other on 

 the top again, and ice the top with pink or pistachio 

 icing. 



EtiGS A LA Baldwin. — Boll four or six eggs till 

 quite hard ; cut the \yhites into very small pieces. 

 Make a rich, white, thick sauce, to which should be 

 added a little parsley, chopped very fine, a little 

 cayenne and salt, and a tablespoonful of cream ; put 

 in the pieces of white of egg, and boil all up for one 

 minute, and have ready the yolks, rubbed through a 

 coarse sieve; place the white egg mixture into adish, 

 cover with the tammied yolk, and brown lightly 

 with a salamander. 



Celery a l'Italienne. — Take two heads of cel- 

 ery, well washed and cleaned, stew them in milk till 

 quite tender; make a brown sauce, boil some 

 macaroni, and. after draining the macaroni 

 from the milk, cover with the thick brown 

 sauce ; then put on a layer of grated 

 Parmesan cheese, then more celery and sauce, then 

 more cheese; cayenne, and salt to taste; on the top- 

 scatter a few bread-crumbs, and then lay little bits 

 of butter over all, and brown with the salamander. 



Lark Puffs. — Make some puff-paste, and take 

 half a dozen larks and brow n them in a stewpan 

 with a little butter; then take them out and drain 

 them, and put into the body of each bird a small 

 lump of fresh butter, a little piece of truffle, pepper 

 and salt, and a tablespoonful of thick cream. Truss 

 each lark and heap it in a slice of fat bacon. Cover 

 it with puff-paste rolled out to the thickness of a 

 quarter of an inch, and shape it neatly. Put the 

 puffs in a buttered tin, and bake in a brisk oven for 

 ten minutes. — The Practical Coufectioner. 



GLEANINGS. 



Citric Acid in Cows' Milk. — G. T. Haekel has 

 confirmed the existence of citric acid, as calcic 

 citrate, in normal milk. The examination of many 

 samples shows the presence of about o-i percent. 

 citric acid. A good cow yields daily, therefore, as 

 much citric acid as is contained in two or three 

 lemons. 



Thin Out the Grapes. — Remove every alter- 

 nate bunch, where they are thickly set, on a branch 

 or one vine, and see the difterence in the size of the 

 bunches that are left this fall when they ripen, 

 over those on vines and branches not trimmed. 

 Also take a pair of fine-pointed scis.sors and thin out 

 the fruit on the bunches, and see the difference in 

 the size of the fruit in the autumn. 



An Unimpressive Scarecrow. — The Fnrvi 

 World (Eng.) says: What the bird creation think 

 of scarecrows may be inferred from the following 

 incident : A Mr. Bannister, of Leyland, put up a 

 scarecrow, attired in the usual repellent style, in his 

 garden. A few days afterwards he found that a 

 thrush's nest had been built on the rim of the hat, 

 and that there were four eggs in it. He covered up 

 the nest, but, a fortnight later, he found another nest 

 there with five eggs in it. He covered it up also, 

 but soon afterwards found a third nest containing 

 five eggs. 



A Simple Bee-veil. — The fear of being stung 

 deters many from keeping bees who would other- 

 wise gladly engage in it, and really, to some, the 

 sting of the bee is no small matter. This, however, 

 can be avoided by preparing a veil for the face. A 

 cheap and easy way to make a bee-veil, and one as 

 good as any, is as follows : Procure a piece of plain 

 black cotton bobinet, sew it up as a sack, and run a 

 draw-string in the end, which can be tied around 

 the crown of the hat, and put a string in the lower 

 end also, to tie around the neck, or simply tuck it 

 around the neck, which will answer quite as well. 

 Should a bee strike the veil with the intention of 

 stinging, the rim of the hat will hold it at a suffi- 

 cient distance from the face to render it impossible 

 for it to reach the wearer. 



Composition of Honey. — R. Bensemann has 

 analyzed a sample of pure honey taken direct from 

 the bee-hive. It was quite colorless, transparent, 

 and showed no traces of crystallization. Its taste 

 was very sweet, and its odor somewhat aromatic. 

 It gave a rotation of the beam of polarized light to 

 the right (374'^".) It gave to analysis : water, 22-61 ; 

 Levulose and dextrose, 64-33; saccharose, 12-59; 

 and ash, 0-09; total, 99-62 parts. The presence of 

 saccharose (cane-sugar) in this honey, to the extent 

 of over 12 1-2 per cent., is attributed by the author 

 to the fact that the bees collected in fields near to a 

 sugar refinery, and doubtless many of them visited 

 the latter. 



Rare Metals and Their Uses. — Some rare 

 metals, possessing special qualities, are required for 

 certain work. Thus palladium is used in making 

 some parts of timepieces, and iridium for the points 

 of gold pens, and the uninitiated have no idea of 

 the value of such scarce products. Vanadium costs, 

 for instance, $12,000 per pound; zirconium, $7,900, 

 and lithium, which is the lightest of metals, $7,700 

 per pound. Rhodium, which is extremely hard 

 and brittle, and is only fusible at a very high tem- 

 perature, fetches $2,500; and iridium, the heaviest 

 substance hitherto discovered, costs $1,200 per 

 pound. It will therefore be seen that gold and 

 silver are far from being the most precious metals, 

 as far as their market value is concerned. 



