Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/109

 is a useful medical agent, besides being serviceable as lamp-oil and also as a solvent of caoutchouc; and even the refuse, left when the leaves have yielded up their oil and wood, is not looked upon as rubbish, but is compressed into blocks and used for firewood, while the resinous matter it contains produces gas enough for the illumination of the factory.

Truly, as one man's meat is another man's poison, so one man's rubbish is another man's treasure. While the Russians export or simply waste all their bones, other more thrifty people boil them, to extract their grease and gelatine; convert them into charcoal, to be used in refining sugar; pass them on to the turner, to be made into knife-handles and a thousand other useful articles; or grind them up to supply phosphate of lime for the farmer's crops. The commonest and roughest kinds of old glass are now bought up by a certain manufacturer, who melts them up, colors the liquid, by a secret process of his own invention, to any tint he desires, and finally pours it out to cool in flat cakes. These are broken by the hammer into fragments of various size and shape, which are used to produce most effective decorations, such as might be introduced with advantage in many a now plain unattractive-looking building. The cost of this variety of mosaic is less than that of any other, and no doubt it will be extensively used as it becomes better known.

Even such insignificant things as cobwebs are turned to account, not merely for healing cut fingers—Bottom's sole idea as to their use—but for supplying the astronomer with cross-lines for his telescopes. Spiders' threads have even been woven, though one can not imagine where or how, except in fairy-land, by fairy fingers, and for fairy garments; and among the curiosities which travelers bring home from the Tyrol are pictures painted upon cobwebs, the drawing of which is perfectly clear and distinct, with the spider's handiwork at the same time plainly apparent. High prices are charged for those strange works of art, and no wonder, for the cobweb paper—which resembles a fluffy semi-transparent gauze—looks as if it must be extremely unpleasant to draw upon; and no doubt the eccentric artist fails many times before he succeeds in producing a salable article. But we may descend even lower than cobwebs in the scale of refuse, and still find that we have not reached the dead-level at which things become utterly worthless and good for nothing. Nay, much that is sweetest and associated in our minds with luxury and refinement may now be produced from that which is in itself most repulsive; for, while artificial vanilla can be made from the sap of the pine-tree, essence of almonds from benzine, and the delicate perfumes of woodruff and melilot from coal-tar, other scents as fragrant can be obtained from the unsavory refuse of the stable.

Perhaps there is nothing more interesting and instructive, as showing how the meaning of the word "rubbish" varies, than the history