SCIENCE SITTINGS

New Zealand Tablet, 10 July 1919, Page 46

SCIENCE SITTINGS

(By “Volt.”)

Brooms from Pine Trees. One of the latest discoveries due to the war search for substitutes is a new use for ; pine needles. It has been found that the needles of the - pine make a fair substitute for. bristles in brushes and brooms. They are found in great quantities on the ground in fir forests, and, owing to the large amount of silica in them, they are hard, and do not decay rapidly. The pine needles are dealt with in two ways. Where they are long they are simply bunched together and tied firmly, and a stick is pushed down the centre as a handle. The other plan is to insert clusters of smaller needles in holes in a thickish piece of wood. These holes are filled with hot pitch, and when this material has set hard and dry the pine needles are held firmly in place. Elaborate tests have shown that pine needles wear well. They are not more easily broken than much of the material which has been commonly used in broom-making, and owing to their hardness they can withstand a good deal of friction. War Tests of Locomotives. It sometimes happens .that an invention pioneered in one country is taken up by another and developed more rapidly and successfully than in its original home. This did not occur, however, with the invention which created the modern industrial era—the steam engine. Both in the stationary form and in the locomotive, British engineers have never lost the lead which the genius of Watt and Stephenson gave them. For speed and efficiency the performances of the modern British locomotives are unsurpassed. During the war British railways carried an enormously increased traffic, although hundreds of locomotives were sent to France, and some even as far as Mesopotamia, for military transport purposes. In France and Flanders, moreover, hundreds of miles of light railway were constructed and equipped from locomotive and rolling-stock factories in Britain. New types of engine were rapidly evolved for this unusual form of transport; and Sir Douglas Haig has testified to the remarkable efficiency of the locomotives and other equipment turned out in large quantities at short notice. The success of the British locomotive works in this phase of military engineering is due in part to the fact that for many years they have been turning out locomotives for every variety of special purpose—mines, quarries, docks, plantations, factories, and so. on —in every part of the world. The experience they have gained during the war will be therefore of positive assistance in solving the transport problems of countries overseas. Moreover, the war has increased their productive capacity and encouraged the adoption of means for achieving a more rapid output of locomotives with steel and other metals of the highest grade and machined within the finest limits of precision,