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Thames Star, Volume XI, Issue 3666, 25 September 1880, Page 4

. The most astounding thing a contemporary ever heard of in the way of a. time-piece is a clock described by a Hindoo fajah as belonging to a native prince of Upper India, and jealously guarded as the rarest treasure of his luxurious palace. In front of the clock's disc was a' gong swung upon poles, and near it was a pile of artificial human limbs. ■The pile was made up of the full number of parts of twelve perfect bodies, but all lay heaped together in seeming confusion. "Whenever the hands of the clock indicated the hour of one, out from the pile crawled just the number of parts needed to form the frame of one man, part joining itself to part with quick metallic click; and when completed, the figure sprang up, seized a mallet, and, walking up to the gong, struck one blow that sent the sound pealing through every room and corridor of the stately palace. This done, he returned to the pile, and falls to pieces again. When two o'clock came, two men arose and did likewise; and so through all the hours, the number of figures being the same as the number of the hour, till it noon and midnight the entire heap j sprang up, and, marching to the gong, struck one after another each his blow, and then fell to pieces. It ia difficult to say were the utilisation of waste substances will end. An Eng. linn paper learns that a manufactory in Germany is turning out lOOOlbs of grape sugar a day, made from old linen. The old linen, which is pure vegetable fibrine, ia treated with sulphuric acid and converted into deztine. This is washed with lime water, and then treated with more acid, and almost immediately it changes and crystallises into glucose, or grape sugar, which is highly valued in the making of rich preserves and jellies. The process is said to be economical, and the su^ar is chemically the same as that found in tlie grape. Why the project should be objected to on the score of its origin is not clear, if one reflects that grapes are nourished by materials more offensive than old rags, and that there is practically no difference between a transformation ia nature's laboratory and one in the laboratory of the chemist. Still, there is a great cry over the German Tagsugar factory, and considerable danger of the enterprise being stopped by the German Government.