Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 May 1898 — POPULAR SCIENCE. [ARTICLE]

POPULAR SCIENCE.

Su/vejs and examinations of the bi luminous coal beds of Pennsylvania have led the Government experts to an uounce that at the present rate of con sumption the supply will not be ex hausted for 800 years to come. Mr. J. W. Spencer, who has bee; examining the evidence that the West Indies were once a part of a great continent, concludes that it existed, and that these islands were once connected with what is now the mainland of North America. The extent to which a Chimney ec u poison the atmosphere has been scientifically determined by a test made In Berlin. The soot which comes out of the chimney of a single sugar refinery was gathered for six days and found,, to weigh 6,800 pounds. To the moisture in the air we are in iebted for the maintenance of an even degree of temperature. But for it nigbl would be colder than Greenland, ever it the tropics. It is the water In t’.v/ air that holds the sCm’s heat and keep* the earth warm where direct sunligh; fails to fall upon bodies. It is said that there is no better or simpler way of testing suspected wa ter than the following: Fill a clean pint bottle nearly full .of the water tc be tested, and dissolve in it half a tea spoonful of loaf or granulated sugar-, Cork the bottle and keep in a warm jlace two days. If the water becomes cloudy or milky within forty-eight hours it is / nfit for domestic use. Prof. I; 'll, who has made scientific inqui.v oi to nearly 100 instances of rain and How falls from the clear sky, says that he has found that in the majority of such instances the fall took place on the southwest side of an area of low barometer at a distance of about 500 miles from its center. Two noted Instances of the kind under consideration, one of snow and the other of rain, have received much attention from t? meteorologists. .The first was a sno,. storm from a clear sky at Blooming:on, 111., March 15, 1855, in which the ground was covered to the depth of ac inch; the second, a heavy shower ol rain at Vevay, Ind., on the afternoon of June 30, 1877. In neither case was there a single cloud visible.