Various

“ The industrial problem of the rectification of alcohols is based entirely upon the properties of volatile liquids, upon the laws of the maximum tensions of the vapors of these liquids, and upon the influence of temperature upon those different elements which find themselves in presence of each other in an alembic.
If we desire to follow, in their least details, all the phenomena which succeed one another in a rectifying column, and which are connected with one another by a continuous chain of reciprocal influences, the problem becomes exceedingly complex. ”

“ It may be difficult to see the connection between blisters and alkalies in their power to influence the course of acute articular rheumatism, and yet it is certain that they do so influence it, and in the same way, i. e., by altering the condition of the blood from acid to alkaline. If you ask me to explain to you how blisters act in this way I am obliged to confess my ignorance. To produce this result they must be applied over all the affected joints. Experience, if not science, has decided conclusively in their favor. ”

“ Try and disabuse yourselves of the idea that their cure is dependent upon medicines alone; to help nature is often the best we can do. No treatment was ever invented which stopped a case of acute articular rheumatism. It cannot be stopped by bleeding, or sweating, or purging, by niter, by tartar emetic, by guaiacum, by alkalies, by salines, by salicylic acid, or by anything else. The physician can palliate the pain and perhaps shorten the attack, can control and perhaps prevent complications and stiffness of the joints, but he cannot arrest the disease. ”

“ He began by stating that as members of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, on revisiting their brother members and friends here in Newcastle, after an interval of twelve years, they came as it were to one of their natural homes; certainly to the home of one of the greatest engineers that England has ever produced, and the birthplace of the locomotive, which has done more than any other improvement, of our age to lessen the cost of materials to the men who have to use them, and therefore to cheapen and extend production in the most wonderful manner. ”

“ The existence of method in madness is no marvel, and that characteristic cannot therefore be supposed, or alleged, to weigh as evidence against the "insanity" of the criminal. The perpetrators of these heinous offenses against common right and public safety may be more or less responsible for their acts, and, so far as these are concerned, more or less sane or insane. The measure of the morbid element in their individual cases will be the health or disease of the particular part or element of the brain from which the offense sprang. ”

“ In fine, the hull and engines should be as much as possible one structure; rigidity in one place and elasticity in others are the cause of most of the accidents so costly to the ship-owner; under such conditions mass and solidity cease to be virtues, and the sooner their place is taken by careful design, and the use of the smallest weight of material--of the very best kind for the purpose--consistent with thorough efficiency, the better for all concerned. ”

“ For any temperature whatever, the maximum tension of the vapors of a mixture of water and alcohol is always comprised between that of pure water and that of pure alcohol.
b. The tension of the vapors of a mixture of water and alcohol approaches the tension of alcohol so much the nearer in proportion as the proof is higher; and, reciprocally, if water is in excess, the tension of the vapors approaches the tension of the vapors of water. ”

“ The locomotive type of boiler has lately occupied the writer's attention, with a view to its more definite introduction into marine work. The difficulties, however, which lie in the way of applying it to steamers going long voyages are very great. The principal difficulty lies in the necessity of burning a large quantity of fuel in a very limited space and time. This can only be done either by direct pressure or exhaust action applied at the furnace. In other words, we must either exhaust the funnel, which will absorb a large amount of power, but would be comparatively easy of application ”

“ Indeed, the people are so jealous of their plant that to send the seed out of the country becomes a serious matter, in which life is risked. The seed of Pyrethrum roseum is obtained with less difficulty, at least in small quantities, and it has even become an article of commerce, several nurserymen here, as well as in Europe, advertising it in their catalogues. The species has been successfully grown as a garden plant for its pale rose or bright pink flower-rays. ”

“ There is no difference in nature between the mental operation by which a "sane" man contrives and executes a crime, and that by which a known "lunatic" will commit the like offense. There may be as much method in the one instance as in the other, and the faculties which exhibit this method may be as sound and effective, but in the one case the idea behind the act is sane, while in the other it is insane. ”

“ This is so because it is a higher attainment in moral culture to do right advisedly, than simply to perceive the right thing to do. The application of principle to conduct is an advance on the mere recognition of virtue in the concrete, or even the possession of virtue in the abstract. The question whether any past act of wrongdoing was an act of insanity does not so much depend upon the great question whether the person doing it was insane as a whole being, or whether the deed done was the outcome of passion or error, the direct fruit of limited or special disease. ”

“ Tin may be easily estimated by electrolysis; it can be separated from its hydrochloric acid solution, or from its double salt with ammonium oxalate, as a beautiful silver gray coating on the platinum. When the ammonium oxalate is substituted by the potassium salt, the operation becomes more difficult, as a basic salt is formed at the opposite pole, and is not easily reduced. If the tin is separated from an acid solution, the current must not be interrupted while the washing takes place, a precaution which it is not necessary to follow when the ammonium oxalate is used. ”

“ To the professional mind, at least, it will follow from what we have said that the injury to mind properties or qualities inflicted by the invasion of disease may be partial, and must in every case be determined by laws or conditions governing the progress of disease, perhaps on the lines and in the directions which have been least well guarded by educationary influences. A man may lose his faculty of forming a wise judgment long before he is deprived of the power of distinguishing between right and wrong. ”

“ Industry knows only one means of obtaining an excellent product, and that is to diminish the quantity of fine alcohol which comes from a same lot of spirits, and to make a large number of successive distillations. Hence the large expenses attending rectification, which produce fine alcohols necessarily at an elevated price. We may remark, in passing, that the toxic action of commercial alcohols is in great part caused by the presence of essential oils, amylic alcohol, and ethers, absolutely pure alcohol, as compared with these, being relatively innocent. ”

“ It is obvious that a wire let down into a well is simply useless. On the two-fluid theory, it offers no effectual way of escape to the terrestrial electricity; according to the older views, it would be absolutely dangerous, by attracting more electricity from the clouds than it could dispose of. The author advocates connecting lightning conductors with water or gas pipes, which have an immense surface of contact with the earth. ”

“ The marine boiler as now made is very efficient, but if the quantity of steam used be considered in relation to the increased pressure, it will be seen that the boiler of to-day is little if anymore efficient than that of ten years ago. The present boiler has an evaporative efficiency of about 75 per cent., and cannot be much improved so long as air is supplied to the furnace by the natural draught. To increase the efficiency from 75 to 82.5 per cent. would require about double the heating surface, the weight of boiler and water being also doubled, while the gain would be only 10 per cent. ”

“ Why is it that our present apparatus cannot produce good results in rectifying alcohol? Because they are limited by the temperature at which they must operate. Between 78° and 100° the tension of the vapors of all the liquids mixed in the spirits is considerable for each of them; they all pass over, then, in certain proportions during the operation of rectification. ”

“ At the same time we feel sure that there are other markings still smaller, as every increase in the power of the microscope has always rendered visible some markings still smaller than the last; and in like manner has every increase in the power of the telescope developed more worlds and suns far away from our system and beyond our Milky Way. An approach to the infinite in minuteness and to the infinite in magnitude and distance is thus furnished to us by one instrument alone. ”

“ Gold, or the man who attempted to assassinate the President of the United States of America, is insane. There are circumstances in connection with each of these tragedies which must suggest the reflection that the assailants were possibly, or even probably, of unsound mind. ”

“ For a same range of temperature between the boiler and the refrigerator, the weight of alcohol which distills in an hour is constant. By the operation of the valve, D, it becomes easy to allow all the liquid condensed in the first refrigerator to pass into the second boiler; and thus the second rectification, which is effected in a more perfect vacuum, is supplied with exactness. The object of this valve, then, is to allow the liquid to pass, and yet to cut off the pressure in such a way as to have a double fall of temperature throughout the whole apparatus ”

“ The speed and regularity of ocean steamers has also greatly improved, and one small scientific improvement has added much to the safety of traversing such seas as the Atlantic at a high speed--namely, the careful and continual use of a good thermometer, to ascertain constantly the temperature of the sea-water at the surface. For if an iceberg is floating within a quarter of a mile--or even half a mile, if the sea is pretty smooth--the surface water will be several degrees colder than the rest of the sea ”

“ No zinc is used, only care in washing out, drying out, and managing the water." This is the evidence of an engineer with a large number of vessels in his charge. On the other hand, some of the most prominent Liverpool engineers always use zinc, and take care to apply it most strictly. The evidence of one of them is as follows: "We always fix slabs of zinc to most boilers, exposing not less than a surface of one square foot for every twenty indicated horse-power, and distributed throughout the boiler. This zinc we find to be in a state of oxide and crumbling away in about three months. ”

“ When the amount of peroxide separated is so large that it does not adhere firmly, and becomes mechanically precipitated on the negative electrode, it becomes impossible to complete the estimation without loss from the solution of the peroxide, and the results cannot be accepted.
If the double oxalate is submitted to electrolysis, the whole of the lead is separated out in its metallic state, but it is so rapidly oxidized by the air that it is very seldom that it can be dried without decomposition even when the operation is conducted in a current of illuminating gas. ”

“ According to the experiments which have been made up to the present time, it has been found that the separation of copper is best effected in a nitric acid solution, while that of nickel and cobalt takes place most readily in an ammoniacal solution, and for the precipitation of zinc and cadmium a potassium cyanide solution is the best. The accuracy of the results depend chiefly upon the following of certain fixed rules, such as, for instance, that the precipitation of copper only takes place when there is a definite amount of nitric acid in the solution ”

“ If a solution of iron ammonium oxalate and aluminum oxalate, to which an excess of ammonium oxalate has been added, be submitted to the action of the electric current, the iron will be deposited as a firmly adhering coat on the negative electrode, while the aluminum oxide remains in solution, just so long as the quantity of ammonium oxalate is in excess of the quantity of ammonium carbonate produced. When, finally, a precipitation of aluminum oxide takes place the liquid is almost free from iron. ”

“ Every carder or spinner knows that where an injury comes to the sliver because the sliver is soft, but partially condensed and very susceptible to injury, the injury is magnified and multiplied in every successive process. Virtually the field was long since abandoned for an accurate quick-working motion that should be applicable to any and all the machines and to every sliver or strand of the machine. ”

“ Hardly a week passes that some unfortunate is not brought to my office, who has been badly injured in some way; he has been bleeding, perhaps, the distance of several blocks, and arrives almost faint. ”

“ When one looks back upon the goodly list of clever men and benefactors of the human race, who have lived, say, during the last hundred years, one is sometimes tempted to wish that more of those scientific men, who have had the most brilliant ideas, and been our greatest discoverers, should have striven to carry out their discoveries into practice. For instance, take Faraday's beautiful discoveries in electricity. ”