MISCELLANEOUS.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 166, 10 May 1872, Page 5

MISCELLANEOUS.

. The San Francisco Bulletin says >r4®; Wilford A. Rogers, of Eolsom, has received letters patent for an invention relatino: to a method for elevating tailings ahddirt from placer diggings when the claim is situated lower than the surrounding slightly declining sluice box, into which the dirt is thrown and carried to the loyer,end by a current of water. At this point the box enters the lower end of another close box which inclines sharply upwards so that its outer ends extend to the surface of the surrounding ground. One or more nozzles enter this box at different points near the bottom, and point in the direction of its 'outlet.

A strong current of water passes through these pipes, and by its momentum carries tailings up to the surface of the ground, the action being similar to that of a G-iffurd injector. In view of' the large number of mining enterprises projected the coming summer, this invention is of great importance. The durability of the framed timbers of buildings is very considerable. The trusses of the old part of the roof of the Basilliea of St. Paul, at Rome, were framed in 816, and were sound and

good in 1814j, a space of nearly a thousand years. These trusses are of fir. The timber work of the external domes

of the Church oi St. Mark, at. Venice, is more than 840 years old, and is still in a good state. And Alberti observed the gates of cypress to the Church of St. Peter,.at Home, to be whole and sound after being up nearly 600 years. The inner roof of the Chapel of St. • Nicholas, King's Lynn, Norfolk, is of oak, and was constructed about 500 \ years: ago. :Daviller states, as an instance of the durability of fir, that the > dormitory of the Jacobins Convent, at ... Paris, had been executed in / firf and lasted'4oo'years.—The Engineer. A poor gardener who wanted to know " i the best way to start a little nursery, was advised to get married.