July 4, 1884.] 



SCIENCE, 



13 



time reported that a great majority of those whose 

 opinions had been sought had expressed themselves 

 in favor of a consecutive numbering of the hours of 

 the day from 1 to 24. 



At the evening session on Tuesday, June 10, the 

 society were welcomed to Buffalo by the city officers; 

 and the president of the society, Mr. D. J. Whitte- 

 more, delivered the annual address. On Wednesday 

 an excursion was made to the so-called Tifft farm, 

 where improvements are being made, designed to 

 facilitate the transfer of coal from the railroads to the 

 lake vessels. They will consist in an extensive system 

 of docks, excavated on the mainland, together with 

 coal-pockets and other structures for loading into the 

 boats. Near by, an extensive storage-place for coal 

 is provided; the loaded cars being drawn up a long 

 incline of trestle-work, from which they descend by 

 gravity after unloading their coal beneath. The 

 mountain of coal thus formed is penetrated by a 

 wooden tunnel eight feet square, into which cars are 

 run and loaded through sliding doors, when the coal 

 is to be transported to the pockets at the docks. At 

 this place a hundred and twenty thousand tons of 

 coal may be stored during the season, when naviga- 

 tion is closed, or from Dec. 1 to May 1. Although 

 the clock frontage of Buffalo already measures five 

 miles, the Tifft farm improvements will add eight 

 miles more, at an estimated cost of eighty dollars per 

 foot front. The unloading and loading facilities are 

 already so complete at Buffalo, that a two-thousand 

 ton vessel may arrive loaded with grain, and depart 

 loaded with coal, within eighteen hours. There is a 

 growing demand, however, for greater capacity as the 

 lake traffic increases. 



Thursday was devoted to an excursion to Niagara 

 Falls and the new cantilever bridge, and on Friday 

 the reading of papers was resumed. Mr. E. L. Cor- 

 thell, chief engineer of the West-Shore railroad, and 

 formerly in charge of the works at the mouth of the 

 Mississippi, read a paper on the South-Pass jetties, 

 dwelling chiefly upon the lessons which had been 

 taught by their construction. The channel is now 

 nearly straight for two and a quarter miles, and the 

 depth is continually increasing. A survey made last 

 May showed the least depth through the channel to be 

 forty feet except in a few places, and everywhere 

 much in excess of that guaranteed by the contract. 

 Moreover, the jetties had now become thoroughly em- 

 bedded in the sand, which had become firmly packed 

 into all their interstices, so that their permanence 

 was assured. There was, further, no advance of the 

 bar toward the gulf, although a rapid advance had been 

 predicted by many engineers. The effect on com- 

 merce had been very great, and there was now no de- 

 lay whatever at the mouth of the river; so that New 

 Orleans might be said to have a better channel from 

 the ocean than any other city in America. The 

 results of the work had clearly proved the advantage 

 of a concentration of the force of the current, and had 

 shown that the river could obtain what it could main- 

 tain, and that it could not maintain what it could not 

 obtain. Altogether, the result of the works had been 

 in every way satisfactory. 



A paper by Mr. Benjamin Beese, on the manage- 

 ment of forces engaged in railroad-track repairs, was 

 listened to with evident appreciation by the railroad 

 engineers present. 



Mr. E. Sweet, state engineer of New York, contrib- 

 uted a paper on the enlargement of the Erie Canal, 

 arguing, that, in order to be a proper highway, the 

 canal should be large enough to carry the largest lake 

 vessels, or eighteen feet deep and a hundred feet 

 wide on the bottom, with locks four hundred and fifty 

 feet long and sixty feet wide. The cost of the im- 

 provements proposed, which would involve a reloca- 

 tion of part of the canal, and the canalization by locks 

 and dams of the Mohawk River, as well as some works 

 on the Hudson, was estimated at from a hundred 

 and twenty-five to a hundred and fifty million dol- 

 lars; while the probable tonnage was placed at twenty 

 to twenty-five million tons per annum. Thirty years 

 ago the Erie Canal carried nine-tenths of all the traffic 

 between Buffalo and New York, while now it carries 

 less than one-fifth of the total. The paper was fol- 

 lowed by one prepared by Capt. Drake of Buffalo, 

 urging the importance and the cheapness of water- 

 carriage. 



Mr. J. J. R. Croes of New York read a paper, com- 

 paring the water-rates in a large number of cities and 

 towns. Assuming the conditions of a dwelling for 

 seven persons, he found that the rates would vary in 

 different towns from five dollars to seventy-two dol- 

 lars per annum, and that they were by no means in 

 proportion to the cost of the works. The average 

 rates in different parts of the country were compared, 

 and the advantages of measuring the water delivered 

 to consumers were discussed. 



The remainder of the session was devoted to a dis- 

 cussion on the subject of steel, and a comparison be- 

 tween steel and iron for structural purposes; but, on 

 account of the want of time, a number of papers were 

 read by title only. 



RECENT OBSERVATIONS ON EXPLO- 

 SIVE AGENTS. 



Judging from the many attempts made to vary 

 the form and composition of ' explosive gelatine,' this 

 method of using nitroglycerine is meeting with favor. 

 As invented by Nobel, it is made by dissolving seven 

 parts of soluble gun-cotton in ninety-three parts of 

 nitroglycerine at a temperature of 35° C. Under the 

 circumstances, the whole mass gelatinizes, and, when 

 cool, is quite a stiff and translucent jelly, insoluble 

 in water, quite insensible to shocks, and holding its 

 nitroglycerine firmly. Unfortunately its stability has 

 become a matter of doubt. Hill, Gen. Abbot, and 

 others have cited instances of spontaneous decom- 

 position during storage; and the writer has recently 

 described the circumstances attending a similar case 

 occurring under his own observation. The cause is 

 believed to exist in the lack of uniformity of com- 

 position of the gun-cotton, and the failure to remove 

 from it the last traces of free acid. It is hoped that 

 these difficulties may be overcome. 



