Rensselaer Union, Volume 2, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 September 1870 — Discoverles Made by Accident. [ARTICLE]

Discoverles Made by Accident.

Not a few discoveries in the arts and sciences have been made or suggested by accident The use of the pendulum, suggested by the vibrating of a chandelier in a cathedral; the power of steam, intimated by the oscillating of a tea-kettle; the utility of coal gas for light, experimented upon by an ordinary tobacco-pipe of white clay; the magnifying property of the lens, stumbled upon by an optician's apprentice while holding spectacle-glasses between his thumb and finger—are wellknown instances in proof of the tact Galvanism was discovered by accident Professor Galvani, of Bologna, in Italy, gave his name to the operation, but his wife is considered as actually entitled to the credit of the discovery. She being in bad health, some frogs were ordered for her. As they lay upon the table, skinned, she noticed that their limbs became strongly convulsed when near an electric conductor. She called her husband’s attention to the fact; he instituted a series of experiments, and in 1789 the galvanic battery was invented. Eleven years later, with that discovery for his basis, Professor Alessandro Volta, also an Italian, announced his discovery of the “voltaic pile.” The discovery of glass-making was effected by seeing the sand vitrified upon which a fire had been kindled. Blancort says that the making of plateglass was suggested by the fact of aworkman happening to break a crucible filled with melted glass. The fluid ran under one of the large flagstones with which the floor was paved. On raising the stone to recover the glass, it was found in the form of a plate, such as could not be produced by the ordinary process of blowing. Glass pearls, though among the most beautiful, inexpensive, and common ornaments worn by the ladies, are produced by a very singular process. In 1656, a Venetian, named Jaquin, discovered that the scales of a fish, called bleak-fish, possessed the quality of communicating a pearly hue to the water. He found, by experimenting, that beads dipped into this water assumed, when dried, the appearance of pearls. It proved, however,that the pearly coat, when placed outside, was easily rubbed off; and the next improvement was to make the beads hollow, The making of these beads is carried on to this day in Venice. The beads are all blown separately. By means of a small tube, the insides are delicately coated with the pearly liquid, and a waxed coating is placed over that. It requires the scales of four thousand fish to produce half a pint of the liquid, to which a small quantity of sal-ammonia and isinglass are afterward added. Lundy Foot, the celebrated snuff manufacturer, originally kept a small tobacconist shop at Limerick. On one night his house, which was uninsured, was burned to the ground, As he contentSlated the smoking ruins on the followig morning, in a state bordering on despair, some of the poor neighbors, groping among the embers for what they could find, stumbled upon several canisters of unconsumed, but half-baked snuff, which they tried, and found it so pleasant to their noses that they loaded their waistcoat pockets with it. Lundy Foot, aroused from his stupor, imitated their example, and took a pinch of his own property, when- he was struck by the superior pungency and flavor it had acquired from the great heat to which it had been exposed. Acting upon the hint, he took another house in a place called Black Yard, erected ovens, and set about the manufacture of that high-dried commodity which soon became known as Black Yard snuff. Eventually ho took a large house in Dublin, and, making his customers pay literally through the nose, amassed a great fortune for having been ruined.— Oliver Optic's Magasine.