Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 December 1898 — POPULAR SCIENCE. [ARTICLE]

POPULAR SCIENCE.

Bftireyv and «KaataattMa of Ife* M tnminna coal beds as PatuMortraala have led the Government expert* to *anounoe that at the present rate es eoasumption the eagpijr will net bo *»■ haunted fer 800 year* to cmna Mr. J. W. Spencer, who bee bee* examining the evidence that the West Indie* were once a part of a great continent, concludes that It existed, and that these Islands were once connected with what 1* now the mainland of North America. The extent to which a chinaey can poison the atmosphere ha* been eslentlfically determined by a teat made in Berlin. The soot Which come* out of the chimney of a single sugar refinery was gathered for six day* and found to weigh 6,800 pounds. Te the moisture In th* air we ar* Indebted for the maintenance es an even degree of temperature. But fer It night would be colder than Greenland, ever at the tropica It i* the water In ths air that holds the sun’s heat and keeps the earth warm where direct sunlight fails to fall upon bodies. It Is said that there Is no better or simpler way of testing suspected water than the following: Fili a dean pint bottle nearly full of the water te be tested, and dissolve in it half a teaspoonful of loaf or granulated sugar, Cork the bottle and keep in A warm place two days. If th* water becomes eloudy or milky wlthia forty-eight hours It is r nfit for domestic use. Pref. Rv ell, whe ha* made scientific nto nearly 100 instances of rain and . tow falls from the dear sky, says that be ha* found that in the majority of such Instances th* fail took place on th* southwest side of an area •f low barometer at A distance of About 800 miles from its center. Two noted instances of th* kind under ooxuddenu tion, one of snow and th* other of rain, have received much attention from t> - meteorologists. The first was a anow Storm from a clear sky at Blooming ton, 111., March 15, 1855, in which the Eound was covered to the depth of an ch; th* second, a heavy shower of rain at Vevay, Ind., on the afternoon of June 80, 1877. In neither case was , there a single cloud visible.