56 
unrivalled appliances for the production of 
intense cold, as well as of the assistance of 
Professor Dewar. An account of the ex- 
periments is given in the Comptes Rendus, 
and with notes by Professor Crookes in the 
Chemical News of June 11th. The difficul- 
ties encountered in the liquefaction of 
fluorin are its intensely corrosive action 
and its very low temperature. Several liters 
of liquid oxygen, the refrigerant, were used 
in the research. Happily, at very low 
temperatures fluorin loses much of its chem- 
ical activity, no longer attacking glass. 
Fluorin becomes liquid at —185° C., is 
clear yellow and possesses great mobility. 
At this low temperature silicon, carbon, 
sulfur, phosphorus and reduced iron pre- 
viously cooled in liquid oxygen and then 
placed in an atmosphere of fluorin, do not 
become incandescent, and the iodin of 
potassium iodid is not displaced by fluorin. 
Benzene and turpentine are, however, de- 
composed with incandescence when the 
temperature rises to —180 C., showing the 
great affinity of fluorin for hydrogen. Note 
is made of the fact that when fluorin is 
passed through liquid oxygen a white 
flocculent precipitate is formed, which when 
filtered off deflagrates with great violence 
as soon as the temperature rises. It would 
seem to be a compound of fluorin and 
oxygen,and is being further investigated. 
In a recent Comptes Rendus, Berthelot 
and Vieille give an account of further in- 
vestigations on the dangers attending the 
storage of acetylene. They had previously 
shown that, if under less than two atmos- 
pheres pressure, acetylene cannot be de- 
tonated by fulminates or by red-hot wire. 
They now show that acetone is a good 
solvent for acetylene. While such a solu- 
tion is still capable of explosion, it is much 
safer than the gas alone, and the pressure 
at which an explosion is possible is raised 
from two to ten kilograms per square centi- 
meter. In a large vessel the amount of 
SCIENCE. 
[N. 8. Vou. VI. No. 132. 
acetylene that can be safely stored is fifty 
times greater with the acetone than with- 
out it. 
At the conference of the Institution of 
Civil Engineers, held in London the last of 
May, Professor Biles read a paper before 
the Shipbuilding Section on ‘Improved 
Materials of Construction.’ In the course 
of the discussion which followed it was 
strongly brought out that nickel steel is the 
coming material for ship building, provided 
its cost can be made satisfactory. For this, 
it was said that new deposits of nickel must 
be discovered and the cost of its metallurgy 
must be reduced. 
THE Engineering and Mining Journal gives 
a report of the Carborundum Company for 
1896, by which it appears that the output 
of crystalline carborundum for last year 
was nearly six hundred tons. It seems 
probable that the amorphous carborundum 
formed in the manufacture, which has here- 
tofore had no use, will ultimately displace 
ferro-silicon in the manufacture of steel. 
Germany alone would use 2,500 tons of 
carborundum annually if it could be fur- 
nished at not over six cents a pound, and the 
Carborundum Company claims it can do 
this. 
Bee Oe oe 
SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 
WE are informed that the preliminary pro- 
grams for the meetings of the sections of the 
American Association for the Adyancement of 
Science promise many interesting papers and 
a large attendance. No less than twenty-five 
papers have already been entered to be read 
before the physical section, including contribu- 
tions from a number of leading physicists, and 
other sciences will be equally well represented. 
We hope to publish in advance of the meeting 
the full programs for all the sections. 
THE fourth summer meeting of the American 
Mathematical Society will be held, as we have 
already announced, at ‘Toronto, Canada, on 
Monday and Tuesday, August 16th and 17th. 
