MISCELLANEOUS.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 159, 17 June 1884, Page 2

MISCELLANEOUS.

Engines are now being constructed of man-ganese-bronze, the first having been turned out by Messrs. W. H. Allen, of Lambeth. All the parts usually made of steel have been formed of this new alloy. For machinery which has to be under water, pumping engines, &0., where the iron and steel rusted fast, manganese-bronze is a splendid substb tute, as it does not oxide. The alloy used is a hard mixture, which runs at high speed without heating, and soon wears down to a smooth and glassy surface. Its strength is about that of mild steel, and it can be forged like the latter metal. It is perfectly marvellous to witness the great strides made both in the perfection and application of the telephone since it was submitted to the British Association meeting in 1877 as a scientific toy. A French electrician is said to have just brought out an ingenious and ncvel method of employing it instead of the old-fashioned speaking-trumpets between a vessel being towed out and its tug. The towing cable has a wire twisted within it by which telephonic communication between the ships can be maintained, the circuit being completed by the copper bottoms of the Vessels.

An interesting experiment is to be made by Dr. Zintgraff; who in company with Dr; Chavanne, is about to visit the Congo and the interior of Africa. He takes with him a phonograph wherein to fix the speech and melodies of hitherto unknown tribes, which thus received by the instrument, will be forwarded to scientific men. in Germany. The apparatus (which will be used for such a purpose for the first time) has been made by Mr. Fuhrmann, of Berlin, and exactly corresponds with one he has in that city, so that the plates used in Africa can be sent to Berlin to be unrolled by that machine, and caused to re-emit the sound received. Dr. Troitski, of Brussels, has made a number of observations upon the effects produced on the temperature and pulse by smoking. He found that in every case, varying according to the condition of the individual, there wp,s an acceleration of the pulse rate and a slight elevation of temperature. If the average temperature of non smokers were represented by 1000 that of non-smokers would by 1008, while.the heart in the former case was making 1000 pulsations, in the latter it would beat 1186 times. It is in the latter efleet that he thinks the danger of tobacco smoking is manifest. It is worthy of note how frequently men, possessed of really clever minds, and who make their mark' in the world in their own particular line, are afflicted with ridiculous ideas of a petty kind. The following from an exchange gives an instance of one of these kind of gentlemen being hoist with his own petard:—James Payn, the novelist, refuses to dress for pinner like other gentlemen, and will only go out if his host will accept him in morning dress, his idea of the same being a suit which would become a scarecrow. Not long ago he was invited by a very consider* able man, who asked some distinguished peo* pie to meet him. One of these proposed to take the conceit out of the novelist by outdoing him in his own line. And it was done. They dressed in flannel shirts, corduroy breeches, velveteen coats, scarlet nectie, thunder and lightening hunting waistcoats, with brass buttons, thick boots and leggings. The novelist was completely beaten at his own game, for he looked like a Nonconformist parson amongst a lot of gamekeepers, not to say poachers. Plimsoll’s efforts towards the preservation of life at sea have proved entirely ineffectual. The average annual loss among British seamen in the five years, 1877 to 1881, was 1692 lives. That number increased in 1882 to 3,118, and it had reached 8,500 at the date of of the latest returns. Sir Thomas Brassey expresses the opinion that much of this loss is preventable. Caieless shipmasters and mates are responsible for many collisions and strand ngs, and the punishment for such criminal blunders has been too lenient. Shipowners and underwriters have been guilty of reckless overloading of ships, undermanning, and negligence of icpairs. The difficulty in the way of an amending Shipping Act is obvious. Shipowners are callous and eare not for loss of life so long as they get their insurance, and competition in insurance is so great that hazardous risks are taken. The commission on unseaworthy ships have more on hand than they can do. If the laws could be so shaped as to prosecute heartless shipowners and corrupt surveyors for murder or manslaughter when an unseaworthy vessel was lost, and drowning all or part of its crew, there would then be too great a risk attached to the ownership of floatingfeoffins. The rage for sight-seeing and for the public exhibition of all sorts of blood-curdling and horrible feats is becoming quite a disease, and one which is in many cases likely to result in loss of life, as has, indeed, been the case before now. The Pa.ll Mall Gazette relates that a new and dangerous development V of mesmerism was displayed the other day at T Paris by a well-known mesmerist, who at the same time is a lion-keeper in a certain menagerie. A beautiful young girl, on whom the spiritualist generally practices, was b: or ’ht into a cage of lions, and after being . .rown into a cataleptic sleep, was submitted to the most frightful ordeals. In one of these the head and arms of the girl were put into the mouth of a lion, which had previously been infuriated by lashes from |its master’s whip. But the apparently dead body did not excite the animal’s appetite, At the end of the scene the girl was released, and went smilingly away, while the mesmerist earned rich laurels. In this age of comparatively advanced civilisation it is quite time that these sort of exhibitions were put a stop to, and that the public mind should be educated to take pleasure in something more reasonable and less savage. Common baking soda is the best of all remedies in cases of scalds and burns. It may be used on the surface of the burned place either dry or wet. When applied promptly the sense of relief is magical. It seems to withdraw the heat, and with it the pain, and the healing process soon commences. It is the best application for eruptions caused by poisonous ivy and other > poisonous plants, as also for bites and stings of‘ insects. Owing to colds, over-fatigue, anxiety, and various other causes, the urine is often, high-colored, and more or less loaded with phosphates, which settle to the bottom of the vessel on cooling. As much soda as can be dipped up with a sixpence, dissolved in half a glass of cold water and drank every three hours will soon remedy the trouble and cause relief to the oppression that always exists from the interruption of the natural How of urine. This treatment should not be continued more than twenty-four hours. Karl Laroche, the doyen of German actors, died at Vienna. Born in 1794, in Berlin, he began his career on the stage in 1811. He was a pupil of Goethe in Weimar from 1823 until 1832, and was a member of the Burg v Theatre for more than fifty years. He made ’ his last appearance on the stage in 1880, as Justice Shallow, in Shakespeare’s Henry IV. (Part II.) A High Church rector, in a letter to the Daily Neics recently asserted that it was possible for a person married, while properly k domiciled in the Australian colonies, to the * sister of his former wife, under the sanction of laws solemnly ratified by the Queen in

Council, to freely set aside his contract of marriage on landing in this country, desert his children, and marry again Mr. Broadhurst, M.P., asked the Aitortey-generai in the House of Commons whether a person so acting would, on returning to Australia, again become the lawful husband of the repudiated wife, or render himself liable to prosecution for bigamy in respect of the marriage contracted in England? Sir Henry James replied: “ I understand the law to be that if people are domiciled in a colony where marriage with a deceased wife’s sister is valid, in effect such a marriage is valid and fully recognised in this country, with, however, the qualification that the children of such a marriage would not inherit real property by descent in this country.