Scientific.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2295, 26 March 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

Scientific.

Pile Driving j?y Dynamite.—The Society of Arts Journal tells us that this has been lately carried out by a Hungarian engineer, who fixes horizontally on the top of the pile to be driven a circular cast iron plate, 15 inches in diameter and 3j inches thick. A dynamite cartridge in the form of a disc 6 inches iu diameter, and 4 l of an inch, thick, containing 171 ounces of dynamite, is placed on the cast iron plate, and exploded by electricity. It is stated that the depth to which the pile is driven by each explosion "is equal to five blows of an ordinary pile-engine weighing 14£ Vienna hundredweights, falling 9 feet 10 inches," and that a east iron plate resists on an average twenty-five explosions.

Coffee ah a Disinfectant.—'Years ago some studious German made the observation. the correctness of which he endeavoured (and to a great extent also succeeded) to establish by statistical data, that coffee, if taken early in the morning on an empty stomach, acted as a preventive against infectious and many acute epidemic diseases. He quoted a great number of cases where individuals accustomed to drink a cup of hot coffee for breakfast had either escaped an epidemic of typhoid then ravaging the paft of Germany where the observer lived ; or, if attacked by the disease, contracted it in a much milder form, while all those who died from the disease had not been in the habit of taking coffee in the morning.

Manufacture of .Paper Pipes.— These pipes, as manufactured in Germany, are made of hemp paper, not rough felt paper, and asphalt. The mode of manufacturing them is the following : The hot paper mass is wound around a roller by machinery, and when the desired thickness has been attained, it is pressed until it gradually cools and hardens. The durability of these paper pipes is said to be established beyond reach of doubt, while to cut the asphalted paper .stuff is like cutting hard wood. The pipes are of a lava-like black, and at the first glance they look like asphalt, being smooth within and rough without. For water, gas, subterranean telegraph wires, telephone conductors, etc., the pipes are reported to serve admirably.— Engineering and Mining Journal.

Statistics of Blindxess.—The world's blind are computed to number about 1,000,000, or about one sightless person to every 1,400 inhabitants. In Austria one person in every 1,755 is blind; in Sweden, one in every 1,418; in France, one in every 1,191; in Prussia, one in every 1,111 ; in England, one in every 1,037- The proportion is greatest in Egypt, where, in Cairo, there is one blind person to every twenty inhabitants ; while in New Zealand it falls to one in every 3,550 inhabitants. Germany has the greatest number of institutes for the blind, thirty-five ; England has sixteen ; France, thirteen ; Austria-Hungary, ten ; Italy, nine; Belgium, six; Australia, two ; while America, Asia and Africa together are said to possess only six.