148 



SCIENTIFIC NEV/S. 



[Sept. 1st, 1887. 



GENERAL NOTES. 



A Pocket Voltmeter. — This useful instrument has re- 

 cently been brought out by Messrs. Paterson and Cooper. 

 It is about the s-ze of a large silver watch, and is said to be 

 reliable. 



Melinite. — We learn from Berlin that experiments made 

 there, by order of the War Minister, have shovi/n that in 

 course of time this explosive compound decomposes, and 

 that it is therefore unfit for military purposes. 



Patents in Switzerland. — The Swiss National Assembly 

 has authorised the State to pass a law for the protection of 

 patented inventions, and as the voting was three to one, 

 there is every probability that effect will be given to this 

 resolution. 



Petroleum Wells in Egypt. — It is reported that the 

 latest accounts from the petroleum wells at Jebel Gemseh 

 are satisfactory. The greatest depth reached was 1,200 ft., 

 and the last boring (220 ft. deep) passed through gypsum, 

 which was throughout strongly impregnated with oil. 



An Electric Kettle. — According to the Centrablatt 

 Elektivkchnic, the Edison Company in Germany has intro- 

 duced a kettle in which the water is heated by an electric 

 current passing through a resistance coil, placed in a suit- 

 able cavity in the kettle. With this apparatus it is said 

 that a litre of water can be boiled in fifteen minutes, at a 

 cost of about one halfpenny. 



Telephone-Telegraph. — Colonel Renard and M. Nor- 

 thombe have invented a system of telephone-telegraphy, 

 ■wh'ch has recently been tried at the French School of War. 

 It is said to answer well, and that an untrained person can 

 easily make use of it. The apparatus is compact, and can 

 be connected with any existing telegraph line, good insula- 

 tion not being of much importance. 



Electric Lighting in the Palais Royal. — It is said 

 that the Edison Company have obtained the permission of 

 the French Government to have the free use of the exten- 

 sive vaults of the Palais Royal for storage batteries. The 

 Company is to light up the whole of the Palais Royal, the 

 Conseil d'Etat, the Cour des Comptes, and the Theatre 

 Frangais, as well as the Menus Plaisirs Theatre. 



Biological Station on Puffin Island. — Owing to the 

 exertions of the Biological Association of Liverpool, sufficient 

 funds have been obtained to build a station on Puffin Island, 

 and to purchase a yacht for dredging and other purposes. 

 Professor Herdmann has been working for some time in 

 Liverpool Bay, and has published from time to time some 

 interesting and instructive accounts of his researches. 



International Astronomical Congress. — It has been 

 decided that there are to be two series of stellar photo- 

 graph?, the first to include stars to about the eleventh mag- 

 nitude, and the second to include stars to the fourteenth 

 magnitude, or about fifteen millions altogether. A perma- 

 nent bureau has also been appointed to carry out the deci- 

 sions of the Congress, and to keep up communication with 

 the observatories which are to take part in this great astro- 

 nomical undertaking. 



A Telegraph Pole on Fire. — A singular fire occurred in 

 New York a short time ago. One of the immense telegraph 

 poles, so common in the United States, was set on fire by 

 the sparking of two wires, which accidentallj' came in contact. 

 The pole was in John Street, opposite the building of the 

 Western Union, and there were no less than 150 wires 

 suspended from it. The flames were near the upper end 

 of the pole, and it was with some difficulty that water 

 could be thrown to such a height to extinguish them. 



Paper Doors. — We have recently been told of paper 

 barrels and bottles, and now we learn that paper doors are 

 coming into use in America, and it is said that they compare 

 favourably with those of wood, as they neither shrink, 

 swell, crack, nor warp. The doors are formed of two thick 

 paper boards, stamped and moulded into panels, and joined 

 together with glue and potash, and finally rolled through 

 heavy rollers. After being covered with a waterproof 

 coating, and with another which is fireproof, the doors are 

 painted, varnished, and hung in the usual way. 



Cutting Glass. — Many of our readers are doubtless 

 aware that glass may be cut under water with great ease, 

 to almost any shape, with a pair of shears or strong 

 scissors. In speaking of this, the Pottery Gazette points out 

 that two things are necessary for success. First, the glass 

 must be kept quite level in the water while the scissors are 

 applied ; and seiondl}', to avoid risk, it is better to perform 

 the cutting by taking off small pieces at the corners and 

 along the edges, so as to reduce the shape gradually to 

 that required. The softer glasses cut the best ; the scissors 

 need not be very sharp. 



Telegraphing in the Sea. — It appears that Mr. Edison's 

 new system of telegraphing at sea without wires depends 

 on the ease with which sound can be transmitted in water. 

 The apparatus he uses is a steam whistle, placed in the 

 cabin of a ship, and the sound it produces is transmitted by 

 a conducting wire to a speaking-trumpet fixed on the hull of 

 the vessel, below the water-line. The sound emitted passes 

 through the water very rapidly, and strikes against another 

 trumpet on the vessel to be communicated with, and this 

 causes an electric bell to ring. Signals can thus be sent to 

 or from either of the vessels. 



American Birds. — The special groups, illustrating the 

 nesting habits of British birds, which have proved so 

 a'.trac'ive in the Natural History Museum at South Ken- 

 sington, have now been introduced into the galleries of the 

 American Museum of Natural History, and twelve cases of 

 American birds have already been mounted. According to 

 Nature, the cost of these effective, but expensive groups 

 will be defrayed by Mrs. Robert E. Stuart, and the Museum 

 has secured the services of Mrs. Mogridge, who executed 

 the artificial flower-work for the British Museum. Mrs. 

 Mogridge is without a rival in this branch of decorative art. 



Second hand Corks. — A correspondent of the Analyst 

 points out that corks which have been drawn from bottles 

 are allowed to remain in bar-rooms and other places, where 

 they become coated with fermenting vegetation. They 

 are afterwards sold to dealers, who subject them to a kind 

 of bleaching process, and then pass them through a smoothing 

 machine. After this they are sold to bottlers of beer, etc., 

 who use them again. Attention, however, is called to the 

 fact that although a cork may be ever so well cleaned, its 

 internal fissures always retain some of the decomposing 

 vegetable matter, the injurious properties of which are com- 

 municated to the liquids they are intended to preserve. 

 This should certainly be prohibited. 



The Respiration of Dogs. — At a recent meeting of the 

 Acad(Smie des Sciences, M. Charles Richet communicated 

 the result of some experiments he had made on the effect of 

 heat on the respiration of dogs. In the normal physiological 

 state a dog breathes from twenty to thirty times a minute; 

 but when placed in a heated chamber, or when he has been 

 running in the sun, the number of respirations may reach 

 300 to 350. A dog does not perspire, and the temperature 

 of the animal is kept down solely by a large increase in the 

 evaporation which takes place in the lungs. According to 



