JSht! RURAL NEW-YORKER 
1319 
Simple Science 
By Dr. F. D. Crane 
Effect of Rain Water on Plants 
If the greenhouse ventilators are left 
open on a rainy day, any plants the 
rain falls on show a marked effect, like 
new life. Why is this? Is there any¬ 
thing we could use in the ordinary 
watering? n. j. p. 
Elmhurst, N. T. 
The fact has been often noted. There 
seems to be no real reason known, though 
it is easy to speculate about it, and no 
imitation or substitute for the only or¬ 
iginal and genuine rain water is as yet 
on the market. You might try ammonia 
nitrate, very dilute, a tahlespoonful to 
10 gallons, for instance, inul see if you 
get something of the same effect. It is 
harmless, and a good fertilizer when 
dilute. F. n. c. 
Keeping Cider Sweet 
How much calcium sulphite or sul¬ 
phurous acid is required to keep a 50- 
gallon cask of cider sweet and prevent 
fermentation? H. J. 
Winsted, Conn. 
A quarter ounce or less per gallon, say 
from 10 to 12 ounces of the sulphite to 
the cask. Commercial sulphurous acid 
is of uncertain strength; better stick to 
the calcium salt. Wet it to a thin paste, 
put in the cask, bung and roll or shake 
well. The acid of the cider will take the 
lime and the free sulphurous acid formed 
will go far toward killing the germs and 
yeasts present. P>ut it will not kill them 
all, and the cider will probably ferment 
some day. F. i). c. 
Solid Alcohol 
Mow is alcohol made solid? ,t. o. w. 
Kho<le Island. 
The first solid alcohol came <w(‘r here 
from Cermany, about 15 years ago, in 
the form of small, green cubes, labeled 
“Smaragdin.” It was practically a jelly 
of alcohol and uitro-cellulose (“guncot¬ 
ton”), and burned with a good flame, 
leaving little ash. A very similar article, 
a nitro-cellulose sponge soaked with al¬ 
cohol and Cfiated with a nitro-cellulose 
jelly, in larger cubes and uncolored, is 
again being put on the market. Acetone 
appears to be the jelly-making agent, for 
guncotton is one of those curious bodies 
which will dissolve in mixtures of two 
fluids but in neither of the components 
alone. .Tust how the jelly is made is not 
widely known; at any rate it is not a 
trick for the amateur. The most common 
form of solid alcohol is made by dissolv¬ 
ing pure sodium .stearate in hot alcohol, 
or directly forming it there from the 
stearine and soda. This is the stuff that 
has been widely sold for the past few 
years, under a variety of fancy names, 
in small tin cans. It gives a good heat, 
but does leave the soap as “a.shes” behind 
it, though this is not a sm-ious objection. 
This sort of solid alcohol, properly made, 
is also rather beyond the experimenter. 
However, a fairly good substitute can be 
made by taking one-half ounce, about one- 
half a cubic inch, of any of the hard white 
soaps sold everywhere, shaving it very 
fine and stirring it in a pint of denatured 
alcohol, heated, until it dissolves. The 
solution can then be quickly poured into 
small containers and will “set” as it cools. 
To heat the alcohol, heat a large pail of 
water to boiling, take it off the stove and 
away from the fire, and put a t’n can 
with the soap and cold alcohol in it. Al¬ 
cohol beats «o quickly that if you stir 
constantly, and have a fairly large pail 
of water, enough heat will come through 
the tin. The white soaps are not all 
alike, and you may have to use a little 
more or less to the pint of alcohol. 
• F. D. C. 
Dried Milk 
In an account of the chemical exhi¬ 
bition in New York I read that there 
was a machine which would change a bar¬ 
rel of milk into a dry powder. Is this 
true? n. c. w. 
New .Jersey. 
It is true, and a good many barrels of 
milk are being dried every day by this 
and similar machines. Milk carries about 
87 per cent water, and the point is to get 
this off without changing the food pres¬ 
ent, especially without making it insol¬ 
uble in water. If we remove the pressure 
of the air, there is nothing to keep the 
particles of water from flying off, pro¬ 
vided we also take them away as fast as 
they fly off. That is, if we take fifty- 
iiine-sixtieths of the air pressure off, 
water will “boil” at room temperature 
till it uses up most of the energy, heat, 
it has and goes solid, that is, freezes to 
ice. As long as it is liquid you cannot 
take off that last one-sixtieth air pres¬ 
sure—^the water will boil to keep it up. 
And only a little heat is needed to keep 
it from freezing. So the problem is to 
take off the air pressure, continue to 
pump off the wmter vapor formed, and 
supply just enough heat to boil off the 
water as fast as you can without letting 
it get hot enough to cook the milk solids. 
Some processes spray in the milk, some 
run it v,ver plates, and others over cylin¬ 
ders, under as low a pressure as it pays 
to use, so that it will dry as qu'ckly as 
possible. IMilk so dried will keej) in¬ 
definitely, as what germs there are left 
cannot increase without water, and, when 
water is added, the milk is iiractically 
Reproduced from New York Evening Telegram 
re-formed. Like some other “reformed” 
things, it does have a queer taste, but it 
is a lot better than no milk, and the food 
value is all there. f. n. c. 
Cleaning Tarvia Barrels; Paint for 
Tin Roofs 
1. What will clean Tarvia barrels? If 
the sides and liottoms are dry, could any¬ 
thing be put in them? 2. What will help 
a tin roof that is full of little holes? 
New I’rovidence, N. ,1. c. E. 
1. Cleaning those barrels is not easy. 
If it were, the original owners would not 
so lightly abandon them. You might try 
hot kerosene, taking proper care against 
fire. You can certainly put anything you 
wish in them, but whether you will get it 
out again is an open question; however, 
the stuff is harmless, and the flavor merely 
annoying. 2. Hot tar, painted on, will 
give your roof a few years more life, and 
there are several readymade roof paints 
on the mai’ket which work pretty well. 
F. D. C. 
Cucumber Cream | 
Please give me a recipe for cucumber 
cream, and also one for freckles. 
Pierrepont Manor, N. Y. ir. N. b. 
Grind or chop fairly well-developed 
green cucumbers and press the juice out, 
till you have 10 fluid ounces. Let this 
stand for an hour or two and strain 
through a very fine cloth. Add eight 
ounces of water in which you have dis¬ 
solved 90 grains of borax. Take 20 
ounces of white mineral oil, warm it and 
add 30 grains of benzoic acid and nine 
ounces of beeswax. The w'hiter the bees¬ 
wax the better the looks of the product, 
but the unbleached wax works about as 
well. Put the vessel with the wax and 
oil mixture in a larger vessel in which 
water is kept nearly boiling, but fasten 
the inner vessel so you can stir hard 
without splashing in the outside water. 
Have the oil fairly warm, say about 150 
degrees F., by heating the outer w'ater, 
and add little by little under constant, 
steady stirring, the juice and water mix¬ 
ture. After it is all in, let cool slowly, 
continuing to stir till nearly cold. The 
point in making these things is this stir¬ 
ring, in which no printed directions can 
tell you. Some oils and waxes take less 
water than others. Better add the water 
rather scantily. Other perfume can be 
added as the mixture cools down, a few 
tirops of oil of lavender, for instance. If 
you get a good grade of benzoic acid the 
mixture ought to keep some time, but all 
those things in which real cucumber juice 
is used are likely to spoil sooner or later. 
The best recipe for freckles is plenty 
of open air, sun and wind. Some, having 
obtained them, wish to remove them, but 
the stuff that does this by peeling the 
face is so dangerous that we wull not give 
the formula. Of the safe things, lemon 
juice is slow, but it either removes them 
or you outgrow them while using it. 
F. n. c. 
: B 
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