Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1881 — BITS OF INFORMATION. [ARTICLE]

BITS OF INFORMATION.

An elephant does not attain his full growth until ha is 16 or 18 years old. Snails have been put in boiling water and have survived the terrible ordeal. The wolf’s sense of smelling is peculiarly strong. He can smell carrion the distance of nearly a mile. Foub-fifths of the animals on the globe, or 200,000 species, belong to the ringed and jointed-footed animals, and of these 150,000 are the six-logged insects. The coral insoot deposits in its body particles of lime, and when it dies its body washes away and leaves its skeleton —the wonderful formation known as coral—behind. Exposure of hot steel to a cold surface renders it hard. This is usually dono by dipping the rod-hot metal in water, though other cold surfaces which are rapid conductors will answer the same purpose. In Hofland the preservation of the woodwork of drawbridges, sluices, gates and other works is conduced by the application of a mixture of pitch and tar, whereon are strewn pounded shells, with a mixture of sea sand. When rivers are much warmer than the air they give rise to fogs, because the rapid evaporation from the warm water pours more water into the atmosphere than it can hold suspended in an invisible state, and consequently the surplus vapor is condensed into mistjby the colder air into which it rises. There are conditions of atmosphere when no actual fog is apparent in which darkness prevails, and what are called dry fogs, or sometimes blight. In some cases they are clearly due to smoke, as, for instance, the smoke of burning prairies, which may extend over vast distances. The waters of the ocean are found to be of an almost uniform saltness, the proportion of salt being 2.7 per cent., which gives a pound of salt (about) to every four gallons of water. The quantity of saline ingredients contained in the sea, according to the late Mr. Mudie, amounts to four hundred thousand billions of cubic feet, which, if piled up, would form a mass 140 miles long, as many broad and as many high—or, otherwise disposed, it would cover the whole of Europe, islands, seas and all, to the height of the summit of Mount Blanc, •which is about 16,000 feet. That the Mississippi may deservedly be called the “Father of Waters” the following data will show : Quantity of water discharged by that river annually, 14,883,360,633,880 cubic feet; quantity of sediment discharged annually, 28, 188,083,892 cubic feet; area of the delta of the river, according to Lyell’s estimate. 13,000 square miles, and depth of the same, as calculated by Prof. Riddell. 1,056 feet. The delta, consequently, as appears from these figures, contains 400,378,429,440,000 cubic feet, or 2,720 cubic miles, and it would require for the formation, therefore, of one cubic mile of delta five years and eighty-one days—for the formation of one square mile, of the depth of 1,056 feet, one year sixteen and one-fifth days, and for the formation of the whole delta 14,208 4-5 years.