WHERE ALL THE PINS REALLY GO.
AN old gentleman in the north of London has been making a series of interesting experiments with a view to finding a solution to the question often asked: "What becomes of the countless myriads of pins, etc., that are annually lost?" As he expected, he finds that it is the disintegrating effects of the air which resolve even these intractable little instruments into their elements. He put some hundreds of brass and steel pins, needles, hairpins, etc., in a quiet corner of his garden, where they would be subject to all the destructive agencies of dampness, earth, wind, etc. The results are curious. Ordinary hairpins were the first (taking 154 days, on an average) to oxidize into a brownish rust—ferrous oxide—which was scattered by the wind as it was formed, and not a trace of a single one could be detected at the end of seven months. Common bright pins took as long as eighteen months before their combustion was complete, but brass ones had been entirely turned into green verdigris long before that. Polished steel needles of a small size lasted a very long time (over two years and a half), but a black lead pencil proved itself to be practically indestructible, both cedar and plumbago being almost as good as when new, even tho harder things had quite rotted.