Page:ONCE A WEEK JUL TO DEC 1860.pdf/224

 216 made in greater lengths than two feet, and the consequent increase in the number of joints is a great difficulty. But, apart from this, a very slight sinking of the ground is sure to break them at the joints by an internal leverage pressure, independently of the pressure of the fluid. The same difficulty occurs with the glass pipes which have been attempted. In fact, a permanent pipe cannot be made of brittle material, and its brittleness is one very serious objection to cast-iron, apart from the consideration of its objectionable weight in transport. In streets vibrating beneath rolling carriages, cast-iron pipes frequently break, and it has been stated, that in the Australian Waterworks, the breakage in transport and allocation has amounted to as much as from twenty to twenty-five per cent., a very serious addition to the cost.

Impressed with these serious difficulties, M. Juloureau, of Paris, has hit upon a new material, which, it is stated, can be sold at half the price of cast-iron, for equal capacity, while it is less than one-sixth the weight. He makes a pipe resembling those of M. Chameroy in the system, of bituminous lining inside and out, but the case, instead of being of sheet-iron, is of paper, which, being saturated with bitumen, is rolled up in the form of a hollow cylinder, fold on fold, till it has attained a thickness of about three-eightseighths [sic] of an inch.

On the 19th of January, of this present year, a number of engineers were got together at the base of the Westminster Clock-tower, the scene of Mr. Denison’s bell craft, and there a variety of these pipes—measuring from two and a-half to seven inches internal diameter, and five feet in length—were subjected to hydraulic pressure, tested by one of Bourdon’s guagesgauges [sic], of 220 lbs. to the square inch, equal to a column of water about 500 feet high, and this pressure they sustained without any damage. This is more than the pressure that common cast-iron pipes will sustain, and it was stated that it required 330lbs. to the inch to burst them. On testing the power of a two and a-half inch pipe to bear a transverse strain, a very satisfactory result was attained, and upon shivering a piece with a sledge-hammer it appeared that every fold of the paper was separate, and retained considerable fibrous strength, notwithstanding the heat of the bitumen it had been exposed to in the process of manufacture.

The source of strength in this arrangement is found in the fact that the pressure increases the contact of the folds of the paper, making every fold bear an equal strain like the wire-folded gun of Mr. Longridge, or the silk-folded guns of the Chinese. The adhesion of the separate folds may be illustrated by the mode in which a Thames steamer is held fast to the pier by two turns of a rope round the timber bit, by which means the friction enables a single man to control the movement.

These pipes will be less subject to the action of frost than metal is; and although they are not yet tried in large sizes, and the requisite thickness for that purpose is not yet known, it is possible that they will come largely into use for moderate sizes, and also for small service pipes to replace lead at a very far less cost than gutta percha.

The severe frost last winter, bursting our water-pipes and driving us to stand-cocks in the streets, was not creditable to us, as a mechanical nation, in its results upon our domestic water supply. There exists so simple a mode of preventing water-pipes in houses from bursting by frost, that I suspect the plumbers must be aware of it, and keep it carefully out of sight. It is to have a small spherical cistern of thin copper attached to the lower part of the water-pipe, and a gas-burner fixed below it. If, when the frost comes on, the gas-jet be lighted, the effect will be that the cistern will become a boiler on a small scale, circulating sufficient warmth through the pipes to prevent the action of the frost either in stopping the supply or in bursting the pipes. Every household might be saved from winter’s mishap in this simple mode, without the unsightly process of hay-banding its service pipes.

Some objection has been raised about difficulty in bending for curves, but without apparent reason. These pipes may be made in curved forms as easily as cast-iron; or, by filling with sand and heating, they may be bent like a malleable metal pipe. Their stiffness, and freedom from decay, renders them peculiarly eligible for the purpose of draining the permanent way of railways. Whether any better material will ultimately be discovered it is difficult to pronounce; but, so far as judgment goes, and experience has verified, a new era appears to have been attained in pipe making. The strength of the material has long been proved in the familiar instance of rocket cases, where the enormous pressure of the powder is so successfully resisted by simple concentric folds of paper.

Just at this time, Mr. Gladstone’s alteration of the tariff opportunely arrives to facilitate a new manufacture, opening up also new sources of material.

2em



vivid description of Holland was summed up in three words, “Canaux, canards, canaille.”

The same alliteration might be used to form an accidental definition of Jersey—cows, cabbages, cider, and crapauds. The cows are those usually known by the name of Alderneys; but the smaller isle steals its bucolic honour from the larger. There are no other cows in Jersey alive; for the laws of the island forbid the importation of foreign breeds. All extraneous cows seen painfully landed from the butchers’ cutters from France, or painfully dragging their stiffened limbs along the road, are under sentence of death. France supplies Jersey with meat, not of a first-rate description, from which cause Jersey labours under a twofold disadvantage—that of having French meat and English cookery; and, under the circumstances, it is a wonder that the thing called digestion exists at all in the island: for in England, where there is no cookery, the meat is so good that it does not require it; in France, where there is no meat, properly so called, the cookery is so good as to create it: in Jersey there is neither meat nor cookery.