Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/590

574 costly black porcelain and the dark tints in majolica-ware. The chloride of uranium is coming into use as a substitute for the chloride of gold in photography. It is anticipated that two extensive fields for the employment of the metal will soon be opened. One is as a substitute for gold in electro-plated ware, for with platinum and copper it forms two beautiful yellow alloys. Its platinum alloy has a special value from its power of resistance to the action of acids. The other use will be found in electric installations, and depends on its high electrical resistance. Uranium has hitherto been found only in pockets or patches in Bohemia, Saxony, and Cornwall, but in the centennial year of its discovery a lode of the metal which promises a large supply was found in the latter region.

A Chemist's Services to Mankind.—In a recent address on the life-work of Pasteur, Sir Henry E. Roscoe emphasized the benefits to humanity which have resulted from the researches of the great French chemist. "The first and obvious endeavor of every cultivator of science," he said, "ought to be to render service of this kind. For, although it is foolish and shortsighted to decry the pursuit of any form of scientific study because it may be as yet far removed from practical application to the wants of man, and although such studies may be of great value as an incentive to intellectual activity, yet the statement is so evident as to almost amount to a truism, that discoveries which give us the power of rescuing a population from starvation, or which tend to diminish the ills that flesh, whether of man or beast, is heir to, must deservedly attract more attention and create a more general interest than others having so far no direct bearing on the welfare of the race." Pasteur's series of valuable labors, including the discovery of the causes and remedies for the sicknesses which wine and beer undergo, the cure of the silk-worm disease, the existence of which in one year cost France more than one hundred millions of francs, the extermination of fowl-cholera, and of the fatal disease known as anthrax in cattle and wool-sorters' disease in man, culminates in his discovery of a successful treatment for rabies. Prof. Roscoe gives an idea of the wide demand for the treatment of Pasteur's laboratory in these words: "There I saw the French peasant and the Russian moujik (suffering from the terrible bites of rabid wolves), the swarthy Arab, the English policeman, with women too and children of every age, in all perhaps a hundred patients. All were there undergoing the careful and kindly treatment which was to insure them against a horrible death. Such a sight will not be easily forgotten. By degrees this wonderful cure for so deadly a disease attracted the attention of men of science throughout the civilized world. The French nation raised a monument to the discoverer better than any statue, in the shape of the 'Pasteur Institute'—an institution devoted to carrying out in practice this anti-rabic treatment, with laboratories and every other convenience for extending by research our knowledge of the preventive treatment of infectious disease." The contrast between the spirit of science and the spirit of war is well expressed in Pasteur's own words at the opening of this institute: "Two adverse laws seem to me now in contest. One law of blood and death, opening out each day new modes of destruction, forces nations to be always ready for the battle-field. The other, a law of peace, of work, of safety, whose only study is to deliver man from the calamities which beset him."

The Cotton Fiber.—Mr. Thomas Pray, Jr., in a lecture before the Franklin Institute, said that the ordinary way of judging raw cotton by feeling with the fingers was exceedingly crude, seeing that the fibers vary all the way from of an inch in thickness for the coarsest "upland," to  for the best Sea Island cotton. Some few cotton-spinners have now been induced by Mr. Pray to adopt the microscope in examining cotton. The finest cotton raised in any of the fields of the world comes from the Mississippi delta. Under the microscope it is seen to be beautiful in structure, of perfect development, full of oil deposits, and having nearly four hundred spirals per inch. It makes very strong yarn, capable of coloring all the delicate shades, like pink, and bleaches in the most perfect manner. Dyers frequently find spots in cotton goods that will not take color at all, or only unevenly.