Our lively neighbours, as journalists still sometimes delight to
designate the practical, money-getting French of post-imperial days,
have learned much in the stern school of adversity. Saddled with a
weight of taxation that might crush the spirit and cripple the energies
of a more robust race, they shew wonderful elasticity in developing new
and unexpected sources of national wealth, and leave no stone unturned
the turning of which may yield a profit.
If there was one branch of industry the revival of which seemed
hopeless, it was the home manufacture of kelp, virtually driven out
of the market by South American barilla. At its best the kelp trade
had but helped the inhabitants of the Hebrides, the western Highlands,
and other barren shores, to eke out a scanty livelihood by burning the
sea-weed that the waves washed to their feet; while the preparation
was primitive enough to have dated from the days of Ossian's shadowy
heroes. Science, however, embodied in the form of M. Emile Moride of
Nantes, has seriously taken in hand the task of utilising the heaps
of wreck-weed that strew the bleak Breton coast, so as to derive the
highest return for labour and capital invested. With the aid of a
portable furnace, a ventilator or set of bellows for continuous blast,
and two wheelbarrows, M. Moride provides for the cooking of his raw
material. The furnace is built of dry stones, wrapped round in fresh
wet weed, and is supplied with apertures which promote the rapid
cooling of the 'sea-weed charcoal,' so called. The ventilator insures
quick combustion; but the beauty of the process is that the bromium
and iodine, apt, in the old-fashioned method, to be lost through
over-roasting, are now preserved. There are at Noirmoutier alone two
hundred of these furnaces at work, producing two million gallons of
carbonised weed. Each furnace earns its annual fifteen or twenty pounds
sterling, supplying as it does soda, potash, and other chemicals to the
wholesale druggist, along with phosphates and salts of lime invaluable
to the farmer. The pecuniary advantage over the ancient system is
roughly estimated at sixty per cent.
France, which exports so enormous a number of eggs, is naturally
desirous to content her chief customers, ourselves, by sending over
the fragile freight in good preservation. Rubbing the shells with
butter, lard, or moistened gum is the mode hitherto practised, but the
grocer's stores have never quite rivalled the fresh products of the
hen-yard. They may do so now, if we are careful to follow the advice of
M. Durand, the Blois chemist. He coats over the shells of his new-laid
eggs with silicate of soda, lays them separately to dry, being heedful
that no speck of surface remains accessible to air, and consequently
to decay, and stows them, for a year if required, in a cupboard. M.
Sace of Neufchâtel, a Swiss chemist, not a French one, is reported to
achieve as much by the help of paraffine.
Should we have the ill-fortune to be half-drowned, suffocated by
unwholesome gases or vitiated air, or to fall down in a fit, Dr
Woillez is ready with his new apparatus for artificial respiration.
The patient's person, all but the head, is placed in a cylinder of
iron, from which one stroke of a powerful pump extracts the air; the
lungs and chest of the sufferer expanding as the vacuum is formed.
Eighteen such mechanical breathings can be produced in the minute, and
at each of these a quart of air--double the quantity inspired in normal
health--rushes in to oxygenate the blood. The _spirosphore_ is beyond
all doubt a potent agent in serious cases, but some cautious surgeons
have expressed fears as to the secondary results which might attend its
use.
Nothing but praise can be bestowed upon the successful efforts of M.
Lenoir to construct a looking-glass which should neither grow yellow,
and give us back a bilious presentment of ourselves as silvered mirrors
do, nor destroy the health of the workmen, as was the case in the old
process of mercurial amalgamation. The new glasses are backed with
silver, washed with quicksilver certainly, but in solution not in
vapour, and therefore innocuous to those who handle it.
Alcohol, as we know, can be distilled from almost anything; but
Apothecary-Major Ballard, of the Cherchell Hospital, in Algeria,
deserves some notice for finding out that Barbary figs, so called,
will yield it in profusion and of excellent quality. The stoniest
tracts of North Africa are indeed dappled with the flaming red blossoms
of the prickly pear or cactus, and the fruit, guarded by its thorny
envelope, can be had for the gathering. One ton and a half of these
wild figs will give about sixteen gallons of colourless alcohol, at
eighty-five degrees, and with a _kirschwasser_ flavour. The same weight
of beetroot yields but fifteen gallons of the far weaker spirit in
common commercial demand; while beetroot, an exhausting crop, can only
be grown on the best and most highly cultivated land.
The most enthusiastic advocates of ballooning would have hesitated
to declare that submarine surveys were within the province of the
aëronaut. Such, however, seems to be the case, since M. Duruof and his
companion going up in a balloon, on the twenty-fifth of last August, at
Cherbourg, and being at an altitude of five thousand feet, were amazed
to see beneath them, with startling distinctness, every rock, fissure,
and depression at the bottom of the sea. And yet the sea opposite Cape
Lévy, where the aërial voyagers obtained this bird's-eye-view, has an
average depth of above two hundred feet. So limpid did the water appear
that the under-currents were perceptible, whilst nothing would have
been easier than to sketch or map the bottom of the sea.
A novel and perhaps a practically useful property of madder, hitherto
only known as the active principle of a red dye, has been found out by
M. de Rostaing. Meat covered with a layer of dry madder powder defies
decomposition. It dries, however, slowly, wasting by desiccation so
much that in the course of months it is reduced to less than half its
weight. A more economical means of preserving meat is that employed
at Buenos Ayres, whence beef, mutton, and even entire animals are
constantly forwarded, in a state of perfect conservation, to Antwerp
and Havre. The solution in which the meat is steeped contains borax and
boric acid, saltpetre and a little salt, borax being the prime agent.
The experiments of M. Dumas prove that borax destroys the soluble
atmospheric leavens which would otherwise promote decay; and so far so
good. But another _savant_, M. Peligot, who has dosed the plants in his
garden with borax and killed them very promptly by so doing, suggests
an ugly doubt as to the perfect wholesomeness of meat steeped in borax
as an article of diet.
In spite of all the progress that has been made in electric science
since first Volta put together his 'crown of cups,' a perfect galvanic
battery is yet to seek. M. Onimus has done something towards this in
availing himself of the virtues of the new, tough, and supple material
which bears the name of parchment-paper. Every electrician knows
that the great theoretical merits of Professor Daniell's 'constant'
battery are counterbalanced by the trouble, care, and annoyance which
it entails. All double liquid batteries have hitherto proved bulky,
vexatious, and expensive; but M. Onimus simplifies matters by using
parchment-paper instead of a porous cell, the copper spiral encircling
the parchment, which is wrapped around the cylinder of zinc, and the
pair of elements being simply plunged into a solution of sulphate of
copper.
M. Leclanché, whose battery has for years past set in motion half the
electric bells of Europe, has put what he considers the finishing
touches to his well-known invention. He now, to compose his negative
element, adds to his mixture of peroxide of manganese resin and hard
gas-charcoal finely powdered, about four per cent. of the bisulphate
of potassium, wedges the mass in a steel mould capable of enduring
enormous pressure, and brings it first to a dull red-heat, and then
under the action of the hydraulic press. We are assured that one cell
of the improved Leclanché battery can heat a platinum wire to redness.
A single element of Grove's or Bunsen's arrangement can do no more than
this; and the result is the more creditable to the ingenious Frenchman
that his is a 'constant' battery, excited by one fluid (the muriate of
ammonia), and in which the consumption of zinc, always an important
item, has been reduced to a minimum.
What we call vegetable isinglass, and the Chinese by the name of
_thao_, and which has hitherto been derived from Eastern Asia, is now
extracted from French sea-weed, and made useful in French factories.
It is in its crude state a yellowish gelatine, which the Industrial
Society of Rouen has, after repeated experiments, succeeded in
converting into what bids fair to be the best sizing for cotton cloths
ever known. Macerated in water for twelve hours, boiled for fifteen
minutes, strained, and stirred till it is cold, the thao gives a clear
solution, which does not again become a jelly, and which can be laid
cold upon any textile fabric, and left to dry. One invaluable property
it has, since it defies, at common temperatures, damp and mildew; and
is therefore already being applied to give lustre, not only to Rouen
prints and Mulhouse muslins, but to the woollens of Puteaux and the
silks of Lyons.
Ozone, the newest and the least stable of the gases, has recently
been made to do good service in the sick-room. It makes short work
with those miasmata and organic impurities of vitiated air which the
Italians describe by the expressive name of malaria, and which every
physician knows to be among the most baneful influences with which the
convalescent patient, whose tenure of life is not yet quite assured,
has to contend. A mixture should be made of permanganate of potash,
peroxide of manganese, and oxalic acid, in equal parts, and two large
spoonfuls with some water put into a plate and placed on the floor
of the sick-chamber. Care should be taken, however, to remove steel
fenders and fire-irons, and to cover up brass door-handles, since ozone
will rust all metals meaner than gold and silver.