by Barkham Burroughs
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How to Preserve Posts.--Wood can be made to last longer than iron in the ground, if prepared according to the following recipe:--Take boiled linseed oil and stir in pulverized coal to the consistency of paint. Put a coat of this over the timber, and there is not a man that will live to see it rot.
What Diamond Dyes and Paints Are Made of.--Solutions of the aniline colors.
What the Ingredients Are of Soapine and Pearline.--They consist of partly effloresced sal soda mixed with half its weight of soda ash. Some makers add a little yellow soap, coarsely powdered, to disguise the appearance, and others a little carbonate of ammonium or borax.
How Many Thousand Feet of Natural Gas are Equal in Heat-Creating Power to One Ton Anthracite Coal.--About 40,000 cubic feet.
SUSTAINING POWER OF ICE.
The sustaining power of ice at various degrees of thickness is given in the following paragraphs:
At a thickness of two inches, will support a man.
At a thickness of four inches, will support man on horseback.
At a thickness of six inches, will support teams with moderate loads.
At a thickness of eight inches, will support heavy loads.
At a thickness of ten inches, will support 1,000 pounds to the square foot.
THE EXPANSIVE POWER OF WATER.
It is a well known, but not less remarkable fact, that if the tip of an exceedingly small tube be dipped into water, the water will rise spontaneously in the tube throughout its whole length. This may be shown in a variety of ways; for instance, when a piece of sponge, or sugar, or cotton is just allowed to touch water, these substances being all composed of numberless little tubes, draw up the water, and the whole of the piece becomes wet. It is said to suck up or imbibe the moisture. We see the same wonderful action going on in nature in the rising of the sap through the small tubes or pores of the wood, whereby the leaves and upper portions of the plant derive nourishment from the ground.
This strange action is called "capillary," from the resemblance the minute tubes bear to a hair, the Latin of which is capillus. It is, moreover, singular that the absorption of the water takes place with great force. If a dry sponge be enclosed tightly in a vessel, it will expand when wetted, with sufficient force to burst it, unless very strong.
London Water Supply.--The quantity of water consumed in London amounts to about 145,000,000 gallons a day. If this quantity could be collected together, it would form a lake 700 yards long, 200 wide, and with a uniform depth of 20 feet.
A Protection for Embankments.--Engineers often have considerable trouble with the loose soil of newly-made embankments, so apt to slip or be washed away before they are covered with vegetation. According to a French railway engineer, the best plan is to sow the banks with the double poppy. Several months elapse before grasses and clovers develop their feeble roots, but the double poppy germinates in a few days, and in a fortnight has grown sufficiently to afford some protection to the slope, while at the end of three or four months the roots, which are ten or twelve inches in length, are found to have interlaced so as to retain the earth far more firmly than those of any grass or grain. Although the double poppy is an annual, it sows itself after the first year.
A Cheap Concrete.--A kind of concrete made without cement is composed of 8 parts of sand, gravel and pebbles, 1 part of burnt and powdered common earth, 1 part of pulverized clinkers and cinders, and 1-1/2 parts of unslacked hydraulic lime. These materials are thoroughly incorporated while dry into a homogeneous mixture, which is then wetted up and well beaten. The result of this is a hard and solid mass, which sets almost immediately, becoming exceedingly strong after a few days. It may be made
