Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 84, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 April 1910 — Science AND Invention [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Science AND Invention

The third municipal census of Buenos Ayres, now being compiled, is expected to give that city a population of at least 1,285,000. Brass may be given a color resembling pewter by boiling it in a cream of tartar solution containing a small amount of chloride of tin.

New York is experimenting with street cars driven by electric motors which get their power from gas engines mounted below the floors of the cars.

Though blessed with the most fertile soil and most favorable climate in the world, the United States produces less wheat per acre planted than England, Germany, or Holland.

A model electric engine, built “by Thomas Davenport, a poor blacksmith of Brandon, Vt., and operated on a small circular track in 1834, probably was the first electric railway in the world.'- ' ■ 1 r '’

A bit of primeval yew forest about half a mile square is carefuly preserved in the Bavarian highlands of Germany, the tree, once widely distributed, having become almost extinct in Europe.

The amount of fertilizing matter brought down by the River Nile from its source every year is estimated at 1OO,O00;OO(1 tons — enough to cover a road from the earth to the moon sixteen feet wide by two and one-half inches deep.

The Bell Telephone Company is to adopt in New York the plan developed by independent companies in Buffalo of attaching pay-station telephone-box-es to street poles, after the model of police call-boxes. It is said that little inconvenience is caused by the roar of traffic in thfe street, because the head of -the operator ean -be introduced into the box so as practically to shut out the extraneous noises. During 1908 Peru and Panama officially adopted the world system of standard time based on the meridian of Greenwich, and it is expected that in consonance with a resolution of the Pan-American Scientific Congress the Latin-American - countries generally .will adopt this system. It was the expressed wish of the congress that the new system should become effective from Jan. 1, •1910. Time signals upon this system are now sent out without cost by cable and wireless telegraphy throughout the American continent. The whole globe is divided into hourly belts, starting from the meridian of Greenwich.

The chairmau of the chemistry section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Professor Louis Kahlenberg, dwelt, at the recent Boston meeting, on the Importance ol recognizing that solutions are really chetnical in character, and that there is no wide gulf separating the act ol solution from other chemical phenomena. Benjamin Silliman, Sr., in 1837, regarded solutions as chemical' compounds. and the chemical view predominated until 1887. Professor Kahlenberg thinks that the renewed study of solutions from the chemical point of view will greatly aid in getting a broader and more correct conception of the nature of chemical aetlOH“TtseTf.

it will be of particular service in unraveling questions in physiology.