SCIENTIFIC.

Patea Mail, 9 October 1880, Page 5 (Supplement)

SCIENTIFIC.

CLIPPINGS FIIOM THE ‘SCIENTIFIC

AMERICAN.’

A beef-steak chopped up fine and baked with flour and yeast in the form of a ‘ meatbread ’ loaf is the latest dietetic sensation. It is asserted that meat thus treated entirely disappears during the process of purification, the nutritive principles becoming incorporated with the bread. SI. Scheurer Kestner has just been explaining the process.

A correspondent of the Portland (Me.) ‘Advertiser’ relates as follows his experience m looking for a proper souvenir of .Sheffield, Lngland, famous for its cutlery :— c Every other shop in the place seemed to be a cutler’s shop—and into one of the best of these I ventured, requesting to look at scissors. It is a hobby of the English shop-keeper to show his cheapest goods first, no matter who his customer may be. Enter a shop in pursuit of something really good, for which you are willing to pay, and it generally takes three or four strong efforts to obtain it—ho will persist in showing you the cheapest grades first. (So tray after tray of common cheap scissors were displayed on the counter. Have you nothing bettor than these ?’ I ? s^C c?,’ a ,V as k ‘ al 'i buying these scissors for . hie]field's sake, and I want a good pair.’ Out came another case, still in no way fine goods, I had already looked at five or six grades. ‘lf these are your best, ’ I said, ‘ I will look further on. ’ ‘ Oh, ’ said the shopman, ‘we have ouo more kind—very fine goods indeed, the best in the shop, but they are expensive;’ and he unlocked a drawer and took out a tray of really good scissors. I took up a pair to examine them, and read, stamped on the blade, ‘ Newark, New Jersey! - As I could not reconcile myself to take a pair of New Jersey scissors as a souvenir of .Sheffield, I was obliged to leave the disgusted shopman to lock up his precious scissors again; he probably more than ever grounded in his belief that the high price of Ins goods was my reason for not purchasing.

Dr. ,T, IT. (,; iruiicr, house surgeon at Bellevue Hospital, has obtained some remarkable and valuable results in skin-grafting during the past year. One patient who required such treatment refused to furnish grafts from his own arms or body, owing to the pain involved ; and, unwilling to ask another to subject himself to a pain which the person to be beneiitted was unwilling to submit to, Dr. Girduer tried the experiment of taking skin grists from a corpse. The doctor says : ‘ I cut piece of skin from a patient who died in the wards a few hours before, first talcing care to inquire whether the cause of death was due to a poisonous disease or not. I then cut the cuticle into small pieces, which 1 laid on the granulated surface of the ulcers, and bandaged the leg up very firmly. In three days the graft began to show signs of life, a perfect union having taken place, and in a week a splendid skin, smooth and elastic, had grown over the ulcerated part, making a complete cure and leaving no scar behind. (Since that time I have treated upward of fifty cases with invariable success, 1 have grafted the skin of an Irishman on a negro, and I have grafted the skin of a negro on an Irishman with ease. In both cases the skin lost its original colour, and changed its hue to suit the wearer.

The genius of invention in the photographic art and the audacity of the artists themselves arc pretty evenly paced. The ‘Lions of Society ’ have already been exhibited to the public gaze with monstrously magnified heads and diminished bodies; already have curiously-grouped anomolies been placed on sale in the shop-windows of most large towns—prominent dignataries of the Church apparently on the most amicable terms with members or the dviiil-mondc —and now a fresh power for mirth or mischief has been placed in the hands of the photographist by a process, the 'niudn* ojii vand.l of which is described in the above-named paper as follows ‘ Winking photographs are said to be produced in the following manner :—One negative is taken with the sitter’s eyes open ; another without change of position, with the eyes shut. The two negatives are printed on opposite sides of the paper, ‘ registering * exactly. Held before a flickering lamp, or other variable source of light, the combined photographs show rapid alternations of closed and open eyes, the effect being that of rapid winking.’ It is not difficult to forsee that some racy comicalities will soon be purchasable for the album.

A child, being asked what was the three great feasts of the Jew’s, promptly and not unnaturally replied, ‘ Breakfast, dinner, and supper. ’

There is a clerk in one of the banks in George street who is aft. IUHn. in height and only weighs six stone avoidupois weight. He possesses most extraordinary digestive powers, and can assimilate almost anything from Kidman’s cheese to a Cambridge sausage. Queensland owns him.—Sydney paper.

‘Don’t you love her still?’ asked the jugdc of a man who wanted a divorce. ‘Certainly, I do,’ said he; ‘I love her better still than any other way, but the trouble is she will never be stilL’ The judge, who is a married man himself, takes the case under advisement.

A Hint to Ladies.—Some amusement was caused in the Hereford Guildhall during the hearing of a case. When the Court was crowded in the body of the hall amongst the spectators was a woman wearing a hard felt hat. Her hair was done up neatly, and the Sergeant-at-Mace, mistaking her for a young man, cried out in sentorian tones, ‘Take your hat oil', there !’ All looked round for the delinquent, and when it was found that the Bergeant-at-Mace had mistaken a woman fora man, the laughter that ensued upset the decorum of the Court. The Mayor of Hereford, who was presiding, said he thought that if women liked to wear men’s hats they should uncover in a Court of •Justice the same as men did. The matter then dropped; but when a constable who . relieved a brother officer cameinto Court, and, caught sight of the hat, ‘ Take off that hat there!’ he bawled out, and the Court waa again convulsed with laughter, the offending young woman still remaining apparently ignorant of the cause that had disturbed the equanimity of the Court.