Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 May 1876 — INDUSTRIAL, STATISTICAL AND TECHNICAL. [ARTICLE]

INDUSTRIAL, STATISTICAL AND TECHNICAL.

Bmib atatfeittttt geiUni calculates that from the coal- *" ,T r Wf" # l prices. Freights to AUanttc tat-board have also declined, **l •* •** months ahead. In ihe'bituminoua districts then are no material chavgea to note. Tta great staph- <>i coal. Commodities. is in the tamper monopolists, who regulate the pnmm this tael acooidlng to their greet!. « 'Wilinn II h I play the infa■fsMP*P qCextortion, but m&ing capitalhte. eei Ptetyown and monopolizing nauwagr Ul|t|imoßt.-4W« Journal. Stnvoans frM life of a railroad sleeper It seven years, the 88,000 miles of track •opsame annually 84,000,000 sleepers, or talrty tSßi' growth on. 88,000 acres of the best natural woodlands. Or, if the weepers are raised artificially, some 700,000 notes would he inquired, planted with twte heat adapted for the purpose, regularly cropped and scientifically managed, to supply the railroads already constructed. At leant 115,000 miles of fencing are required to enclose the railroads of the O0«l»try, which could not hare cost on an avenge toes than S7OO per mile. Onehalf of this would barely represent the oostofthe wood employ e«l, or $43,000,000; while It must take annually lumber to flm value of not less than $40,000,000 tofesq) thebe fences in repair—i/r. Hums übbantschitch, in a paper contributed to a German medical journal, directs attention to the fact that if a watch be held at a little distance &om the ear ton ticking is not heard uniformly, but there is a swelling and diminishing of the sound. If held at snch a distance as to he scarcely audible the ticking will come and go, being at times perceived distinctly, but at times becoming wholly inaudible, as If the watch were being moved to and from the ear. This variation in perception is not always gradual; it is sometimes sudden. The same holds good for other weak sounds, as that of a weak water jet or a tuning fork. Since breathing and pulsation have not the least Influence on the phenomenon, the interruptions o i the sensation must be attributed to the organ of hearing itself; our ears being unable to feel week acoustic stimuli uniformly, but having varying times of fktigue. To decide finally where the seat es me peculiarity lay, Herr Urbantschitch made both ear passages air-tight and applied a tuning fork and a watch to the head. The sounds seemed not continuous tat intermittent The cause must, theretote, be in the nerves of hearing. An apparatus of great delicacy has lately been invented by Dr. Mosso, of Turin; for measuring the movements of the blood-vessels in man. It is named toe plethysmograph , and its operation consists in Inclosing a part of the body, say thefareaim, In a glass cylinder with a caoutchouc ring, tilling the cylinder .with tepid water, and measuring, by a special contrivance, toe quantity of Water which flows out or in through a tube connected with the cylinder, as the arm excaoutchouc tubing with a glass tube S; downward into a test-tube susfrom a double pulley with coun- , to which the recording lever is 1, in a vessel containing a mixture ml and water. When the ypssels back from the test-tube into the cylinder, tie teat-tuba rises and toe counterpoise ifmtjpli Among other applications of the apparatus, Dr. Mosso employs it in studying the physiology of thought and eerebral activity. The slightest emotions ■ nre revealed .oy the instrument by a change in,toe state of the blood-vessels. The entrance of a person in whom one is interested during the experiment has the effect of diminishing the volume of the forearm by from lour to fifteen cubic .. centimetres, the work of the brain during the solution of a perplexing problem or the reading of an obscure passage is always accompanied by a contraction of the! vssaels proportionate to the effort of thought