Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/444

430 affords a white, hard butter, richer than butter from the cow, which has the further advantage of remaining fresh for a whole year without being salted. Only limited quantities of this product have as yet come into the market. The native Africans use all these fruits, under one form or another, for their own alimentation.

Flowers and Perfumes.—The rose is extensively cultivated in the Balkan Peninsula, chiefly for the sake of the perfume it affords. The Provence or cabbage rose, it is said, will yield in the second year from one hundred to two hundred bushels of flowers per acre, weighing six pounds to the bushel. The rose harvest at Adrianople sometimes yields about ninety-four thousand ounces of attar of roses; the average of the Bulgarian harvests in the past ten seasons has been fifty-seven thousand ounces. The price of this perfume has declined fifty per cent since 1883. The Moors in Algeria extract an attar of moderate value from the indigenous double white musk rose. Twenty-eight tons of rose-leaves were imported into Aden in 1886, of which half were shipped to India. The "ixora extract" is made from the soka-flower (Parvelta angustiflora); frangipanni, from the flowers of species of Plumeria, native to the West Indies and some parts of South America; the essence and pomade of cassie, of the French perfumers, from the flowers of Acacia farnesicina. About one hundred tons of these flowers are used in Cannes yearly, individual makers working up one hundred thousand pounds. The fragrant white flowers of Blighia sapida and of the Bukul (Mimusops Elengi) are used for making distilled waters; and the flowers of spikenard (Andropogon nardus) are employed in Algeria for perfuming hair-oils and cosmetics. Moorish women form garlands to ornament. the interior of their dwellings from the flowers of the jasmine, and obtain a perfume by steeping them with oil in bottles, which are exposed to the sun. The same process is applied to the flowers of the tuberose and the cassia. Hungary water is distilled with spirit from the tops of rosemary-flowers. Twenty tons of violets are used annually in Nice and Cannes, and one hundred and twenty tons of orange-blossoms in Nice. Orange-flower water is one of the most agreeable vehicles for nauseous medicines that we have. Rose-buds are made into preserves in Arabia; the blossoms of the shaddock are used for flavoring sweet-meats, and the fleshy calyces or flower-bracts of the Indian sorrel, a Hibiscus, having a pleasant acid taste, are made into tarts, jellies, and refreshing drinks in India. The petals of flowers arc much used in Roumania for flavoring preserves, of which not less than one hundred and fifty varieties are made.



has been called, in letters written by Mr. James R. Skilton to the Mayor of Brooklyn, to the dangers that are hidden in the pipes through which water-gas is conveyed into houses and in the meters. The pipes and the meters are often—it would hardly be too much to say, usually—leaky, and as the escaping gas, largely carbonic oxide, while extremely poisonous, is imperceptible to the senses, great harm may be and often is wrought before the family are aware that anything is wrong. It is hard, even when the nuisance is known to exist, to force timely attention from the companies furnishing the gas, and, when they do send men to make repairs, the work is, as a rule, done in the most negligent manner. Mr. Skilton has no doubt that "hundreds of people are sacrificed every year to the Moloch of the gas-meter."

the "Monthly" for July there is a note in which Asamayama is spoken of as the highest active volcano in Japan. This is popularly correct, but is not scientifically exact. Asamayama is 8,284 feet high (Rein). The last fatal eruption took place in 1783, and the last emission of ashes occurred in 1870, while the evidences of volcanic eruption are much more conspicuous than they are around Fujiyama, the height of which is 12,287 feet (ibid.), and which has been quiet—i. e., not violently active—since 1707. But when one sees the "hot" place on the side of Fuji, it becomes very apparent that the activity of Asama is very little greater than that of her peerless sister. The heat at one place on Fuji is so great as to be perceptible to the hand. Snow will not lie; and it is said that there is an escape of steam.

of rock-salt at Ellsworth and Kingman, Kansas, were described by Mr. Robert Hay at the meeting of the American Association. The veins were discovered in April and August, 1888. One hundred and fifty-five barrels of salt were manufactured in Kansas in 1888, and it is estimated that the output of 1889 will not be less than three times as large. 