Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 June 1875 — MECHANICAL AND SCIENTIFIC. [ARTICLE]

MECHANICAL AND SCIENTIFIC.

—lt has often been asserted that breathing oxygen quickens the action of the heart ana raises the temperature of the body. Tins assertion has been subjected to investigation by Naouraoft and Bieliaief, who find that the prolonged inhalation of pure oxygen exerts no appreciable influence on either the pulse or the temperature. The experiments were made on dogs and on the human subject. —A writer in the London Builder suggests that thick glass might be easily and cheaply cemented to the walls of hospitals, etc. It would be non-absorbent, imperishable, easily cleaned, readily re- [ laired if damaged by accident, and, unike paper and paint, would always be as good as at first. Glass can becutorbent to conform to any required shape. If desired, theplutes may lie colored any cheerful tint. The non-absorbent quality is the most important for hospitals and prisons, and ip worthy the consideration of architects. —There is an increasing demand for land in Ceylon for the purpose of growing tea, cinnamon, cinchona, vanilla and other useful plants for economical purposes, as well as for the spread of the coffee plantations. A disease in the coffee-plant has lately been discovered which threatens scarcity of this product unless speedily checked. It is called “ leaf disease,” and, as its name implies, is principally apparent in the death of the foliage, though the produce of the berries is also considerably reduced. It is believed by competent authorities to be mainly caused by exhaustion; and is, in this respect, similar to the disease among the lemon groves of Europe. The government of Ceylon have taken up the subject with a view to its thorough investigation. —Hairsprings, says a writer in the Victoria Magazine, are made in the factory of finest English steel which comes upon spools like thread. To the naked eye it is as round as a hair but under the microscope it becomes a flat steel ribbon. This ribbon is inserted between the jaws of a fine gauge and the dial-hand shows its diameter to be two twenty-five-hundredths of an inch. A hair plucked from a fiian’s head measures three twenty-ftve-hundredths —one from the head of a girl at a neighboring bench twotwenty-tive-hundredths. Actually, however, the finest hair is twice as thick as the steel ribbon, for the hair compresses one-half between the metallic jaws of the gauge. A*hair-spring weighs one-fifteenth thousandth of a pound troy. In straight line it is a foot long. —Dr. Birks, the well-known physicist and author, suggests that, according to the present theory of the laws of' matter, there may he more truth than has commonly been recognized in the old arrangement of the four elements, which placed a fourth region of fire above the solid, liquid and gaseous constituents of our globe. In fact, according to this writer’s reasoning, there must be above the region where the air, though, greatly rarefied, is still elastic, a still higher stratum where elasticity has wholly ceased, and where the particles of matter, being very widely separated, condense around them the largest amount of ether. All sensible heat, says Dr v , Birks, in the collision or oscillation of neighboring atoms of matter will thus have disappeared ; but latent heat, in the quantity of condensed ether or repulsive force ready to be developed on the renewed approach of the atoms, will have reached its maximum, and may be capable of producing the most splendid igneous phenomena, such, for instance, as die northern lights or tropical thunder-storms.