Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 April 1891 — NEW-FANGLED CYCLES. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

NEW-FANGLED CYCLES.

[ Tree living leads to free thinking, and free thinking to free living. > On Jan. 21, 1861, Kansas was admitted as a State into the Union. Truth and a soul that is ready for truth meet like the fuel and the flame. The number of exiles to Siberia this year, up to Oct. 1, amounts to 16,000 souls. Our prayers and God's mercy are like two buckets in a well—while one ascends the other descends. A new material called “lactite” has recently appeared in England as a substitute for bone or celluloid. Casein is the principal constituent. It is estimated that during the pßst | year damage aggregating $350,000 ha been done to buildings in Ashland, Pa., by the settling of the surface. High heels, it is said, owe their origin to Persia, where they were introduced to raise the feet from the burning sands of that country. The latest article to be manufactured from corn is soap. Experiments have shown that a bushel of corn, with the proper amount of alkali, will make 200 pounds of soap. It is foolish to try to live on past experience. It is very dangerous, if not a fatal habit, to judge ourselves to be safe because of something that we felt or did twenty years ago. Out at the Folsom prison, Oregon, there is a horse that has developed an earnest desire to eat all the red and green peppers he can get hold of. The animal behaves just like any other horse except in this particular. An Austrian count and a member of the Imperial Corps got so hard up the other day that he tapped a butcher’s till for SBO, but was suspected and has had to skip out like a common thief. It’s a wonder he didn’t sell his title to some idiotic American heiress. Queen Victoria having presented the mess of her Prussian regiment (First Dragoon Guards) with a portrait of herself, the officers have sent her a large and handsome colored photograph of the regiment in parade order. Colonel Victoria is understood to be proud of her command. While Brazil was in the throes of revolution her immigration agents were passing from point to point in the United States and telling people what a peaceful, law-abiding country it was, and how they wanted the Yankee to -come over there and show ’em how to farm and do business. A new form of chair has been brought out by the Medical Battery Company, of Oxford street, London. An electric current renders the patient insensible to pain when an operation is being performed on him. If this be true, the days of laughing-gas, ether, etc., for dentistry are numbered.

Henry Shiner lays claim to ten acres in the heart of Cincinnati, valued at millions, but as there is nothing mean about him he will quit-claim for sls in cash and a barrel of whisky. He says he met an old chap on the highway one day fifty years ago who gave him the land for a chew of tobacco. There is a story about almost every inland lake that it has no bottom. John Farmer, a New York man, has epent three months sounding the lakes of that State, and in no case has he found a spot in any lake deeper than ninety-one feet. That’s water enough, however, to drown all the surplus cats and dogs. The specific gravity of a new-laid egg varies from 1.080 to 1.090; an egg, therefore, is heavier than seawater, the specific gravity of which is 1.030. "When kept, eggs rapidly lose weight, and become specifically lighter than water: this is owing to the diminution of bulk in the contents of the egg, the consequence of which is that a portion of the inside of the egg comes to be filled with air. To make an impermeable glue, soak ordinary glue in water until it softens, and remove it before it has lost its primitive form. After this, dissolve it in linseed oil over a slow fire until it is brought to the consistence of a jelly. This glue may be used for joining any kinds of material. In addition to strength and hardness, it hai the advantage of resisting the action of water. For along time glass spinning and glass-flower manufacture have constituted a very extensive branch of Austrian glass industry. At present the methods have become so developed that a petroleum flame gives some 1,550 yards of glass thread every minute, this being woven not only into glass cloth, etc., but also employed lor watch chains, brushes, and other useful articles. A spark from a locomotive on the South Pacific Bail road in California caused the burning of a wheat crop. The company being sued for damage •bowed that the fire was caused by a locomotive of the Santa Fe Company, lessee of the road, and the United States Court sustained the position that the la aor was not liable for the

acts of the lessee—an important principle, of wide application. Eight years ago a Sacremento woman gave a tramp a dollar. The tramp subsequently went to work, accumulated a fortune of $15,000, and, dying the other day, left all his estate to his benefactress. Tramps should cut this out and show it to the lady of the house when they apply for assistance. It is not quite so certain as the ordinary lottery, but-the tramp might scoop in a dollar now and then. The Smithsonian Institution, along with the sages of the land, has concluded that many valuable animals are fast becoming extinct. Instances in the past occur to us—the buffaloes, for example, to mention a singular notable case—and touching the future, we all have been fearful lest the seal should follow him to the happy swim-ming-grounds. The forthcoming publication of the Smithsonian will substantiate these melancholy forecasts. A man died in Savannah the other 'lay who played no small part in the ■ea duel between the Alabama and Kearsarge. His name was Michael Maher, and he was a petty officer of the Alabama. When the Alabama had been sunk by the Kearsarge, and the latter’s boats had rescued her crew, Maher jumped from one of the Federal boats with the Alabama’s papers in his pockets, was picked up by some English or French craft, and escaped to England.

The respiration of insects has been the subject of study by M. Contejean, who has found that, contrary to what takes place in vertebrates, the movement of inspiration is passive and that of expiration active. The air is driven from the body by a contractile effort. Hence, when the insect is wounded, the flow of blood occurs at the expiration. The respiratory movement is notinterrupted by cutting off the head, nor by the absorption of curare, which produces an immediate cessation in man. It is easy enough to ship oil in tankships, but not so practicable to do the same with molasses. At least the thing has been tried in iron tanks, and chemical action has spoiled the business. But now come some Boston people who have contracted to carry molasses from Cuba, in wooden tanks, for a New York sugar house. The schooner to be employed has been fitted with twenty tanks, with an average capacity of 10,-. 000 gallons. To keep the ship seaworthy these tanks are to be divided into compartments of 3,000 gallons each.

Prince Nicholas of Montenegro has ordained in his official gazette that every one of his active warriors shall plant during 1891 two hundred grapevines; every brigadier must plant twenty; every commander and undercommander of a battalion, ten; every drummer or color-bearer, five. Every guide, moreover, must plant two olive trees, and every corporal one. The gazette calculates that in consequence of this order Montenegro will have four million grapevines and twenty thousand olive trees on next January 1. . Something new in the line of entertainments is upon the tapis at York Beach, Me.—a frost carnival. The hall is to be decorated to represent the arctic regions, with grottoes, snow caves and icicles. The audience is expected to appear in costume suited to the apparent condition of things, toboggan. Esquimo, or snow and frost covered suits. The children are in training for appearance as snow fairies, frost sprites, etc,, and a sleigh bell chorus and drill, with 164 sleigh bells, is on the programme. The supper is to match the rest of the performance. If the weather continues to behave as it has done for the last four weeks there is no doubt that the outdoor accessories will be in proper trim for the occasion. Disbelievers in vaccination for small-pox should consider the statements just made to the French Academy of Medicine by Dr. Brouardel. While Germany loses only 110 persons per annum from small-pox, France actually loses 14,000, to be accounted for by the rigid way in which vaccinatioa is enforced in Germany and by the carelessness of the Frenchmen. In 1865, when vaccination was not obligatory in Prussia, the mortality was 27 per 100,000 inhabitants. After vaccination was enforced, the mortality fell in 1874 to 3.60 per 100,000, and in 1886, to 0.019. At the present the mortality from this cause in France is 43 per 100,000. The natives on some of the Pacific islands, being provided with neither metals nor any stone harder than the coral rocks, of which the a* ells thev inhabit are composed, would seem badly off, indeed, for material of which to make tools or weapons, were it not that their very necessity has bred an invention no less ingenious than curious and effective. This is nothing less than the use of shark’s teeth to give a cutting edge to their wooden knives and swords. The mouth of the shark contains 300 teeth, arranged in five rows, all closely lying upon each other, except the outer row, ana so constructed that as one tooth is broken or lost another takes its place. The teeth are not only j ointed and keen-edged, but are finely and regularly serrated, so that the cutting port er is greatly increased. Indeed, so great a faculty have these teeth for wounding that the implements and weapons upon which they are used have to be handled with great care. The Kingmill islanders make many strange articles of shark’* teeth.

Models that Were Exhibited In the English Stanley Show. The results of the Stanley bicycl show in England indicate a number of complex and cumbersome changes rather than real, simple improvement; The show brought out five wheels, four of which will be new to American cyclists. The fifth, though a shade lighter (and perhaps frailer? than the safety seen most gen efally in this country, will be found to 'much resemble the “B” model of the Victor wheel. These five bicycles and the

ingenious and somewhat fantastic changes suggested in them go to show the extent to which brain power has been used in the effort to invent some contrivance that will render wheeling a lighter and easier and more convenient exercise than it is at present. The improvement suggested in the “Zirner” consists of a movable handle bar provided with a lever. This lever is attached to rods running to a concealed mechanism in a box near the axle. The uses of this contrivance are to render hill-climbing easy, and to relieve the otherwise necessary upward pressure on the handles. "When the

handles, which are set in ball bearings, are drawn up, the axle is drawn round and the desired pressure secured. This improvement gives the wheelman some little relief in the matter of hill-climbing, but the facility with which the complex machinery will work in hard, actual service is a matter of speculation. In the way of new ideas in tricycles was shown a three-wheeler provided with an electric motor. It is said that the battery, which is placed amid wheels, will, unassisted, propel the

machine along a smooth road at the rate of from eight to twelve miles an hour. The motor will be specially welcome to ladies when a rather steep hill is. encountered. The motor may be of practical value on English roads, which are, as a rule, superb highways for wheelmen. How it will operate on some of the streaks of stubble and rut that are called roads in this country is another matter. A new fangled tire, the “maxim,”

was exhibited. The tire consists of a series of rubber studs. It is doubtful that it deserves the name its inventor has bestowed upon it. The lightest wheel displayed at the Stanley show was a 24-pound cushion tired safety. Nothing is new about this wheel except its weight. Perhaps the most complicated and

cumbersome wheel was exhibited in the “Euclidia.” It discloses a new idea in frames, but the practical wheelman must be the judge of its virtue. The frame of the machine—two bars bent into the shape of pears and brought back around the forward semicircumference of the' hind wheel—i ß

tensioned by means of a hub and an extra set of spokes which give to the entire bicycle the aspect of a spider’s web out of gear. It is not probable that any of the new-faugled bicycles will be used to any extent in America.

THE ZIMER.

AN ELECTRIC MOTOR.

THE MAXIM TIRE.

TWENTY-FOUR-POUND CUSHION-TIRED SAFETY.

THE EUCLIDIAN