THE YOXJNG SCIENTIST. 
380 
A.D.. 223 A.D., aud so on to the present day. " To 
it," says Sir James, " kings have even dedicated 
their dominions, in testimony of a belief that it 
is a branch of the identical fig tree under which 
Buddha reclined at Urumelaya when he under- 
went his apotheosis." Its leaves are carried away 
as streamers by pilgrims, but it is too sacred to 
touch with a knife, and therefore they are only 
gathered when they fall. The King Oak in Wind- 
sor Forest, England, is 1,000 years old. 
—The just now popular word dude, meaning an 
empty-headed, languid-mannered young swell 
who bangs his hair, proves to be no foreign im- 
portation, but, like many another expressive 
term, to be of good New England parentage. The 
word (pronounced in two syllables) has been 
used in the little town of Salem, N. H„ for twenty 
years past, and it is claimed, was coined there. 
It is common there to speak of a dapper young 
man as a " dude of a fellow," of a small animal 
as "a little dude," of a sweetheart as " my dude " 
and of an aesthetic youth of the Wilde type as a 
dude. But how the word attained so sudden and 
widespread a notoriety puzzles Salem. Its re- 
vival at New York is credited to a distinguished 
Englishman, who remarked, after visiting a rich 
club, that the young men were all " dudes." 
— In a recent lecture on solar physics at the 
Eoyal Institution, Sir Wm. Siemens gave his rea- 
sons for setting the temperature of the photo- 
sphere of the sun at about 2,800 degrees C, in- 
stead of about 10,000 degrees, where Rosetti and 
other late investigators put it. He agrees, in this 
lower estimate, with Violle, St. Clair, Deville, and 
Sir William Thompson, and thinks the solar tem- 
perature can not much, if at all, exceed that of 
the most powerful electric ares. He recognizes 
fully the fact that a temperature higher than 
3,000 degrees C, would be absolutely conclusive 
against his theory that the solar heat is due to the 
recombination or burning of compound gases at 
the surface of the sun. He bases his estimate 
of the solar temperature upon three foundations: 
First, the behavior of a carbon rod and a small 
gas flame in the focus of a reflector exposed to the 
sun ; second, on a comparison between the spectra 
of various lights— for instance, the Argand burner, 
an incandescent lamp, the electric arc, and the 
sun itself, as observed by Langley on Mount 
Whitney ; third, upon experiments on the rela- 
tion between radiating power, made by means of 
a long platinum wire heated by an electric cur- 
rent. 
— Ill New York City, a short time ago, a man 
died from poison, communicated while handling 
some buffalo hides sent from India. His com- 
panion worker employed on the same job was 
taken sick, and after a severe illness finally re- 
covered. Both the men became warm, perspired 
freely, and repeatedly wiped the sweat from their 
faces with the bare hand, each of the men having 
a pimple on the face. Whether the death of the 
one and the illness of the other was caused by the 
virus from the hide of a diseased animal, or by 
the absorption of arsenic used in the preserva- 
tion of the hides, is not positively known. Prob- 
ably, however, the cause was disease communi- 
cated from an infected animal through its hide, 
as the Calcutta packers use, frequently, an arsen- 
ical preparation on the hides to kill a small 
brown worm that otherwise might destroy the 
hides, and instances of poisoning in handling 
these hides are not uncommon. Some years ago 
an importer of hides in New York died irom the 
effects of a bite or sting of a fly which inhabited 
the loft where the hides were stored. 
— Christian Knab, in Munchberg, Bavaria, 
makes a blue preparation good for marking 
trunks and boxes, because it readily combines 
with wood, cloth, etc., and resists the action of the 
weather. His process is given in the Deiiische 
Industrie Zeitung as follows: 100 pounds of a 30 
per cent, fluid extract of logwood are put in a suit- 
able kettle, with 3 quarts of alcohol, to which 2 
pounds of hydrochloric acid has already been 
added. 
The mixture is kept at 68* Fahr., and well 
stirrred until thoroughly mixed. Next he dis- 
solves 10 pounds of (yellow) chromate of potas- 
sium in 30 pounds of boiling water, and adds to 
it 20 pounds of hydrochloric acid, stirring well, 
and when it has cooled to 86° Fahr., stirs it very 
slowly into the mixture already in the kettle. 
The whole is then warmed to about 185* Fahr. 
The mass, which then becomes an extract, is 
stirred a short time longer, and to it is added 30 
pounds of dextrine mixed with 20 pounds of flne 
white earth (terra alba;, and well stirred through. 
The mass, when taken from the kettle, is put into 
a mill, where it is thoroughly worked together. 
It is, lastly, put into tin boxes and left standing a 
long time to dry out. 
— The fine scrapings of any common cattle's 
horn steeped in vinegar and bound hot as can be 
borne upon a wound, will subdue pain almost in- 
stantly, and effectually subdue lockjaw. I have 
often used this remedy, and have never had a 
failure. In wounds torn and lacerated, as. for 
example, where a nail has been stepped on pene- 
trating the sole of the foot, and the patient wild 
with pain, countenance livid, teeth chattering, 
limbs trembling and lockjaw seeming inevitable, 
with this remedy I have produced perfect quiet, 
relaxation of muscles and freedom from pain, 
and even from soreness of the wound, in the 
space of fifteen minutes time. I was called in 
haste to see a young man of 15 years who had 
stepped on a nail I found him almost in spasms, 
and had no remedies with me. In the house I 
found a powder horn, and with a piece of glass 
went to scraping. As soon as I had a common 
thimbleful I barely covered it with vinegar and 
hea,ted it as hot as could be borne, and, setting 
others to scraping, I applied it to the wound, 
changed often as soon as cool, adding the scrap- 
ing accumulated, and with this treatment had 
the boy easy and out of danger in fifteen minutes. 
I know not what there is in horn that produces 
this effect, which I have seen many times, and 
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