A very pleasant and interesting ceremony was witnessed on Scarborough sands the other day, where a large collection of donkeys and ponies were assembled in review order. A few gentlemen have for the past two years subscribed for prizes to be offered at the end of each season to those drivers who can show their beasts in good condition and bearing the signs of kind treatment. This was the second distribution of the kind. There are many seaside places and other spots of popular resort where this good example might be followed with much advantage.
Lord Brabazon utters a useful note of warning when he points out, what has long been patent to many observers, that there is a deterioration in physique of the inhabitants of the more crowded portions of our cities. Want of food, exercise, and fresh air are the causes of this decline. He points out that in this year’s drill competition of School Board scholars it was clearly noticeable that those children from the poorest and most crowded districts were of shorter stature than the others. As a partial remedy for this lamentable state of things, Lord Brabazon advocates more variety in the system of education, and begs the authorities to remember that the body should be cared for as well as the brain. He pleads also that cookery, needlework, and the knowledge of a few simple rules for maintaining the body in health, will be of more value to a girl than a smattering of French, and that a boy will make a better citizen for having been trained to use his hands as well as his head in honest labour.
It is stated that a Wild Birds’ Protection Act is much needed in several parts of our Indian possessions. The birds have been hunted down for the sake of their bright plumage, until in some districts certain species are almost exterminated. The frightened agriculturists are now calling out for protection for their feathered friends, for insects of various kinds are increasing to an alarming extent, and are playing sad havoc with the crops.
According to the Building News, another curious use has been found for paper. At Indianapolis, a skating rink has been constructed of this ubiquitous material. Straw-boards are first of all pasted together, and are subjected to hydraulic pressure, and these when sawn into flooring-boards are laid so that their edges are uppermost. After being rubbed with glass paper, a surface is obtained so smooth and hard, and at the same time exhibiting such adhesive properties, that it is well adapted for the modern roller-skates. It is also stated that in Sweden old decaying moss has been manufactured into a kind of cardboard which can be moulded in various ways for the purposes of house decoration. It is said to be as hard as wood, and will take an excellent polish.
When we read the account of some fatal gas explosion, we are always prepared to find the oft repeated tale of the foolish one who goes to look for the leak with a lighted candle. A recent explosion of this kind in Paris has led to the appointment of a Commission to determine the best manner of searching for gas-escapes. It has been now decided that an electric incandescent light fed by an accumulator—or secondary battery—shall be rendered obligatory for such operations, and suitable apparatus has been selected and approved. It now remains to be seen where the lamps are to be kept, how they are to be always charged ready for use, and whether the foolhardy folk who court explosion with a naked candle or match will ever trouble themselves at all about the provision made for their protection.
Japan has the unenviable distinction of being the one spot on this globe where earthquakes are most frequent, and therefore it may be assumed that the Seismological Society of Japan has plenty of work to do. In the last issue of the ‘Transactions’ of this useful body of workers, there is a good paper by Professor Milne on Earth Tremors. The study of these slight movements of our great mother is called microseismology, and a number of exceedingly ingenious instruments have been contrived for identifying and self-recording them. From the fact that earthquakes are generally preceded by great activity in the way of tremors, it is hoped that reliable means may be found of forecasting those terrible occurrences. Professor Milne supposes earth tremors to be ‘slight vibratory motions produced in the soil by the bending and crackling of rocks, caused by their rise upon the relief of atmospheric pressure.’ Another investigator thinks that they may be the result of an increased escape of vapour from molten material beneath the crust of the earth consequent upon a relief of external pressure. In other words, these premonitory symptoms are developed when the barometer is low.
Messrs Manlove and Company, engineers at Manchester, Leeds, &c., in calling our attention to a paragraph which appeared some months back in this Journal descriptive of a street-refuse furnace or ‘destructor,’ point out that that title was given to an apparatus of their invention some years ago, which is now in successful operation in various parts of the kingdom. Owing to the word ‘destructor’ not having been protected by copyright, it has been applied by other inventors to more recent contrivances.
A New Jersey capitalist has lately planted a vast area in Florida with cocoa-palms, and he expects in a few years to rival the most extensive groves of these trees in other parts. The plantation covers one thousand acres, and each acre numbers one hundred trees. They will not yield any return for the first six years; but at the end of that time a profit of ten per cent. on a valuation of two million dollars is looked for, the original cost of planting being only forty thousand dollars. The trees, we learn, will flourish only within a certain distance of the sea-coast, and each full-grown tree produces annually sixty nuts. We presume that the estimated profits take into consideration the processes of oil-extraction and fibre-dressing, which necessarily follow in the wake of cocoa-nut cultivation.
The International Health Exhibition has been even more financially successful than its predecessor ‘The Fisheries,’ for the total number of persons who passed its turnstiles is more than four millions, a number equal to the population of London itself. The Exhibition of Inventions which is to open next year has met with some unexpected but not unnatural opposition from some of our great manufacturers. These complain that competition with foreign countries is so keen just now that it will be a national mistake to exhibit for the benefit of others, machinery and processes which have deservedly earned for Britain a proud pre-eminence in various manufactured products. They point out that a patent is very little protection in such a case, because of the ease with which, in other countries at least, it can be infringed, and because of the difficulty and expense of tracing the delinquents. It is probable that for this reason many of our manufacturers will stand aloof, or will only exhibit such things as comprise no trade secrets.
The dwellers in a certain part of suburban London have hitherto been in the happy possession of artesian wells on their premises, from which they could draw a never-failing supply of good water. They feared not the calls of the water-rate collector, and looked with indifference at the disputes with the Water Companies going on around them. But suddenly they have been rudely awakened from their pleasant dream of security, for their wells have run dry. An enterprising Water Company has sunk a deeper well than any of the others; and as water will insist on finding the lowest level, the smaller fountains have been merged into the big one.