444 SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY. 



•ciicli room fire-proof, is now attracting attention in America, and must 

 recommend itself to builders generally, as rendering buildings not only 

 safer from fires, but cooler in summer and warmer in winter, and free from 

 insects that harbor in common papers. These papers are made in rolls of 

 any thickness or length, and can be colored or printed with any desirable 

 pattern. Fire-proof boxes for shelves in shops can also be naade of this sub- 

 stance, and scenery for threaters, if fabricated of it, would be impervious 

 to flames. 



The varieties of abestos are quite astonishing to those who have not 

 made a study of this mineral. Iso two localities seem to yield precisely 

 similar fibre. In the cabinet of Mr. C. A. Wilson, Genoa, Italy, there arc 

 at least one hundred distinct varieties from the Alps alone; one specimen 

 when taken out of the mine was 5 feet long, and weighed 700 pounds, of 

 the most delicate cream color, and soft' like raw silk, after separating the 

 fibres. 



In America the asbestos business is mainly in the hands of a Boston 

 company, protected by fifteen patents on various goods, and begins to as- 

 sume a prosperous condition, calling for increased supply of the crude arti- 

 cle, whilst in Great Britain it is chiefly centered in a flourishing Glasgow 

 company, which was the first to risk the novel enterprise of trying to utilize 

 a w^ell-known mineral that has waited more than 2,000 years to become use- 

 ful to men. In Paris it is begun to be adopted for civil and for public reg- 

 isters in the form of a fire-]3roof writing paper. Eecently, patents have 

 been taken out in America and England to cover its use as a fuel-bed for 

 petroleum in any sort of stove or engine-furnace. It absorbs and retains 

 the oil, its capillary attraction causing it to burn only on its surface, where 

 it is under perfect control and gives out an intense heat. By a simple ar- 

 rangement the hydrocarbons can farther be converted into gas fuel, so it is 

 claimed. 



These fact would indicate that there is a business future for this mineral, 

 and that new uses for it are likelj'- to be discovered. The most beautiful 

 varieties of the long, soft flexible and extremel}' fine fibers, commonly 

 known as "floss," and which are more abundant than the strong, tenacious 

 fibres, yet await a call in the industrial art. — Iron. 



Fire-Proof Paper. — Asbestos is found in lai-ge quantities in the valley 

 of Aosta, in the Italian Alps. A priest of A.rezzo, nan;ed Tictoria del 

 Corana, has experimented with it in the paper-mills of Tivoli, and is now 

 making a fire-proof fabric at a cost of four francs per kilogramme. The 

 The most useful apjjlication which has yet been made of the paper is for 

 the decoration of theatres. 



Slates. — To test the absorptive capacity of a slate, it is a good plan to 

 2)lacc it on edge in the water, leaving half of it above the surface. If the 



