Questions and Answers.
Vincent V. M. Beede, East Orange, N. J., asks some members to describe some less common games of dominoes, and tell the origin of the game croquet. Let's have them in the form of morsels for printing. L. V. Riddle, 13 Roanoke Avenue, Jamaica Plain, Boston, Mass., is interested in botany, and wants to hear from Albert W. Atwater and all young naturalists and botanists. Ralph Cain, 1041 Santa Fe Street, Atchison, Kan., thinks it would be a capital idea to form an electrician Chapter about the Table, and would like to have other members join him. He hopes to become an electrical engineer—an excellent direction for one's ambition just now, we think, for electricity is to be the motive power of the future far more than it is now. Knights of to-day who reach their threescore and ten in due time will see steam supplanted by it on our railways. Sir Ralph will find Callaud cells, duplicated for strength, the battery most used for sustained power. The arc light is the result of frictional not chemical electricity.
W. D. S.: What is the simplest and cheapest form of electric battery depends upon the use for which the battery is needed. Electricians use the blue-stone for telegraph or closed-circuit work; sal-ammoniac or Leclanche and other open-circuit batteries for electric bells and burglar-alarms; acid batteries, such as Grenet, Bunsen, and others, for electro-plating, and dry batteries for medical use. The cost is from $1.50 to $5 per cell. Books on electricity are divided into subjects. For instance, Ayrton's Practical Electricity is a series of lectures for students, $2.50, while Mayer's work, at $3.50, treats wholly of telegraphy. Ask J. H. Bunnell & Co., 76 Cortlandt Street, N. Y., for their catalogue, which they send free if you mention the Round Table. Mary Newell Eaton, 197 South Lafayette Street, Grand Rapids. Mich., wants in-door games for persons of sixteen to twenty. She also wants to hear from any member who has visited or who now lives in Italy or China. She may send us the morsel she mentions.
Joseph H. Durant hopes we will publish a story every other week that young artists may illustrate. We could hardly find space for one so often, but we intend to offer some prizes for illustrations. Conditions will be announced soon. Sir Joseph must learn to use India ink or water-colors (black only). Pencil cannot be reproduced at all, and crayon but poorly. John H. Campbell, Jun., 413 School Lane, Germantown, Philadelphia, Pa., wants to receive sample copies of amateur papers, to join corresponding clubs, and to hear from members in Germantown with a view of forming a local Chapter.
Smith Phillips sends us some odd epitaphs from tombstones in a cemetery at Brownsville, Pa. Such oddities are in many similar yards. It is in this cemetery, by-the-way, that the parents of James G. Blaine are interred. Speaking of cemeteries, can any one tell us why we use single slabs set up at the head of the grave, while in England and France, countries from which we borrowed most of our customs, one sees quite different marks of graves? Where did we get our idea? Who can tell the Table?
Ronald Chipchase thinks we should add swimming to our list of all-around sport events when we offer another medal. Lloyd Thomas asks how to make a simple telescope for use in studying astronomy. Better not make it at all. One that is of any real use can only be made by an expert, and is expensive. G. D. Galloway, Oakwood Place, Eau Claire, Wis., publishes the Albermarle, and wants to send you a sample. It is a neat eight-page amateur paper. Will Fred Hawthorne tell us about the fruits of Jamaica—what ones are ripe when he writes. Compare them, date for date, with their appearance in Massachusetts, and carefully describe those that we do not have. Sir Fred, we should explain, lives at "Mona Great House," Kingston, British West Indies.