Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 March 1888 — SCIENCE NEWS AND NOTES. [ARTICLE]

SCIENCE NEWS AND NOTES.

Saeeharine. Prof. C. Fahlberg, who, under the direction of JProf. Na Remsen, chief of the chemical laboratory of the Johns Hopkins University, discovered the intensely sweet principle known as '‘saccharine,” is about establishing another great factory for its manufacture. The European consumption of this strange antiseptic sweetening agent, drawn from cd al tar, already exceeds the capacity of the Magdeburg factory, although its cost is quite equal to that of its sweetening equivalent, the best cane sugar. Dr. Fahlberg says the sale in America is greatly hampered by the duty. If this duty were abolished it could be used to make cheap, good sugar out of the whole glucose product of America, saving to the country many of the millions now paid abroad for cane and beet-root sugar.

Strain Heating of Cars. During the severest “blizzard” of the season, from the 12th to the 17th of January last, a steam-heated train on the Chicago & Northwestern Railway Railway struggled with snow and cold on a special run from Chicago to Des Moines, lowa, 363 miles and return. Seventeen hours of this time were spent in a snow drift. During the trip the temperature of the outside air ranged down to 29 degrees below. The cars were kept comfortable through all this. When the engine was detached to seek release from the snow drift the cars were kept warm by the Baker heaters. The Hallway Review thinks that steam heating is shown in this experiment to be here to stay, despite the cavil of unbelievers, for it has successfully carried a train through conditions that reach the maximum of severity in our latitudes. But it has also shown that we are as yet only upon the threshold of the science of steam heating.

Engraving by Dynamite. Dynamite is so instantaneous in its action that a green leaf can be compressed into the hardest steel before it has time to flatten. One of the experiments at the United States torpedo •works was to place some leaves between two heavy pieces of flat iron, set them on a firm foundation, and see what gun-cotton would do in forcing the iron pieces together. A charge was placed upon them by compressing the gun-cotton into a cylindrical form about one inch thick and three or four inches in diameter, through the center of which a hole is made for a cap of fulminate of mercury, by which the gun-cotton is exploded. The reaction was so great, from merely being exploded in the open air, that one of the iron pieces was driven down upon the other quick enough to catch an impression of the leaves before they could escape.

An Old-School Scientist. Prof. Alexander Dickson, the eminent Scotch botanist who died Dec. 30 1887, in his 52d year, was a man of the old “Kit North” school. During the Christmas holidays he spent much of his time in the favorite pastime of curling, and on the day of his death he was in exceptionally good spirits on the ice; h s side was winning a close match, and he entered keenly into the excitement of the moment, when, without warning, he dropped dead in the act of making a shot. He was an accomplished and enthusiastic musician, and in later years found peculiar pleasure in collecting Gaelic airs. At botanical excursions in the Highlands he might be frequently found noting down an air as it was droned by a gillie or whistled by a herd, and he amassed a considerable number of these airs, whiah at one time he thought of publishing.