Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 April 1883 — Effect of Sunlight on Flour. [ARTICLE]

Effect of Sunlight on Flour.

A soldieb at New York has just been 1 sentenced to imprisonment for two years i for stealing sl. No wonder Howgate < skipped. At this rate he would not have got out of thejpenitentiary until A, D. 201,884, and all his old friends would i have forgotten him by that time. Some learned scientist says that the effect the sun has on the earth is to gradn- I ally absorb it, and that in about one million years there will be nothing left of the earth. There iA then, some prospect of a conclusion of the star route trial* even if a long .suffering people are obliged to wait a million years for it.—Peck s Sun. There are only four nations in, the world to-day that are paying tbf _,ir way. England generally manages to make ends meet and show a trifling surplus of two or three millions to be applied to the reduction of its enormo’ds national debt; the United States, in spite of congressional extravance, put by every year nearly fifty times as much; and Holland and Belgium both keep about even. With these exceptions every nation in the civilized world shows an annual deficit of more or less millions.

One test after another shows that electricity as an illuminating agent is far from, satisfactory when the question of cost is considered. The last report on this subject is from a large railway station in California. A careful experiment was made, extending over a period of six months, with the employes trained to the best efficiency and expenses cut down to a minimum, and the conclusion reached was that while electricity gave a better light, than gas, yet sufficient light could have been obtained from gas for half the money. An establishment in Chicago for raising vegetables in winter, has over four miles of hot water pipes, and 300 tons of coal are required to heat the twenty-two houses used in the business. The capital invested in the houses is $35,000, the ground on which they stand is valued at as much more. The great winter crop is lettuce; parsley is sown for Thanksgiving and spinach for the holidays. An acre of rhubarb roots is taken up each year, and forced for the early market Cucumbers are raised in May, and the value of this crop when in season is 8100 a day. The crops are uncertain —one year $2,000 net was made on cauliflowers, the next year the crop did not pay expenses.

Cold and rainy summers, such as have afflicted England of late years, occurred in the last century, and probably in every century. History repeats itself in weather as in alLelse. About 1750 Lord Chesterfield writes to his son from Blackheath, near London, in June, that he is seated beside a blazing fire, and in 1784 Cowper writes to his friend Newton on June 21: “Thia unpleasant summer makes me wish for winter. The gloominess of that season is the less felt because expected, and because the days are short. We have now frosty mornings.” On July 3 he writes: “Last Saturday the cold was so severe that it pinched off the shoots of our peach trees.

The fashionable people are running to buttons. A New York correspondent describes a dress recently finished for a Fifth avenue lady which carries 1,800 buttons, and required the constant labor of a seamstress for ten days to sew them on. On each sleeve there are 100 buttons on the body, basque, and collar 350, and on the skirt 1,350. Those on the skirt are arranged in triangles, squares, crosses, stars, and other curious shapes, on a foundation of black satin. The dress has a satiny appearance, and is very weighty —so much so that it will require a lady of considerable strength to wear it This may all seem rediculous, but as long as people will spend their money there is no reason why it shouldn’t pay for the employment of the poor.

In 1884 the electoral votes in the different States will consist as follows: Alabama. ; 10 Nevada, 3 Arkan— 7 North Cafolina It California 8 New Y0rk..... 86 Colorado ...... 8 New Hampshire... 4 Connecticut 6 New Jersey 9 Delaware. 8 0hi0. ...a 23 F10rida.......... 4 Oregon 8 Georgia 12 Pennsylvania.. t....... 3J Illinois 12 Rhode Island 4 Indiana.—.—. 15 South Carolina 9 loura.. ••••••••••••••••••••••••* 18 Tennessee.... 12 Kansas 9 Texas 13 Kentucxy... 18 Vermont 4 Louisiana. 8 Virginia )2 Maine.. ........ 6 West Virginia 6 Maryland...... Wisconsin. 11 Meemehueetts .14 Michigan 18 Senators.. .76 Minneanta- - 7 Representatives ..325 Mi550uri....••••••»••....•. 16 Mississippi « Total 401 Jhbmfrs...... 5 I ..'4l. ?■—■■*" 1 Tn meresae in the population of the United States “pursuing useful ocoupa-

tions” from 1870 to 1880 was 30 per cent 1 btrt the increase in the-nwMber sos thw 1 engaged in agriculture has been only f while the number of those in othe . cupations increased 47.7 per Cf calling attention to this, the Gazette says that it is evident , ftre becoming more and more a ing people, and that each year a larger pro r /Jt^ofda H arni products for home ur ~ carriage will steadily becorr to the railroads. view is perfectly sound, fair to note the progress of machinery m farming, by which the per capita of per sons em s teadily increasing each year * There is no question that the v °l r Jne of agricultural products in the sited States has increased very much tester than the number of persons employed. '

They are having a real lively time in. Newport, Rhode Island, and a couple of he high-toned residents of the city are making a regular circus for the folks to laugh at. It seems the two men live neighbors to each other, and as a matter of course, became involved in a dispute about the line fence which separated them. The man who claimed that the fence encroached three inches on his property went out the other morning to tear : t down, when his neighbor came out and cooly sitting down on the front steps turned the water hose on him and drove him away. The neighbor returned the cold water move with a shower of bricks, but was arrested and conveyed to the station. Before he could get out his neigh? bor had repaired the fence, and when he went to tearing the fence down again he found his neighbor on deck with the hose The man with the hose still wears the banner.

A man who had been in the Michigan penitentiary for twenty-eight years was pardoned the other day by the Governor. He was convicted of murder in the first degree in 1853 and sentenced for life, out it recently transpired that he was innocent of the crime. A similar case in Illinois was reported some weeks ago. Innocent—and the hot iron of injustice has burned to the very bone. The victim of such a fate suffers agonies tenfold greater than the felons with whom he is forced into companionship. The most vivid imagination can hardly picture the reality of the horrid nightmare experienced by one who is thrust from the world to pass his days and months and years in a. convict’s cell Hope consumed, reputation blasted,a life wrecked —there is no Samarcand apple for ills like these. Yet the State might do more for such a man than merely to pardon him. It, would seem that in the absence of legal responsibility for the gnat wrong, something should be done in all cases of this kind by way of compensation.

Much has been said and written of the great extent and large possibilities of Mexican haciendas. But probably few people in the United States even yet realize the extent of some of these tracts of land, where a million or a million and a half of acres often constitute a single estate in the hands of one owner. There are many such estates in Mexico large enough to hide away many a European principality, large enough to awaken the envy of many a land proprietor in the Pacific Coast States of the Union. These are to be found in many of the Central and Northern States of Mexico. The famous Salado ranch, for example, contains over 600 square miles of land. It lies partly in the State of Nuevo Leon, Ooahuilla, Zacatecas and San Luis Porosi, on the highway to Mexico, and on the line of the new railroads. It occupies the central table lands of Mexico at an average elevation of 4,000 feet. Chains of mountains traverse the estate, rich in mineral wealth. The boundaries of the estate extend more than 100 miles from north to south; flourishing farms and large mining towns are met at frequent intervals.

Boston Journal of Chemistry. It frequently happens that wheat or rye flour, in spite of the great care in baking, yields an inferior loaf and the failure is commonly attributed to adulteration; but when submitted to investiga tion neither microscopic nor chemical tests reveal any adulteration. Such flour is returned to the miller or dealer as unfit for use. The miller says the flour was injured by the heating of the stones, •and the dealer attributes the defect to the cirmcumstance that the sun must have shone upon the sacks during transportation. It has been proved by numerous experiments that flour can not bear the action of the sun, even when not exposed directly to its rays. When flour is exposed to the heat of the sun an alteration takes place in the gluten similar to that produced by the heating of the stones. For this reason it is abvisable that the transportation of flour should take place if possible, on cool days or by night, as well as that flour should be stored in a cool place.