Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/597

 platinum in some form serve as the wick of his lamp, to be made luminous by the current. But, this failing to meet his requirements, he cast about for other materials. He tried carbon in various shapes, and at length hit upon one form of it which he thinks promises to solve his problem successfully, he cuts out a slender piece of paper from cardboard, in the shape of a horseshoe, about one inch and a half long, and not thicker than a knitting-needle. This is then carbonized by pressing it between metal plates, which are raised to a high temperature. This little slender carbon loop, which preserves its fibrous character, so as to make it somewhat elastic, is clamped to the conducting wires, at each end, and is then introduced into a little glass globe, two or three inches in diameter, which is exhausted of air, and immediately sealed up. By improvements in the Sprengel pump, Mr. Edison claims to get a vacuum so perfect that but one millionth of the air remains in it. As the current passes through the carbon it heats it to a glowing whiteness, so that it gives out a very pleasant, moderate light. These lamps, it is said, can be made very cheaply, and it is claimed that thus far the carbon filaments withstand the influence of the current and promise to be permanent. It would, of course, be premature to pass judgment upon that which time alone can determine.

About Snakes.—The question how snakes progress is answered by the books in a way satisfactory to many minds, but Mr. H. F. Hutchinson, who writes about them in a recent number of "Nature," takes some exceptions to the usual explanation. He seems to have been a careful observer of their habits, and concludes that terrestrial snakes move in one or the other of the following ways: "1. On smooth, plane surfaces, by means of their rib-legs; e. g., the boa. 2. Through high grass, by a rapid, almost invisible, sinuous onward movement, as the hydrophidæ in water; e. g., the rat snake. 3. Climbing trees, or ascending smooth surfaces by erecting their abdominal scales, or using them to produce a vacuum, as lizards do their foot-scales for ascending smooth surfaces; e. g., tree-snakes and cobras." Mr. Hutchinson captured a snake nine inches long, with a head less than half an inch broad, and presented it with a frog two inches long and one broad. The snake saluted the frog by seizing it by the nose. The animal made desperate attempts to shake it off, but in vain, and all the while the process of deglutition (?) was going on, or rather the snake was slowly but surely getting outside the frog. This was accomplished by a sort of vermicular process. The sharp little teeth were seen to advance slightly, and then the whole body wriggled up to a new hold on the frog. In this way it very gradually disappeared, the whole process lasting half an hour. The so-called snake-charming Mr. Hutchinson is confident is only clever legerdemain. He describes the operation of skin-shedding as follows: "The skin ready to be cast yields round the snake's mouth only, and remains adherent to the extremity of the tail. As the animal advances, the caudal extremity of the skin is inverted—that is, pulled inward—and so the process goes on, and is completed by the tail passing through the mouth of the skin; and thus the direction of the abandoned skin is directly opposite to the direction taken by the skin-casting snake—that is, if the mouth of the skin lies east, the snake went out to the west."

Improvements in Butter-making.—English farmers of late years have been giving more and more attention to the improvement of their dairy products, and in the business of butter-making, especially, have made some very considerable advances on the old-time practice. One of the most recent and one of the most important of these is the discovery of an odorless, tasteless, and quite innocuous antiseptic that proves to be an effectual preservative of butter, without the use of salt, and without the usual precaution of excluding it from the air. To test its efficacy, the patent was submitted to Mr. G. M. Allender, a disinterested expert in London, for trial. On the 24th of July last he treated a churning of butter in accordance with the directions specified, and, inclosing the butter in a muslin cloth, placed it in a firkin without a particle of salt—every precaution being taken that there should be no tampering with the experiment. The firkin remained on the