House and Garden 
cold by the evaporation of ammonia. 
By adopting direct evaporation, the 
danger is avoided of rendering the 
ground unfreezable in the event of the 
o 
escape of the unfreezable liquid; the 
cost of the installation is reduced by dis¬ 
pensing with the unfreezable liquid, and 
with the apparatus used for rendering 
it cold; and the power of the refrigera¬ 
ting machine is much better utilized. 
The process possesses the advantage of 
being able to freeze the bottom without 
freezing the upper layers. Thus, when 
it is necessary to deepen the lined shaft 
of a mine which has been flooded, the 
freezing pipes can be placed inside the 
lining, without any risk of bursting the 
lining by the freezing of the water which 
is inside it. In the case of tunnelling 
under a river, as the evaporation of the 
ammonia takes place below the water- 
level, hardly any of the cold is lost in the 
contact of the pipes with the water, 
whereas a great quantity would be lost in 
employing an unfreezable liquid. — 
American Architect. 
ARTIFICIAL PRECIOUS STONES 
/^ONSUL William Bardel, of Bam- 
berg, advises that about forty arti¬ 
ficial precious stones were recently sub¬ 
mitted to the Museum of Natural History 
at Berlin by an association which claimed 
to have made these stones, based on the 
process which recently created so much 
attention. Several official experts, 
among whom was the professor having 
knowledge of gems in the Museum of 
Natural History, two practical experts 
and the chief master of the Gold and 
Silversmiths’ Guild of Germany, were 
requested to make careful examination 
of the merits of the “so-called” new dis¬ 
coveries. The report submitted by this 
committee of experts reads as follows: 
“Of the great variety of stones we 
examined, we were favorably impressed 
only by the artificial rubies. Among 
these were some of great beauty and 
worthy of consideration. The white 
sapphires were of no account at all; 
they appeared dull and washed out. 
Well imitated were the yellow precious 
stones; they really resembled the topaz 
very closely; but this invention carries 
with it only very little value, since the 
real topaz is found in such large quanti¬ 
ties that they sell at from two to three 
marks (47.6 to 71.4 cents) a gramme. 
Therefore it would seem of little im- 
Jtkj- A ■ 
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