Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 April 1882 — RELIGION AND SCIENCE. [ARTICLE]

RELIGION AND SCIENCE.

The “Harrison revival” continues in Cincinnati, and is now entering upon its ninth week. The Welsh bishops hfcve decided not to proceed for the present with the revision of the Welsh new Testament. Every pointing of the great masters in Rome is now photographed, and some of the photographs are sold in the Eternal City at a cent a piece. O ver sixty steamboats on the Mississippi R ver and its tributaries now employ the electric light, which adds much to the safety of traffic and travel. The Northwestern branch of the Woman’s .Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church aeld its regular quarterly meeting on March 10 in Chicago. A womans’ institute of Technical Design hds been started in New York. It is intended to give ample training in such of the industrial arts as women can lollow (o advantage. The Rqv. Phillips Brooks, of Boston, is understood to have reoeived more than $5,000 for the American Memorial wjndow which is to be placed in Westminster Abbey to the late Dean Stanleys The custom of employing artists to paint the outside of houses with artistic designs which formerly prevailed not only in the south of Europe, but also largely in Germany, has been revived in Munich. The shovel-makers in the United States manufacture 12,000 shovels every week. About one-half of them are used at home and the other half are shipped abroaa, mostly to Panama aud South America, It required 1.000 cars to carry exhibits to the Atlanta Exposition, but 200 were suffleent to take away those which remained unsold, Nearly everything except the heavy machinery found a purchaser. The visit of Mr. Moody and Mr. Sankey to Edinburgh is to be commemorated bv the erection of an evangelistic hall for the city. A suitable site, within a little distance of the house of John Knox, has been secured. It has been noticed as a fact which is prooably not without significance, that a number of our best kuown deposits carrying sliver native in large quantities, as for instance, Batopilas and Silver Islet, are closely allied with diorltic rooks. A parasitic plant, has been di-icov-ered by Mr! Berkely, on the lilac. It becomes manifest in large brown patches, sometimes occupying almost the whole of the leaf. It belongs to the order of peronosoroe, and has been named Ovularia syringes.

The annual meeting of the American Institute of Mining Engineers will beheld in Washington, D. C., beginning Tuesday, February 21, 1882. Members are requested to give early notice to the Secretaryof their intention to read papers at this meeting. The ancients slaughtered those taken in war. The first step toward civilization was enslaving the captives that may be said to have been the or; igin of the employment of labor in manufactures. The second step was exchanging prisoners of war, and that was the origin of international commerce. r An important memoir has been presented by Leehantierto the French Academy of Sciences; on the modifications which plants preserved in silos undergo. Indian corn and clover lose much glucose, sugar, starch celulose, and the amount or fatty matter is increased. There is little less of nitrogenous matter. A Sonoma, Cal., farmer has raised' five cork trees, which are now twentyfive to thirty feet in height, and from ien to twelve inches in diameter. One coat of cork, one and p quarter inches thick, has been stripped off. The tree resembles the live oak in foliage. The seeds were brought from Spain twenty years ago. A Lowell, Mass., gentleman, Just from China, visited the Atlanta Exposition, under Chinese orders, to make a critical study of the cotton manufacturing machinery there, in order to select that best adapted to a Mongolian company’s enterprise. Before returning to China, he will place orders for a cotton mill, to be built in China in the spring. The English Wesleyan Conference has just issued a revised edition of its Catechism for Children of Tender Years. In the original edition the child is taught to answer that “Hell is a dark and bottomless pit full of fire and brimstone,” where “the bodies of the wicked are tormented by fire” forever. In the revised edition, the name of Hell is retained, but the words quoted have disappeared. Mineral-tanned leather is impervious to water, and is said to be much more durable than leather prepared in the ordinary manner. Tests have been which show that belts of mineral-tanned leather are not only 30 per cent cheaper, but are stronger than common belts The mineral _ process of tanning is reported to have been introduced into eight tanneries in Germany. A new and interesting proof that, the earth is round has been presented by M. Dufour in a paper recently read before the Helvetic Society of Natural Sciences. In calm weather the innsges of distant objects reflected iutho Lake Geneva showed just ex--aetly tire same degree of distortion which ..calculation would predict through taking into consideration the figure oLthe earth.