Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/444

430  out the principles which Rumford expounded, lie foretold the danger of firing Buch artillery as we now use with ordinary small grain powder. Such powder would explode completely before the shot could fairly be set in motion, and would produce bad effects on the gun. The modern cubes burn on their surface and thereby start the ball. They continue burning and evolving more and more gas as the ball travels along the tube, and, to be perfect, should just complete their combustion as it leaves the mouth of the gun. But this degree of perfection is not attained, and hence we have the "porcupine-quills" appearance.

Horse-Sausages.—The best Bologna sausages are made of chopped bacon and pea-flour, and are flavored chiefly with garlic and cloves. When the bacon is old, but sound, says the Sanitarian, such sausages are wholesome and highly nutritious, and are especially useful to laborers, travelers, and soldiers in camp, and others who have not the means of cooking at hand. They rarely spoil, but, being eaten uncooked, they may sometimes introduce trichinæ. The use of horse-flesh is a recent innovation in sausage manufacture, and is practiced in Italy and Belgium, as well as in this country. These horse-sausages are said to be of the Bologna variety, and the makers justify them from the wholesomeness of horse-flesh when healthy. But the meat actually used is that of animals worn out by work or made useless by disease "fit for nothing else."

The Medoc Wines.—The Médoc district of France, famous for its wines, consists of a long strip of land, extending northerly from Bordeaux and lying between the sea and the river Gironde. The best vines are grown on a surface of gravel-quartz and sand with a clay subsoil. The vine most usually grown is of a stunted variety, and seldom rises more than two feet from the ground. They first bear about five years after being planted, and continue productive for one hundred or even two hundred years. The grapes, when taken to the press-house, are stripped from the stalks and placed in large vats, some of which have a capacity of 3,240 gallons apiece. In these they are left to ferment for a period of from a week to a fortnight. after which the wine is drawn off into hogs-heads and taken to cool in well-ventilated stores. Here the casks are filled up at intervals, and the drawings-off are attended to at the proper time. Tendency to excessive fermentation is checked by drawing the wine off into casks impregnated with sulphur. The Médoc wines are classified into several grades or growths, the qualities of which are considerably capricious; and the quantity of wine produced at the several vineyards is subject to great fluctuations. Notwithstanding, however, the uncertainty of the annual return, the Médoc district is said to be of greater commercial value to France than both the better known Cognac and Champagne districts put together.



respect to the use of the diamond drill, or an instrument of corresponding effectiveness, by the ancient Egyptians, Mr. W. F. Durfee, having inquired through our consul-general at Cairo, received from Mr. W. Flinders Petrie the following list of objects in which marks of such an instrument may be seen: Base of tube-drill hole, cut too deep in roughing out the statue, between the feet of the diorite statue of Chafra (Kofra), in the Boulak Museum; sides of two drill-holes, showing on the inside of the sarcophagus at Gizeh; the marks are near the top, at the north end of the east side, and on the west end; saw-cut too deep into the outside of that sarcophagus, on the north end, near the top at the northeast edge; saw-cut surface beneath the sarcophagus in the second pyramid at Gizeh; drill-hole with core sticking in it, in the granite lintel of the chamber leading from the southwest corner of the great hall of the granite temple of Gizeh, the fifth hole. Mr. Petrie believes there are some small drill-holes in the Hyksos head in black granite from Bubastis, in the Boulak Museum, where the eye-sockets have been cut out.

importance of taking care of the first teeth is insisted on by Mr. Fisher, a dentist of Dundee. While they are destined to disappear in a short time and give place to other teeth, they will cause pain and general conditions of disease if they are un-sound, the same as the permanent teeth do; and the latter can not escape being affected by the disorders they occasion. It is not safe to depend on extracting them if they cause pain, for that enfeebles the chewing power; and, if many of them are removed, the jaw does not develop properly, and the second teeth are made liable to grow irregularly. 