158 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XV. No. 370 



certain cases, of the very hard and poor quality used for noaking 

 pins. It was at the time being used for welding colls of brass 

 wire into continuous mile lengths (twelve coils to the mile length). 

 The wire was about an eighth of an inch in diameter, and of a 

 very good quality of brass. 



Mr. Kennedy had five short pieces of the brass wire welded to- 

 gether into a length of about 18 inches and the burrs removed 

 (the whole operation only taking four or five minutes), and then 

 took the welded pieces to the wire-drawer and had it passed six 

 times through the dies, reducing its diameter from .12 of an inch 

 to .031 of an inch. The existence of the four welds made no dif- 

 ference whatever in the drawing, which was continued until the 

 diameter was reduced to about .002 of an inch. 



In order more thoroughly to examine the conditions of straight 

 butt welding in ordinary sections, he made a number of experi- 

 ments at Lynn. In these experiments, as it was impracticable 

 to measure the power going to the dynamo, he measured the net 

 electrical power going to the welder, and also the exact time 

 during which the current was supplied to the welder. These 

 measurements were made on 25 pieces of wrought iron and steel 

 bar of diameters varying from half an inch to two inches. No 

 sensible difference between the iron and the steel in respect to 

 power or time was found. The horse-power required varied, of 

 course, according to the duration of the operation, and it has been 

 found convenient to make this duration vary directly in propor- 

 tion to the diameter of the bar, taking forty seconds as the stand- 

 ard time for an iron bar of one inch diameter. Keeping to these 

 conditions, the horse-power per square inch of material remained 

 very nearly constant for bars between half an inch and an inch 

 and a half in diameter, its average value being 20.8. This corre- 

 sponds to about 30 indicated horse-power at the steam-engine per 

 square inch of welded section during the time that the current 

 was on. This power can be very largely reduced without det- 

 riment to the weld, if the saving of power should be of greater 

 importance than the saving of time. Of course, with slower 

 working, the quantity of work which a machine will turn out is 

 proportionately decreased. 



The Thomson welders have been used for brazing as well as 

 welding. At the immense bicycle-works of the Weed Sewing- 

 Machine Company in Hartford, Conn., Mr. Kennedy found a 

 brazing welder which had been at work about nine months, and 

 ■which had made, by register, 29,800 separate operations. The 

 managing director of the works said that he was now modifying 

 the design of his bicycles throughout, with the special object of 

 brazing or welding electrically as many joints as possible. 



Inquiries were made as to the wages paid to the men who 

 worked the welders at the different factories visited, and it was 

 found that in no case had highly skilled labor been found neces- 

 sary. 



In summing up the whole matter, it maybe said that the Thom- 

 son electric welding process has already, in America, been carried 

 fairly beyond the experimental stage, and has achieved sufficient 

 success in regular commercial work of somewhat varied kinds to 

 warrant the belief that its industrial future is one of the greatest 

 practical importance. 



The process of welding in use by the Thomson Electric Weld- 

 ing Company has been fully investigated also by a United States 

 naval board, consisting of George A. Converse, A. S. Greene, 

 S. W. Armstead, and Gilbert Wilks, which convened at Boston, 

 Feb. 10. They find that at the present time this process renders 

 it possible, practically, to weld wrought-iron, cast-iron, brass, and 

 copper rods from the size of the smallest electrical conductors in 

 use for distributing purposes, to rods of two and a half inches 

 diameter, and to weld pipes of larger sizes; to weld dissimilar 

 metals, and pieces of different forms of cross-section; to join by 

 welding the ends of wire cables, and to form welded rings of 

 small or large diameter. 



The board is "convinced that the Thomson welding process can 

 be found of great utility to the naval service, both on shore and 

 afloat, for the following reasons: it can be used (a) in welding 

 breaks in rods without altering them either in length or shape; 

 (b) for welding tubes; (c) for welding angles and shapes of iniri- 

 cate form; (d) for welding copper, brass, cast-iron, or other 



metals; (e) for heating metals for forging, tempering, and upset- 

 ting; and (/) for welding wire cables." 



HEALTH MATTERS. 

 Consumption in Hayti. 



The natives of Hayti believe phthisis pulmonalis, according 

 to Dr. R. P. Crandall {Medical Record, Jan. 11, 1890), to be 

 both contagious and infectious, and fear it much more than 

 yellow-fever or small-pox. 



A native who is believed to be affected with this disease is 

 avoided and shunned by all who know him, and becomes an 

 object of prayer for the priests, and of pity for the people. 



When a consumptive dies, the entire contents of the room 

 in which he died are either destroyed cr thrown into some 

 place set aside by the government for that purpose. Tliis sac- 

 rifice of property not only includes the furniture of a room, 

 but also articles of value, such as jewelry, gold, and precious 

 stones. This idea of destruction is carried to such an extent 

 by some, that the paper is sometimes removed from the walls, 

 and the floors torn up. Cases have even occurred where small 

 houses, in which deaths from phthisis have taken place, were 

 burned down to the ground to prevent the spread of disease. 



"While riding one day near the suburbs of Cape Hay tien, the 

 commercial capital of northern Hayti," writes Dr. Crandall, 

 "I came across a sort of marsh or land of mud known as the 

 Cimetiere des Chevaux. Scattered over its surface, and half 

 sunk in its muddy depths, were innumerable household articles, 

 furniture of all kinds, sewing-machines, pianos, book-cases, 

 books, etc. Here and there also appeared the whitened skele- 

 tons of animals. My curiosity being excited, I asked of a 

 native standing near the reason for this apparent waste of 

 property. He informed me that the Cimetiere des Chevaux 

 was a repository for the dead bodies of anmials, and for every 

 thing that was found in the room of one who had died from 

 la poitrine ('consumption'). When asked if anything was 

 ever removed from the cemetery, he answered that nothing 

 would induce a Haytien to even touch any thing that had been 

 placed there. I found this to be strictly true, as on several 

 occasions I offered natives sums of money to bring me articles 

 from the cemetery, and was always refused with looks of horror 

 and repugnance. On careful investigation, I found that 

 phthisis was regarded as contagious by all classes throughout 

 Hayti." 



The Hook at which Death occurs. — From a study of fifteen 

 thousand cases, extending over a period of twelve years. Dr. 

 J. F. Burns states, in the New York Medical Journal for Jan. 

 4, 1890, that it would appear that death occurs seemingly 

 without any particular predilection for any certain hour, and 

 that the number of deaths for each hour is very evenly propor- 

 tioned, considering the large number of cases taken and the time 

 covered. The only very positive conclusions the author has 

 formed from the figures are (1) that the idea that more deaths 

 take place in the early morning hours is an erroneous one; (2) 

 if stimulants are to be pushed in disease during these hours, 

 the practice must be justified upon some other ground than to 

 avert the possibility of danger supposed to be very probable at 

 this period ; (3) that the vitality of an individual in disease 

 is not regulated by the same influen es or subject to the same 

 laws that govern the vitality of a healthy human being, the 

 normal equilibrium maintained in health between the mental 

 and physical states being altered. 



PUTBEF ACTION AT GREAT DEPTHS IN THE Sea.— Dr. Eegnard 

 has raised the question, says the Bristol Medical Journal, as to 

 whether a corpse which sinks to a very great depth is preserved 

 indefinitely or otherwise from putrefaction. According to his 

 researches, published in the archives of the Biological Society 

 of Paris, putrefaction does not take place in decomposable sub- 

 stances submitted to a pressure of 600 to 700 atmospheres. 

 These figures correspond to a depth of 6,000 or 7,000 metres at 

 sea. From these experiments it must be concluded, according 



