Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 September 1891 — The Air’s Moisture. [ARTICLE]

The Air’s Moisture.

It is not to be wondered at that the ancients regarded water as one of the elements of which all things are composed, for it is a truth demonstrated by modern chemistry that almost all natural objects contain a large proportion of water. Not only the plants' that drink the Summer showers and show by their juicy succulence that they have incorporated the liquid streams into their substance, but the very soil in which these plants grow, amt the solid rocks themselves, contain a large proportion of water. And when we take away from animals, and even from man himself, the water which they contain, the amount of solid residue left behind is surprisingly small. It is true that in all these cases our senses give evidence of the presence of water, and do not require the corroborative testimony of chemical analysis. The moisture adhering to soil and to rocks' the juice of plants and the blood and other fluids present in animals, all evidently acknowledge water as one of their chief constituents, and testify plainly to the presence of this liquid. But if we were to suppose that water is always absent from these substances, which to our senses give no evidence of its presence, we should commit a great mistake. The dry and solid rock consists largely of water; and clay, though baked in the summer sun and dried in the summer breeze, cannot be robbed of all its moisture. AV hen the washerwoman buys fourteen pounds of transparent and apparently perfectly dry soda, she in reality pays for nine pounds of water, and gets but seven pounds of real soda, instead of the fourteen that she supposes she is getting. In short, water is present everywhere—in the dry wood that has for years formed our furniture, and even in the apparently perfectly dry dust that blows about our streets. Even the air, on a dry and sultry day, when everything is parched, and when every breath seems to burn our throats, is charged with moisture. That warm and apparently dry air contains moisture is easily proved. An ice pitcher becomes covered with dew, not because the pitcher sweats through from the inside, as it is said to do, but because the water held in suspension by the hot air, even when apparently dry, contains a considerable amount of moisture. Procure a small quantity of salt of tartar, a cheap drug that may be obtained from any apothecary, and on a dry day lay it on a common plate and expose it to the atmosphere. In a short time it will have attracted from the air an amount of water sufficient to dissolve it, and it will have become converted into an apparently oily liquid, called by the old chemists, who did not fully understand the changes that take place, oil of tartar. The experiment will be more convincing, perhaps, if the salt with its containing vessel—which in this case, however, should be as light as possible—be S laced in the pan of a moderately elicate pair of scales and carefully counter-balanced. In this case the abstraction of the moisture from the air is rendered evident by the gradual increase in the weight of the salt and the descent of the pan in which it is placed. If, then, moisture may be regarded as everywhere present, it becomes a nice point to determine when anything, such, for example, as the air we breathe, our houses, bed, elothes, etc., may be considered damp. To look for perfect dryness would be a vain search*; nor would it do us much good if we could find it. Perfectly dry air would remove the moisture from our bodies so rapidly that we should wither as if smitten with the blast of the simoon. In such an atmosphere our throats would be parched as if in an oven, plants would wither and nature become one universal desert. But on the other hand, air that is too moist, that is to say, air that is really damp, produces effects that are equally disastrous. In such an atmosphere metals rust or corrode, vegetable matters rot, and the growth of fungi, such as mildew, mould, etc., is greatly promoted.— American Engineer.

Eugene Bataille (“Sapeck”), the prince of Parisian wags, recently ended his days in a mad-house at Clermont, where he had been conAned since 1889. After a wild and merry youth as a student of the most approved Bohemian type in the Latin Quarter, he settled down as a lawyer. Once, when he was arrested for causing an obstruction in the public thoroughfare by attracting attention as an extravagantly attired Ottoman, such a demonstration was made in his favor by the youth of the Latin Quarter * that the Prefecture ordered his release.