SCIENTIFIC AND CURIOUS

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 11, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 44.

SCIENTIFIC AND CURIOUS.

COCOANUTS AND SKULLS.—Curious resemblances in nature start with the cocoanut, in many respects like the human skull, and almost a facsimile of the monkey's. The meat of the English walnut is almost a copy of the human brain; plums and black cherries, like the human eye; almonds, like the human nose, and an opened oyster and shell, a perfect likeness of the human ear.

The shape of a man's body may be traced in the mammoth squash; the open hand, in growing scrub-willows and celery; the human heart, in German turnips and egg plant, and dozens of the mechanical inventions of the present day, to patterns furnished by nature.

LOOK OUT FOR DAMPNESS.—Never sleep with the bed against the wall, for health as well as convenience. It is unhealthy to sleep next to a wall, because of possible dampness, and also, more serious still, because the breath exhaled is thrown back into the face and breathed again. Headache has often been permanently cured by pushing the bed to the middle of the room.

AN UNTRUE STORY.—The fiction of the deadly upas tree of Java has only this basis of fact to rest upon: The tree exudes a poisonous juice that the natives use to mix with other ingredients to coat their arrows; it also grows only in the low-lying Java Valley, where deadly carbonic gas more or less always escapes from the crevices of the volcanic rocks. Thus is history made.

THE LATEST IN BALLOONS.—A large balloon, intended to make headway against air currents of twenty-eight miles an hour, is being made in France. It will be similar in form to the La France of 1884-85, but larger—230 feet in length and 43 feet in its greatest diameter. It will weigh 66 pounds per horse power, and will be propelled by a screw in front with a rudder behind.

ELECTRIC RAILWAYS.—There are over seven thousand miles of completed electrical railway in the United States, and in a year to come there is little doubt the total will be doubled. Electric traction is cheaper than any form of steam propulsion or the use of horses, and there is little doubt that the passenger traffic of the steam roads will ultimately be largely diverted to the electric roads for short-distance travel in all parts of the country.

THE LONGEST DAY.—The longest day of the year varies with the part of the world that we talk about. In Tornea, Finland, Christmas day is but three hours long. At Stockholm, Sweden, it is eighteen and a half hours long. At Spitzbergen the longest day is three months long.

In London and in Bremen, Prussia, the longest day has sixteen and a half hours. At Hamburg, Germany, and Danzig, Prussia, seventeen hours make the longest day.

At Wardsbury, Norway, the longest day lasts from May 21 to July 22, without a break. At St. Petersburg, Russia, and Tobolsk, the longest day has nineteen hours and the shortest five hours.

At Tornea, Finland, whose Christmas day has but three hours, the longest day has nearly twenty-two hours. The longest day at New York comes close to fifteen hours, and at Montreal, Canada, to nearly sixteen hours.

RECLAIMING OLD RUBBER.—Crude rubber is worth from 40 to 75 cents per pound, and yet a pound of hose or packing costs very much less. This would be hardly practical if it were not for the advances that have been made in the art of reclaiming or recovering rubber, which can be done at the total cost of about three cents per pound. There are several large factories in the country devoted solely to this purpose, and a great many manufacturers do recovering on a small scale at the seat of production of new goods. These old goods are placed in large tanks at the place of reclaiming. A solution of muriatic or sulphuric acid and water is poured upon the waste, and the whole set to boiling by a system of steam pipes passing through the tank. After ten or twelve hours' boiling the cotton fiber which is found in all rubber manufactures, and which is the serious drawback in the reclaiming process, disintegrates and falls into a powder, and there is no difficulty then in the use of the waste. There are other processes of reclamation, all of which are covered by patents and over which there is at present a great deal of litigation.—N. Y. World.