Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/145

Rh is without dots, sprays, or other figures, but with large, regular meshes made with single, compact threads. Eve troubles do not necessarily result from wearing veils, for the healthy eye is as able as any other part of the body to resist the strain they impose upon it. But weak eyes are hurt by them, and prudence should teach not to strain healthy eyes too much.

Domestication of the Egret.—A resolution was adopted at the International Zoölogical Congress held in Leyden in 1895, favoring measures for the preservation and domestication of the egret. Under present conditions the bird, so highly prized for its plumes, is undergoing rapid extermination. M. J. Forest, the author of the Leyden resolution, is confident that the domestication of the egret herons will be found as practicable as that of the ostrich has proved to be. The little egret, or garzette, in particular, has already shown itself quite susceptible to the taming process. In a heronry established at Tunis in 1873, a flock of thirty young birds has increased to about four hundred. The establishment contains a pool and trees, and cost less than twenty-eight hundred dollars. It was stocked in the beginning with captured wild birds, whose disposition and capacity to breed did not seem to be affected by their captivity. The proprietor represents that he gets six or seven dollars a year from each bird, plucking the plumes twice a year, in June and October, besides the increase of the flock. The capacity of the large egret for domestication is not so well established; but a specimen of this bird, which had been captured wild and then tamed, was sent to the Jardin d'Avcclinatation in Paris from Guiana in 1853; and several travelers—Paul Marcoy, Thouar, the lamented Crévaux, and Ehrenreich—mention having seen in Paraguay and along the Amazon numerous domesticated birds, herons and grebes among them, living in the Indian villages on whatever they could find to eat there. Herons bearing ash-gray plumes are kept in some of the larger houses of Bagdad.

Inventing a Match.—The credit of the invention of chemical matches is claimed for various persons in different countries—for Friedrich Kamrer in Germany, Roemer and Preschel in Austria, Ironvi and Moldenhauer in Hungary, Ivan Worstakoff in Russia, Watt and Isaac Holden in England, and Charles Lauria in France. The one thing agreed upon is the date—1833. For Lauria the claim is made by M. Jacques Boyer that he thought about the matter in 1827, when he saw Gay-Lussac's hydrogen tinder box at Lyons in 1827, and had made a practical match before 1833. Immediately after witnessing Gay-Lussac's experiment he began to look for a fulminating powder which would enable him to realize the dream he had conceived, and while still in this search saw his professor of chemistry, Nicollet, produce the detonation of powdered sulphur and chlorate of potash. Then he thought that if he could incorporate phosphorus with this mixture he might produce the blaze he wanted. He had no apparatus but a few sticks of sulphur-tipped pine and some glass tubes. He had got some parcels of sulphur and chlorate from the college laboratory at Dole, and having obtained a little phosphorus from a pharmacy, he proceeded to melt this mixture. As he was inexperienced and awkward at the work, he suffered a number of accidents, in which his bed curtains proved readier to take fire than his matches. At last he dipped the end of one of his sulphured sticks into the chlorate slightly warmed. Some of the chlorate adhered, and, rubbing his half-finished match on the wall where a trace of phosphorus had found its way, the stick blazed up at once. Lauria called his comrades and the principal of the college to witness his achievement, and enjoyed a kind of triumph. He made a few improvements in his invention, added a little gum arable to his mixture to make it more adhesive, and had what is in principle the match of to-day. His fellow-students amused themselves with the matches. Prof. Puttenay made some for his own use, and they found their way into a café at Dole, but the effort to find a more general market for them did not succeed.

Young Animals at School.—A new theory of the sports of young animals put forth by Prof. Groos, of the University of Giessen, holds that they are a preparation for afterlife, for the adaptation of the faculties for the sterner purposes of maturity, and are in