SCIENCE SIFTINGS

New Zealand Tablet, 29 September 1921, Page 46

SCIENCE SIFTINGS

By "VOLT"

PARSLEY POINTS TO FORTUNE.

Discerning beauty in the leaf of- a sprig of parsley, the 14-year-old daughter of a manufacturer invented one of the most popular patterns in cotton cloth.

The manufacturer Peel by name —was engaged in making some experiments in printing on cotton handkerchiefs, when his little daughter hurried in from the garden with a sprig of parsley.

She remarked that she thought it would make a pretty pattern, and her father said he would experiment with it. A pewter dinner-plate was taken down from the shelf, and on it was sketched the figure of the parsley leaf. From this impressions were taken.

The child's idea helped to lay the foundations of the enormous fortunes of the Peel family. Among members of the trade it was spoken of as the parsley-leaf pattern; while the father of the little girl became known as "Parsley Peel."

MINERAL OILS : AN INTERESTING .ADDRESS. Professor T. H. Easterfield, Director of the Cawthron

Institute, delivered an interesting lecture on mineral oils at a recent meeting of the scientific branch of the Nelson Institute.

New Zealand brown coals, he said, contained very little soluble bitumen. Oil shales had been found at Orepuki, and other places in Southland, also in South Canterbury. Large works were erected in 1899 at Orepuki, the shale being distilled in large Scottish retorts. The works, which ran for only a few years, received the Government subsidy offered for the first quarter of a million gallons of oil produced in New Zealand. They produced paraffin wax, lubricating oil, burning oil, light naptha, and sulphate of ammonia. The amount of sulphur in the shales was a great drawback, and the expenses of mining shale was certainly a contributing cause to the stoppage of operations. Natural petroleum had been found at New Plymouth, Gisborne, Kotuku (near Brunner), and more recently at Marina, Nelson. In other localities seepages of oil had been observed. Indications of oil had also been found in the Dannevirke district. Large volumes of inflammable gas had issued from some of the bores, but no considerable quantity of oil. The oils from these different districts differed considerably in appearance and in the proportion of their constituents. Taranaki oil was semisolid grease, at ordinary temperature, owing to the high content of paraffin wax. Kotuku oil was very liquid at ordinary temperature, and Maruia oil was comparatively viscous. The only one of these centres which at any time had shown promise of becoming an important source of oil was New Plymouth. Over two million gallons had been obtained there, of which more than a million gallons was won by Taranaki Oil Wells Ltd., whose expenditure, including liabilities exceeded £140,000. It really looked in 1906 as if this company was going to have a prosperous time. If it had merely sold its crude oil to the-Admiralty it could almost certainly have kept upon its legs, but when the time came for boring new wells it was found it had spent its capital. Companies had operated in this area and their expenditure had approached £300,000, but none of the companies was now putting oil on the market. Taranaki oil was very interesting from a chemical point of view, being remarkably rich in oils belonging to the benzol series, a series which was but poorly represented in Pennsylvanian oils. The presence of benzols caused the kerosene, - which otherwise was of beautiful quality, to smoke when burned in ordinary American kerosene lamps, though no doubt slight modifications of the burners or lamp glasses would satisfactorily meet this trouble. Cycloparaffins which were also present in large quantities in Russian petroleum, were well represented in that obtained in Taranaki. By modern processes it would be possible to extract benzol, .toluol, and zylol from Taranaki oils, Toluol could be used for making TNT explosive and cruude xyol was said to be an excellent insecticide. '