Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1876 — MECHANICAL AND SCIENTIFIC. [ARTICLE]

MECHANICAL AND SCIENTIFIC.

—A brass measure in the shape of a flat fish has been found in Yarmouth, the name of T. Browne, who was Mayor in 1748, still being legible on it. The length of the fish is six and five-eighth inches, its width three inches, ana it was used by the water bailiff to measure the meshes of fishermen’s nets m order to prevent the taking of small fish, for whose preservation the English Legislature is again making strenuous efforts.

—The London World gives the following description of the “latest thing” in coffins r “ You are placed in a glass box, to the top ot which is affixed a metal rod. As soon as the earth is filled in, a battery is connected with the rod and an electric shock shatters the coffin into a thousand pieces, thus allowing the earth to press upon the dear departed and allowing him to return to dust even quicker than m one of Mr. Seymour Haden’s wicker baskets.”

—M. Lostal, a French railway contractor, noticing that the boards of mortarbeds become very hard and resist decay, has invented a process for preserving wood by impregnating it with lime. Lumber is piled in a vat and covered with quicklime, which is slaked by sprinkling. The vat is filled with water to the top of the wood, which remains some days undisturbed and is believed to absorb the lime through its whole structure, becoming hardened and secured against dry rot. —M. Buchwalder, in a letter to M. Dumas, remarks that a recent invention of M. Mouchot for the industrial application of solar heat was virtually anticipated in the time of Numa Pompilius by priests of the Temple Vesta, for kindling the sacred fire, should this from any cause go out. Plutarch describes the contrivance, which was a hollow vase (formed with the sides of a right-angled Isosceles triangle), so arranged that when turned to the sun all the rays from the sides united in the center: “There,” he says, “ they subtilize the air so strongly that they inflame it, and when any and and dry matter is brought near, the fire seizes it, because the air by means of reflection takes the form of flame and forces it to be inflamed.”

—A French engineer named d’Adhemar has invented a coating or paint which is said to preserve iron from rusting better than anything known, besides being cheaper than red-lead paint. Some years ago, in exploring some salt wells among the balls in them unoxidized; later, in Gaudaloupe, he found iron scales or scraps which had lain in the ground without rusting. In both cases he observed that the soil contained sulphur; and the exterior films of the metal in both cases proved to be substantially the same, being sulphuretted. Acting on these hints, he has prepared a pigment which can be applied with any of trie ordinary painter’s vehicles, and which vulcanizes, as he says, the surface of the iron as sulphur does India rubber, remaining unchanged for years.