The Journal of the Institute contains descriptions of machinery with which we may fitly supplement the foregoing: At Smethwick near Birmingham, there is a screw-factory which, with its clever mechanical contrivances, is something to wonder at. All the sizes of screws used in carpentry and cabinet-making are made of iron wire chopped into lengths, and shaped in a series of self-acting machines. A blow on one end forms a head, which is speedily turned true in a revolving chuck, the nick is cut by a small circular saw, a revolving jaw then seizes the head, and the 'worm' or screw is turned in a twinkling; and in this way half a million screws an hour are produced. This seems almost incredible; but the screwing-shed alone covers nearly an acre and a half, and contains two thousand machines. These being self-acting, five or six can be kept going by one woman.
Another example from the same source shews the application of machinery to soft goods and tailoring: At a wholesale clothing establishment in Leeds, more than a thousand hands and three hundred sewing-machines are employed. The cutting-out is done by means of knife-machines driven by steam, which cut through thirty-five layers of thick or a hundred and twenty layers of thin cloth at once, the pattern being marked on the topmost piece. The pile, as is stated, is manipulated around the knife-blade, just as a block of wood is moved when being cut by a band-saw. Pressing-machines heated by gas are used in place of the old tailor's goose, and as they are worked by a treadle, the workman's hands are at liberty to guide the heated iron over the seams.
As our readers know, experiments with continuous brakes for railway trains have been made in England and America. We now learn from a published Report that similar experiments have been made in Germany, and that generally preference is given to the Westinghouse brake. All other things being equal, that must be the best brake which will stop a train within the shortest distance, and that this is done by the Westinghouse appears to be clearly established. This brake has been adopted for the state railways by the Belgian government; and that the question should be settled without delay is regarded as essential in all the countries where it has been tried. The Board of Trade in a recent Report take an unusually decided tone on this point. As the Times remarks: 'They not only constantly refer to continuous brakes as the great railway want of the day, but they also lay down, for the first time, the qualities which a continuous brake ought to possess. The chief of these are instantaneous action when applied either by driver or guard, automatic action, regular use in daily work, and uniformity upon different lines, so that when vehicles from one line are connected with the trains of another the same brake-power may be available for both.' We are further informed that the Board have sent a circular to the railway companies with intimation that the sooner the requirements implied in the foregoing description are put into practice the better will it be for all concerned. There is common-sense in this: it will be read with satisfaction by all who travel by railway.
Social Science this year ventured into a high latitude, and held its Congress at Aberdeen, where the usual endeavours were made to promote health, wealth, and morality, which includes law. A paper read by Mr Caird on 'Economy and Trade,' chiefly as regards agriculture, will comfort those timid folk who are always looking for that troublous time when all our foreign supply of 'bread-stuffs' shall be cut off. 'We grow at present,' he said, 'nearly one million acres less wheat than we did twenty years ago. We have only to revert to the acreage of 1856 to meet such a deficiency as would be caused by all Europe being shut against us. And beyond that, we possess in our immense breadth of pasture-land a never-failing resource of stored-up agricultural power, which could be at once applied to the production of corn, if from any circumstance that course became at the same time necessary and profitable.'
Mr Edwin Chadwick, a veteran among sanitary reformers, read papers on Cleanliness and Health and on 'House Accommodation,' which deserve wide diffusion and careful consideration. But it may be said of these, as well as of many other topics brought forward for discussion, that 'it is better to be in possession of a few important principles than a host of facts; then reflection and reason have elbow-room, and are not hampered and brought to a dead-lock, by cramming a disorganised mass of knowledge into the brain.'
Mr H. C. Russell, government astronomer for New South Wales, has published a descriptive, historical, and tabular account of the climate of that colony in an octavo volume of more than two hundred pages, with a map and diagrams. Although the colony is not yet a hundred years old, Mr Russell has been unable to fill up the gaps which unfortunately exist in the record of its winds and weather; but his book is interesting and valuable nevertheless. He discusses the whole range of meteorological phenomena; he tells us about the hot winds and where they come from; about thunder and hail-storms; about lakes, floods, and tides; about droughts; about the rains, and why they vary; and about the great swarms of moths which at times come in clouds and infest miles of country. In his description of the physical characteristics of New South Wales, he gives particulars which will be quite new and perhaps surprising to many readers. 'Within the colony,' he says, 'may be found all climates, from the cold of Kiandra, where the thermometer sometimes falls eight degrees below zero, and frost and snow hold everything in wintry bonds for months at a stretch, and where upwards of eight feet of snow sometimes falls in a single month, to the more than tropical heat and extreme dryness of our inland plains, where frost is never seen, and the thermometer in summer often for days together reads from one hundred to one hundred and sixteen degrees, and sometimes in hot winds reaches one hundred and thirty degrees, and where the average annual rainfall is only twelve to thirteen inches, and sometimes nil for a whole year.' Clearly there is more scope than was thought for settlers who like 'bracing weather.' In discussing the observations, Mr Russell is of opinion that a periodicity, or a tendency to cycles of phenomena, is discoverable.
How to prevent famine, will be for some time to come a very serious question in India; and while charity seeks to palliate the misery, science is trying to discover the laws of the rainfall, and to devise means of storing large supplies of water against seasons of drought. Examples are not wanting. More than a thousand years ago one of the kings of Ceylon erected a tank, Kanthalai, on a scale so enormous, that were it to be built now it would cost a million sterling. This tank is to be repaired and made available for irrigation. In another district the tank of Kalowewa was twelve miles long and thirty miles in circumference, inclosed by embankments sixty feet in height, and was kept full by two rivers which flowed into it from the hills. In the district of Manaar the Giant's tank offers a further resource, and makes us aware of the pains taken by the natives to secure a sufficient water-supply in former ages. If India has not tanks enough for her wants, they must be built, for periodical famines are an opprobrium to Christian civilisation.
As regards Ceylon, we learn from an address delivered by Sir W. H. Gregory, the governor, that great improvements have been made in that fertile island: jungle and swamp have been converted into rice-fields or lakes: in Kandy there is a constant water-supply: fountains are set up in the villages: laws are in force for preservation of the forests, of the deer, buffalo, and elephant: the pearl-oyster, after some years' disappearance, has returned to the shores: a breakwater is in course of building which will convert the open roadstead of Colombo into a safe harbour, accessible to large ships at all seasons, and it is thought that in time Ceylon will become the great free port of the East.
Pitury is a stimulant said to be of marvellous power, and known to be used by the aborigines of Central Australia; but its origin has hitherto remained undiscovered. Last February, however, after vainly endeavouring for many years to obtain a specimen of the plant, Baron Ferdinand von Müller, Director of the Botanical Gardens at Melbourne, succeeded in getting some leaves; and after careful microscopic examination, he has shewn that they are derived from the Duboisia Hopwoodii, which he described in 1861. This bush extends from the Darling River and Barcoo to West Australia, through desert scrubs, but is of exceedingly sparse occurrence anywhere. In fixing the origin of the pitury, a wide field for further inquiry is opened up, inasmuch as a second species of Duboisia, extends in the forest-lands from the neighbourhood of Sydney to near Cape York, and has also been traced in New Caledonia, and more recently in New Guinea. In all probability the latter shares the properties of the former, as Baron von Müller finds that they both have the same burning acrid taste. The natives of Central Australia chew the leaves of the pitury, just as the Peruvians and Chilians masticate those of the coca, to invigorate themselves during their long foot-journeys through the deserts. Baron von Müller is not certain whether the aborigines of all districts in which the pitury grows are really aware of its stimulating power; but those living near the Barcoo travel many days' journey to obtain this, to them, precious foliage, which they always carry about with them, broken into small fragments and tied up in little bags. The blacks use the pitury to excite their courage in warfare, and a large dose has the effect of infuriating them. It is by no means improbable that experiments may shew that by this discovery a new and perhaps important medicinal plant has been gained.