Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 April 1876 — MECHANICAL AND SCIENTIFIC. [ARTICLE]

MECHANICAL AND SCIENTIFIC.

—The remarkable scientific fact is announced that an Iron ball at white heat retusoa to receive y. charge of electricity ; when cooled down to red heat it will receive a negative charge; at a dull red heat it will receive a positive charge; and when further cooled down It will accept both kinds. —An important advance has been made on one of the Paris tramways, in propelling a car by means of compressed air, heated as used by being passed through hot water. Les An»ales Inaustrielles fully desciibes a contrivance of M. Mekarski, by which he appears tb have solved the problem of running a Self-Acting tram-car along the street tramways- without smoke or steam —lt has been so long the habit of the American people to credit themselves with producing all the really valuable inventions that it is almost a relief, on account of the novelty, to find a capitally useful and Ingenious invention of French origin. A Frenchman, M. lltujrian, has discovered a method by which a well can be made to pump its own water. The invention is not a myth, either, being much better authenticated than the Keely motor, and having been successfully tried near Conilly, in France. The invention is described at length in Appleton's Journal, and from the description it appears that the only requisites ot success are a stratum of soil saturated with water, a second stratum below impervious to water, and beneath that an absorbent stratum. —Mr. E. A? Wunach, in a recent address. before the Geological Society of Glasgow', referring to the evidence showing the immense time required to produce a seain of coal, directed attention to the conditions which he had examined in the Isle of Arran. There, to use his own words, he “ found numerous cylinders of trees, completely flattened, of course, lying across each other at regular angles, with their bark compressed into less thickness than common pasteboard, and the carbonaceous matters re'uced to graphite, so that from three to four inches in thickness of this impure coal contained, probably, twenty generations of trees overlying each o’her. Now, if we allow thirty years only for the life of each tree, we have' 600 years for the formation of four inches of impure coal, or 1,800 years for the formation of one foot of coal.” —The San Francisco News Letter describes the newest discovery in natural history, being an insect which has been christened without consulting the scientists —or as the News Letter calls them, the “bug sharps”—a “ man bug.” The description is as follows: “The creature has a body of a dark green color, mottled with yellow or orange-colored spots This is about five inches long by two and a half broad, of a beetle shape and terminating at the head in a pair of red and very vicious looking eyes and two horny mandibles of a like color and a decidedly snappish appearance. It has no appearance of wings. Its most peculiar feature, however, is a single pair of spidery legs attached to the lower end of its body. These are about twelve or fourteen inches in length and singularly resemble those of a man in regard to the number of joints and the fact that it stands bolt upright on them. The Creature stands some foot and a half high, tyalks with a long crane-like stride, and is like nothing so much as an immense June bug on stilts. Its only known food is mice, and these, when introduced into the large bird cage that confines it, it seizes with a sudden dash of its foot or claw and dispatches voraciously.” It was found on the Island of Iwiwau, some sixty miles south of Steinberger’s domain.