The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, January 26, 1896, Page 25

THE FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, JANUARY 2 1896 s 25 REPRESENTATIVE of the New | York World attended a Keely | seance Philadelphia the other | which the famous motor | xhibited. There were pres- ent Professor Brinton of ths University of | Pennsylvania and W. A. McAndrew of the | 1te—two gentlemen who know | i ly phy- | 0 have been as her Keely seances, tervals of five or six years for e years. the laboratory is about | ar feet s e,and the light from the skylight fell full upon the row of ma- chines along the wall. st there was the engine for the interchange of polar and ! city $10,500, but the contractor agreed to | build it without cost unless its utihity and stability was fully established. MARAT'S BONES. Members of the Paris Municipai Council Want to Dig Them Up. cording to the European edition of ~New York Heraid, attempts have eady been made to add Marat to the list of *“Les Grands Hommes” whose names are to be immortalized by *‘la patrie reconnaissante.’”’ as the inscription on the facade of the Pantheon has it. A sculptor named Battler has produced a statue in plaster of the “friend of the people,”” and Dr. Cabares has written a book on him. The time, however, was Ac th | says: The vehicle, or cycle, or as I chose to | christen it, the hippocycle, was designed | | the chains, E¥EEERATURE_ = AR rview, even with the most powerful reflect- ors, they have so far proved futile. Hence, to the minds of men, the universe must seem forever to be and to remain immeas- urable, incalculable and incomprehensible. And while we may be able to weigh and measure suns and systems within range of our telescopes there are others so far away and so far beyond our powers of vision, and our power of calculation, that even our present supposed great knowl- edge of the siderezl heavens would dwin- Anglo-Saxon, Middle English, the Gothic element, and what not, are pursued “down to the ground”; but English ‘‘as she is | spoke,” or as she ought to be, is deemed unworthy of attention. That is, the in- struction in this primary subject, in our | densely practical age, is theoretic and | scholastic—not_practical. The subject is | primary—that is the difficulty: the prepa- tory schools ought to attend to it, though as a rule they don’t. You may learn | Gaelic, or Assyrian, or Assiniboian; these have to be taught, for they are not preva- lently spoken among us; but as to our own tongue, Dogberry’s idea is 1n effect accepted, that ‘‘reading ana writing come | by nature.” Alas, they do not; and the | learner, being thus left to his own devices, | is in this respect often like the self-made | i man whom his friends pronounced to have | been made but indifferently. The conse- quence is that we have scientific experts | whose construction of sentences leaves | much to be desired, ana popular authors who leave their punctuation to the printer —which is perhaps wise on their part, | since he.knows something about - it, and they apparently do not.—Frederick M. | Bird, in February Lippincott’s. THE ilPPOCYCL}]. Peculiar Vehicle Designed by an Eng- lish Scientist. The statement of Professor A. G. Bell, an English scientist, predicting a machine that will be to the horse what the bicycle is to the man, has attracted much atten- tion. On the subject a correspondent of the English paper, Cycling, states that he designed such a machine in theory which dle into the thinnest of mental vapories.— tom one to the btgler-head. From the | Popular Astronomy. bottom of the headlight also two chains 5 ¢ T ’ run to the ends of an extending arm, which | SULRAN Tunun NanE latter is connected by a rod that rans to | He Is Said to Be a Prisoner of Hias the pilot wheels’ truck. Thus, as the Brother, Abdul Hamid. pilot wheels strike a curve the outside wheel forges abead, of course, and this| Lbe fate of Sultan I;Nra;l V, the bmit}x:: movement works the rod ana chain just | of ““that wretched Sultan” who now.reig: in his place, has for years been one of the enough to move the headlight so that _ the reflection is cast directly ahead on the unexplored mysteries of Constnmmoplg. ‘When the world knows, or supposes, is track. A Paper Fish That Swims, that after a few months of power, he was Here is a little experiment that illus- :“ddgnlhy, debostehd :LY the el WIh:. ;hi:;: trates a principle of natural philosophy. | forced him to the throne on the p! P peid 12 his reason had failed; that he was put Cut out of ordinary notepaver a fish like 2 the one shown in the cut and let it be a | iRt0 seclusion, and there either died or be- came cocmpletely insane. good-sized one. In the center cuta circu- i : Rstabfianed trank the'pan lar opening A, communicatin, ith the N a volume just publishe: g sl G of Djemaleddin Bey, who was intimately associated with the rise of Murad, and an eyewitness of his deposition, we have what purports to be a full and true hi: tory of this Turkish dynastic mystery. It is now asserted that Murad is notonly alive but perfectly sane, though kept a close prisoner by his brother in the pavil- ion of Malta Kiosk in the middle of Yildiz Park. It follows, if thisstatement is true, that Abdul Hamid is a usurper, and that Murad ought now to be Sultan. The wri- ter refrains from suggesting tbat Muraa | should be restored, but he is apparently of the opinion that he woula make as near an approach to a reforming Sultan asis possible under the circumstances. The story of Murad’s rise and fall is told in a highly dramatic style—perhaps a lit- tle too dramatic, if it is intended to im- press the Western reader with its absolute accuracy. Itopens with the last days of tail by means of a narrow canal AB, open- | he never put into actual practice, with four 40-inch wheels, the two rear | wheels drivers and the two front| steerers. The horse was to propel him- | self, the vehicle, and say two riflers,‘ who would steer and govern the | machine. The methods of trans- mitting the power from the horse was by | a revolving endless platform built up on | two chains supported by rollers; the plat- | form of oak battens, about 48 inches by | | three inches by two inches, placed across | the width of the machine and bolted to | Upon this platform the horse | It was a sort of wheel some curious globe, too “tuning-fork in hi of the steel Almost imme- e machine over n_to revolve. The nection between the machine against the wall rand of wire. And the gal- r showed that no electricity was do you think?” whi other. e,”’ whispered the second, pered one n?” asked Mr. Kee the tong and over an inch one end of a s carried it chine and Tell me bow man; the globe re “Make sT shall make | Sive,’” he it revolve t > said Mr, M- | ed a note on the pitch- zither, and the globe, from’ bim, revolved away 1 Mr. Brinton. McAndrew cut the globe stopped in- ts examined the these experiments, uld discover no cause for the mo- Afte: ing machine M into the n ually amaz- iis audience he great mo- achine, un- tor except in ne point of resem- is “not quite fin- t done,” will “soon o) Xt room 1o Vi as they stood looking at plicated mass of iron and as this thing is it will so neu- of gravity that a child will ck it up and hold it atan a's length. § 3ut what of it, Mr. Keely?” man. ed one “To 'what use can you put Limitless use,” replied Mr. Keely. | “With a machine like this, but no bigger than your hand, I will be able to runa streetcar crowded to the roof. And the | motor itself wonld show no motion.’” “And when?"” “Pretty soon, pretty soon. I do not| raean to spring the thing half done. Not | until the scientific mystery of the force is | > mine. For fifteen years I wa s hindered by | an incomplete hypothe ive years ago | I began on another ta Now you see | what I have.” | John Ernest Worrall Keely is now over | 68 years old. He is young-looking for his | years, of great physical strength, a smooth | and persuasive talker, a man of dominating character. He has been at it over thirty | years. And you see what he has. A PEridge Built Entirely of Concrete. | Conecrete is coming rapidly into useasa | honer—if they can be found. | not ripe for what the French would call | the pantheonizing of Marat. | But as radical and revolutionary ideas progress, so do politicians of the present | day revert to the heroes of the Reign of | Terror, and it is seriously contemplated | to dig up the remains of Marat to do them | The idea was suggested to one of the | modern Jacobins of the Paris Municipal | Council by a study of a work written by | M. J. Lenotre, an antiquary who has af- | tempted to reconstruct the history of the quarters of Paris during the Revolution by | means of unpublished sketches by Dema- chy, Fragonard, Dubercourt, Raffet, David | and others. This work is in six numbers, two of which have alreadv appeared. The first treats of the oid Bastile, and the sec- ond of the crypt of the Church of Sainle- Genevieve, now the Pantheon, and the its are existing to-d. According to M. Lenotre Marat was bur- | ied in the cemetery of St. Genevieve, the | fact being attested by a process verbal drawn up by Michel Perot, Civil Commis- sioner of the Pantheon section. Accord- ing to the document the lead coffin con- 1g the remains of Marat was taken out of the wooden shell and buried with- being opened. Consequently there ex- | i omewhere under ground a lead coffin containing intact the body of “the friend | of_the people.” Precisely where the coffin is can only be ascertained by digging; but approximately M. Lenotre has shown in his book. The cemetery of St. Genevieve was situated in front of the church of St. Etienne-du- Mont, diagonally with the front. The ground has not been disturbed since the days of the Revolution, consequently the coffin should be under the pavement in the place St. Etienne-du-Mont or in the small garden of a wineshop close by, known as “Vieux Paris.”” It is probable that the modern Jacobins of Paris will not rest until they have obtained permis- | sion from the Municipal Council to dig up the ground in the square. It might have been supposed that M. Lenotre, who has unintentionally inspired the idea of seeking for the body of Marat, would have been one of the first to seek to | verify his conclusions. Nothing of the kind! been dnterviewed. “Digging,”’ he says, “is not my business. If they want to dig up Marat let them do it without me. You | tell me that my book suggested the search. Possibly it did. It isa work calculated to suggest research. But I am quite satisfied if I have put any one on the track of an interesting verification.” Asked 1f it was known in the quarter where Marat was buried he replied: “I| should say so. Go and take a drink at the | sign of ‘Vieux Paris.’” The patron will tell you that yon can dig up shovelsful of M. Lenotre has | | bonets in his garden, and will add as he stamps on the ground, ‘Vous savez que Marat est enterre ici.” If permission can be obtained to dig under the pavement of the Rue Sainte-Genevieve Marat will cer- tainly be found.” So says M. Lenotre, and permission will certainly be asked. The municipal Coun- cil, however, might save money i1, instead of disturbing the spot, they would put u: a stone in the garden of ‘‘Vieux Paris” with an inscription something like this: Marat lles here. There let him be. He ls at rest and s0 are we. ENGLISH OT TAUGHT. A Writer Who Thinks the Language Is Degenerating. There is reason to fear that the language is degenerating; that the art of writing, except in a few hands, issuffering a change for the worse. True, it is practiced more widely and freely than ever before, but excess of quantity may easily step with loss of quality. Of old our boys studied eubstitute for stone. The fact is attested | grammar, or some apology for it (sinck e by its use in bridge-building, which has | English tongue is but dubiously provided been done in Europe in several cases, but | in e o e minds ar 5 | fixed on football. Our best colleges - the concrete has been invariably Toen | stnats theiv ausiine atud’ints a5 forced by iron girders, except where the | 16t understand the vernacular, .or can- structures were very small and designed | pot express themselves in it. They may for light traflic only. A very interesting | gnow Greek and Latin, but their transla- experiment of this nature is being tried at | tions into our common speech are fear- IlesleviL 1L, where a bridge for street |fully and wonderfully made. By way of railway service has been constructed en- | mending the matter our universities are tirely of concrete, says the Philadelphia | giving great and increasing attention to Record. The bridge hasa span of forty | the history and construction of the lan- feet and is built on piling. It will cost the | guage, especially in its early stages: BRIDGE BUILT OF CONCRETE. would run, being harnessed with collar and traces in the usual but, of course, | the traces would have hooks for attach- | ment inside the machine, placed in the relative position to the horse as are the roller bolts of a carriage. In running, the | horse would pull all the traces, and the ground, or platform, would recede beneath him, while he. with the machine, would | advance. Motion from the platform and chain would be communicated to a toothed | and ratcheted drum on the dividing axle, | over which the platform would run, and | He | mfi' at B. ow let plenty of water run in the bath- | tub and place the fish in it so that its ven- | tral half may be thoroughly wetted and its dorsal half remain dry. Pour into the | opening at A a good-sized drop of oil, and this will at once seek to spread itself over the surface of the water. As it can only do so through the canal AB, the reactive force thus exerted will propel the fish for- Abdul Aziz, of whose ferocity, under the influence of his even more ferocious mother, the writer gives a most sensational account. Scenes in the palace between the Sultan and his mother, of which no one could have been eyewitness, are described with great spirit, but necessarily, as we | suppose, from imagination. Murad, who | was the nephew of Aziz, was also sus- pected of being a reformer in sympathies, ward, which always surprises those to | half a Giaour in character, and generally whom the secret of the oil is not known, | @ dangerous person. —Philadelphia Times. | As a matter of fact he seems to have ——— | been an amiable lad, with many good | sympathies and aspirations, but weakened | even then by an unfortunate tendency to | drink. The mother of Abdul Aziz wanted | him put out of the way, and repeatedly Napoleon and His Valet, I had been up for several nights together and I was tired. The Emperor went out toward 11 o’clcck in the evening and was absent three or four hours. Isatdown to | wait for him in his armchair, near his | wriling table, intending to riss and with- draw when I heard him coming in. But I was so worn out with fatigue that slumber surprised me unawares and I fell into a profound sleep with my head on my arm and my arm on his Majesty’s table. The Emperor at last came in, accompanied by | Marshal Berthier and followed by Rous- tan. I heard nothing. Prince de Neuf- chatel started toward me, intending to | | screw up his courage. e S | stitious, and the astrologers invariably re- pressed her son either to force him to ab- ure the succession, or, failing that, to La\'e him assassinated. To this point, however, Abdul Aziz could never quite He was super- plied that the stars were unfavorable. In | the end he was suddenly deposed through an insurrection organized by his own Min- | ister of War, Hussein Avni, who, with the aid of Midhat Pasha, hurried Murad to the palace and forced him to become Sul- tan. The ex-Sultan shortly after committed THE HORSE BICYCLE. the other end of the platiorm and chains | would simply run over a free drum. But | it was manifest that in this way the ma- | chine would have been propelled back- | the driving axle, and communicate its mo- tion by outside teeth, engaging in similar teeth on the driving axle, as in the rough sketch, or by allowing the horse to travel tail first. The gearing of the platiorm with the axle would, as in the cycle, decide the | speed of the machine as against a given speed of motion per se of the horse. But whereas in the cycle a two-speed gear is not a necessity, in the hippocycle it would be indispensable. When the cyclist en- | counters a hill be cannot drive up he can immediately dismount and push. Toin like manner detach the horse and harness him in front of the hippocycle would be out of the question. So that with a low gear, applicable at will, all hills could be mounted, and for such a_ purpose the crypto-%ynamic two-speed gear would have no doubt answered admirably. Now, it seems difficult to believe that while the cyclist aided by his mechanism (although he propels also its weight) can outstrip nature, as it were, that ti:e horse, placed under similar conditions, would not do the same proportionately. At least consider the immense gain to the horse, say in a tour of fifty miles up and down hill, in his being “able to rest absolutely on every appreciable decline! Itis a truism that there is no uphill with- out downhill. With a phaeton the horse is in almost as violent and exhausting ac- tion, whether the gradient be for or against. But with the hippocyecle it would be different, for on every decline sufficient for it to run with its own impetus it would allow the horse to be as much at rest—al- though temporarily—as n his stall. Other advantages to the horse would be protec- tion from the weather (for he could be covered in), courlnd with perfect ventila- tion. level road on which to run; and a road of perfect and uniform surface always; and with efficient foothold at ‘all times, In the event of a sudden application of the brake, if traveling at a high rate of speed and tail-first fashion, he would be thrown back on his haunches; but = suitable “breeching,” or padded back, could receive his weight. If the plan of fitting the plat- form, as shown in the sketch, were adopted, which wounld allow him to travel normally—i. e., head first, he would, on the :ncr ication of the brake, be thrown forward in the collar ?ust asis the case now in ordinary vehicles, and especially s0 in the tramway carts, fitted as they are with powerful brakes. As to steering, we have now the testi- mony of the French road motors as to the ssibility of efficient steering to justify us n the assumption that there would be no difficulty in steering a horse-motor, Automatic Headlight. An ingenious machinist is credited with haying constructed an automatic head- light for railway engines. In going around sharp curves headlights on locomotives, being made stationary, throw the light straight ahead, instead of throwing it so that it follows the track, where the light should be at all times—a defect now reme- died in this new arrangement. The head- light is made to hang on two pivots, one on top, the framework that holds it being fastened to the smokestack, and the bot- awake me and have me restore hi chair and table to his Majesty; but the | Emperor detained him, saying: *Let the | oor fellow alone; he has passed I don’t | ward. To obviate this difficulty, one of | know how many sleepless nights.”” And | two courses seemed compulsor:; Either | then as there was no other chair in the the platform would have to be fitted below | apartment his Majesty sat down on the side of his bed, made the marshal take a seat tiere also'and talked with him a long | time while I slept on. But requiring one of the maps which were on the table and | upon which my elbow was resting, his M};jest_v although he tried todraw it away with precaution, waked me up, and I rose at once in utter coafusion and excusing myself for the liberty I had involuntarily taken. “Monsieur Constant,” said the Emnperor, with asmile full of benevolence, ‘it distresses me to have disturbed you; kindly excuse me.””—Memoirs of Constant. Balancing Extraordinary. | The harder a thing seems, the more in- | teresting it is. Here is alittle experiment, very simple too, which seems almost im- possible on the face of it—it seems to defy the law of gravitation. You take a tumbler, filled partly with water, 5o as to stand firmly. Then takinga strip of wood, as shown in the figure, about Nicely Balanced. the length of an ordinary leadpencil, half an inch wide and an eizhth of an inch thick, and tapering to a point at one end, you wedge two ordinary tableknives into the strip, at the angle shown in the figure. Now balance the “‘tongue” of the strip carefully upon the edge of the tumbler, moving it s'i‘ightly_ backward or forward to make the equilibrium perfect. When you have found the center of gravity—which may occasion you & little trouble at first— you will be rewarded by seeing the frail contrivance delicately poised in a exquisite balance, which at first sight seems almost miraculous.—Popular Science, Size of the Universe. It has been estimated that a cannon-ball moving with a velocity of 500 miles an hour, and leaving our earth at a certain time and traveling in the direction of the nearest fixed star, would not reach it in less than 4,500,000 years; and yet there are stars in the heavens and visible through telescopes that would require a cannon-ball moving with the same ve- locity at least 500,000,000 years to reach them. It was said by the elder Herschell that it would require light traveling at the rate of 185,000 miles a second 2,000,000 years to come to the earth from the re- motest luminous vapors within reach of his forty-foot telescope, and yet, whatever may have been the eiforts of astronomers to bring the starry heavens as a whole into | suicide in the palace where he was con- fined, cutting open his veins, as all the world remembers, with a pair of scissors. But Murad quickly found himself, accord- ing to this account, at the mercy of the ruffian Hussein Avni, and the other Min- isters, Midhat included, who intended that they should be the real rulers under the nominal sultanate of this weak young man. Murad himself, meanwhile, was distracted at his own powerlessness, and filled with remorse at the suicide of his uncle, whom he imagined to have been murdered by his Ministers. The next step in the tragedy was that Hussein' Avni and Rachid, two of these Ministers, was assassinated by a Cir- cassian in vengeance, for his supposed murder. The other chief Minister, Midhat, hitherto supposed to be the chief of the | reforming party and the special friend of | Murad, now found himself in a very diffi- cult place with the young Sultan. e also was suspected of having had a hand in the murder of Abdul Aziz, and if Murad had continued to reign he would have been ban- ished, or suffered worse than banishment, in consequence of the Prince’s Quixotic re- morse. Midhat therefore sought to save himself in true Oriental manner by depos- ing his master. Murad by this time was exceedingly weak and ill, and the writer alleges that a quack was set to attend on him, whose business it was practically to aggravate the supposed symptoms of in- sanity and not to check his facilities for drinking. An eminent specialist from Vienna was brought in and reported the disease per- fectly curable, but his report was stifled and the quack retained. It was officially announced that the Sultan was mad, his deposition was carried out swiftly and uickly, and his half-brother, Abdul ?{amid, took his place. =The people sul- lenly acquiesced, though the disappoint- ment of the reforming party, who had hoped everything from Murad, was bitter. Murad, according to this writer, was never mad ; he quickly recovered from his iliness and is now perfectly sane in his prison at Yildiz, though Abdul Hamid takes super- human precautions to prevent him from holding communications with the outside world. ‘We will not dispute the truth of all this, but the picture of Murad here given—that of a weak, amiable, visionary, highly musical and rather drunken man—does not impress us with his suitability to ride tbe whirlwind at Constantinople. Neverthe- less, if it be that he is still alive and sane, we hope that the upheaval, when it comes, will bring his release.—Westminster Budget. ¢ The Stirrup-Cap. Life, at my stirrup, lifted wistiul eves, ‘And as she gave the parting cup to me, Death’s pale companion for the silent sea, T know,” she said, the land and where It lies! A pledge between us now before you go, That when you meet me there your soul may know.” now.’ CHARLES G. D, RoBERTS in Lippincott's. A Magnetic Blowpipe. One of the latest developments in elec- tric welding, according to Engineering, is an adoption of .the well-known phenom- enon that the electric arc is deflected when a magnet is brought near it. On placing a powerful electric magnet beside the arc the latter is driven onward, and a tongue of flame is formed which resembles an or- dinary blowpipe flame, only of much greater intensity. The system is known as the Zerener system, and the electric AN AUTOMATIC GUN. The new form of auntomatic gun of the Colt pattern is designed particularly for riot | duty, being so light and easily handled that it is particularly It has an attachment by which it is fastened to the sudden call is made it can be putup in place durir but forty pounds, fires 400 shots a minute or will fire 8 useful for police service. ide of a patrol wagon, and when a the run to the scene. It weighs 000 shots without fouling. furnace consists of two carbons, which form the arc,and which can be fed by hand or automatically, and a horseshoe electro-magnet, which™ can be adjusied in any position. The fact that the arc may be deflected in any required direction en- ables welding and brazing to be carried out in positions which would be practi- cally impossible in ordinary welding fur- naces. Aerial Photography. Photographs taken from points high in the air by means of cameras pointed di- rectly downward can now be obtained in several ways without the trouble of going up in a balloon for the purpose. These photographs, besides possessing a certain Kite Camera. interest for the curious collector, are of great value in topography and will doubt- less figure extensively in military opera- tions during the next great war. In the Photographic Times for January are some: interesting particulars of what has been already accomplished in this direction. M. Batut, a French amateur, has invented a kite camera. The kite is diamond-shaped, with a long tail, assuring stability when it has ascended into the regions of the clouds. The cord holding it to the earth is attached to the frame by a sort of trapeze, so arranged that the camera A, which is also fastened to the irame by the triangular support D, shail have an unobstructed range of whatever is below. The shutter, which is of the ‘drop’ variety, working horizontally, being actu- ated by two rubber bands, is liberated by the burning of a fuse, C, which burns through a thread holding the shutter on tension; the thread being burned releases the shutter, which, in its flight across the opening of the lens, also liberates a scrap of paper, which, floating down, shows the manipulator that the exposure has taken place. A self-registering barometer, B, is attached, to show the aliitude attained. Photograph Made by a Kite Camera. The cut of the house on this page shows a result obtained by M. Batut at an altitude of 127 meters. It representsa plain view of a farmhouse, with its outbuildings. The kite employed is about 714 feet in height; the camera weighed 1200 grams (224 pounds). Another curious form of aerial photo- graphic apparatus was developed by a French inventor, M. Denesse. It consists of a photographic camera attached to a rocket. Anumbrella-like parachuteisalso fixed to the rocket-stick. g\’hen fired into the air this is closed, but assoon as the rocket begins to descend it opens out and the whole returns gracefully to the earth. In this the camera is cylindrical in form, and bas round its circumference twelve lenses—a sensitive plate is in the center. The lenses are provided with a shutter which opens and closes instantly on the camera commencing todescend. Itisthen drawn back to the operator by a cord at- tached before the firing of therocket. The vprincipal advantages of this form of appa- ratus are cheapness of operating and free- dom from risk. ROBBED OF ITS TERRORS. Cholera Declared to Be No Longer Formidable. A report which is printed in a recent number/of a German medical journal is calculated to rob cholera of its terrors. It presents statistics of the progressof the plague in Germany for the year 1894, from which it appears that there were 1004 cases from May 23 to December 15, 490 of which resuited fatally. The population of the empire in that year being 49,429,470, it fol- lows that the percentage of cases per 10,000 inhabitants was 0.2, and of mortality 0.1 per 10,000. The plague was its worst on the Russian and Galican border, and very few cases were recorded in the dis- tricts contiguous to Holland, Belgium and France. In 1894, as in most other periods of contagion, the cholera entered Germany from Russia by way of the Vistula. In- deed, all the medical reports agree that water traffic is much more to be feared as a medium for z«prem‘lingi the plague than railway or wagon traffic. he German health authorities had some trouble at first in convincing the men engaged in river transportation that they must submit to surveillance for the public good, but now they recognize the policy of co-oper- | ating actively with the sanitary boards at | the first outbreak of the plague. | Too much cannot be said in praise of the | splendid work accomplished by the Ger. man Cnolera Coramission in 1894, The reg- | nlations for checking the plague were at | first refigarded as unduly restrictive, and | the health officers charged with enforcing | them met with considerable opposition. | The end justified the means, howeser: | In Hamburg not a single case of cholera | occurred, and there were only six | in the whole Elbe district. A table made by Professor Flugge illustrates the im- provement in German methods of combat- | Ing cholera, for it shows that in the dis- trict of Oberschlesien tnere were but 346 cases in 1894, as compared with 9069 in 1865, | 5903 in 1848, 5498 in 1855, 4438 in 1867 and | 4324 in 1836. The lowest record in any | previous year of general infection was 898 | in 1851. Professor Flugge gives Koch the | credit of teaching his contemporaries how to deal effectively with the plague. | That cholera is no longer formidsble if | precautionary measures are taken is provea | conclusively by the exemption of the Ger- man soldiers during the period of mobiliza- | tion in the Vistula district last year. At | the time, in spite of the prevalence of the | plague in East and West Prussia, an army of many thousandsof men was engaged in maneuvers, but not a single case of cholera | occurred among them. It is interesting to | note the instructions issued to protect | them against contagion. | lowed to"drink only water that had been boiled; whenever their clothing came in contact with Vistula water it was taken off at once and sent to the barracks for disin- fection; and after every drill each man | was compelled to wash his hands with | soap in pure spring water. The general health of the troops was never better.—New York Evening Sun. TO CUT DIAMONDS. A Composition Made Possible by the Electric Furnace. The hardest body known %o science is the diamond, which has been used for a long time for cutting, grinding and drill- ing other hard substances. Diamond powder is of great importance in many trades, and glass-cutting, engraving and kindred trades could not possibly set along without the diamond and_diamond dust. The general use of diamonds for these pur- poses has made them costly, and the scarcity of the material has set the sci- | entists upon the search for a suitable sub- stitute. Such a one has now been found by the French physician Moisson, who has recently succeeded in producing artificial | diamonds with the help of a high-tension | electric current. He has found a combination of boric | acid and carbonized sugar, which results |in a new stone quite superior to the dia- mond in hardness. It cuts the diamond without difficulty, and can be made in any size or shape. The combination of borium with carbon occurs when the mixture of boric acid and carbonized sugar is heated in electric furnaces to a temperature of about 3000 degrees. The result isa black mass similar in appearance to graphite. The new stone will certainly be of consid- erable importance in the quarrying of | stone, in mining, in tha boring of wells, and in many other trades where hereto- fore the expensive and much softer black diamond has been used. A New Railroad Signal. The Boston and Albany Railroad has adopted a device that other railroads will not be slow to accept. Whenever a train for any reason is forced to stop atan un- usual spot a brakeman is sent back with a flag by day or a lantern by night. The lantern is not at all times conspicuous, and many rear-end collisions have oc- curred in consequence of the inability of flagman to get far enough back on the track to sufficiently warn the oncoming train. A fusee has been invented to meet this emergency. It is attached to a pointed rod, which is stuck into a crosstie between the tracks. It is ignited by the simple process of unscrewing a friction cap, | whereupon a bricht red light, which neither wind nor rain can extinguish, burns for fifteen minutes, making an illumination visible for a full mile.—New York World. Phonograph Run by Clockwork. It is stated that a portable phonograph measuring 6 inches by 3 inches by 2 inches has been brought out in Paris. The cylin- der of wax turns by clockwork in the base of the instrument and the diaphragms are very small. The apparatus resembles a musical-box, and can be carried in_the | pocket, yet it is said to be a perfect little | phonograph. They were al- NEW TO-DAY. A TRUE STORY. THE NADDEST WOMAN You ever heard of was one who got hurt on a railroad, She lived on Hyae street. There was & certainty for her of pain, a good rest and BIG DAMAGES. A friend gave her something for it, which he assured her was good, 50 she used it, and then commenced making a listof all the things she would buy with the damages. That ‘'was some comfort. Next day railroad people called and found her so nearly well they could not give her a cent. Scene closed with a profusion of 'Feminine Swear Words. There’s & sharp point in these for RAILROAD MANAGERS, BICYCLERS and EVERYBODY. Her level-headed friend had given her a bottle of Mitchell’s Magic Lotion, Which is 5o harmless and pleasant t0 use, and never fafls to do good. If You Ache or Get Hurt. Soid by druggists at 25¢, 50c and $1.00.