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A New Lamp
The use of projections on a screen as
an aid in instruction is now widely
appreciated; but an absence of the elec
tric or calcium light, (which is often
not procurable) it may prove difficult
to get light sufficiently intense for
large images. Or. Kegnard has lately
devised a lamp of simple character,
the light of which is equal to about
half that of the calcium light, and
which should find various use besides
the c ne indicated. The idea is burn
ing cm a metallic utt a mixture of air
and petroleum vapor. The apparatus
consists merely of a common Bunsen
burner, terminated by a small cage of
platinum wire. The petroleum vapor
mixture takes the place of the gas,
being supplied through an india-
rubbi r tube at. the bottom from appar
atus of well-known form, an air cur
rent from a bellows beiDg sent through
petroleum in a stoppered vessel,
whence, charged with vapor, it passes
to the lamp. The intense heat in burn
ing of the mixture renders the plat
inum cage brightly incandescent. To
send all the light in one direction, a
bent nozzle of trumpet shape, closed
with platinum net , may be adapted to
the Bunsen burner. By use of a fan-
blower to supply the air current, sev
eral lamps may be kept in action, for
the lighting of halls, workshops, etc.,
the effect being much like that of in
candescent electric lamps. A large
weighted bellows will keep one of the
lamp* going for several hours. The
lamp would be useful to doctors in ex
amination of the throat, ear, eto. The
uost of maiuteuance is triffiiug.
C » . -—
For Our Youth,
Bad Bargains.
Once a 9ehooI teacher remarked th t
he who buys the truth makes a good
bargain, and inquired if any scholar
recollected an instance in Scripture of
a bail bargain.
"I do,” replitda boy; “Esau made
a bad bargain when he sold his birth
right for a mess of pottage.”
A second said, “Judas made a bad
bargain when he sold his Lord for
thiriy pieces of silver.”
“A third boy replied : “Our Lord
tells us that he makes a bad bargain
who, to gain the whole world, loses
his own soul.”
“Boy, what will jou take to tell a
lie fur me ?” asked a mate of one of
the little cabin boys on board of a fine
English ship.
“Not all the gold of California, sir,”
was the prompt reply.
A Mother’s Counsel.
The great men of the world have
generally owed much to the character
and i raining of their mothers. If we
go back to their childhood we see there
the maternal influences which form
the aims and habits of their future
life.
Bayard, the flower of the French
knighthood, the soldier without fear
or reproach, never forgot the parting
words of his mother when he left home
at fourteen to become the page of a
nobleman. She said to him with the
tenderness of a loving heart:
“My boy, serve God first. Pray
to Him night and morning. Be kind
and charitable to all. Beware of flat
terers, and never become one your-
aelf. Avoid envy, hatred and lying,
as vices unworthy of a Christian, and
uever neglect to comfort the widows
and orphans.”
When Bayard was foremost in the
battle, confessedly the bravest warrior
in the field, or when in his own great
thirst he was giving water to a dying
enemy, he was only carrying out his
mother’s counsel, and striving to be
worthy of her name. The memory of
a mother’s love is a talisman against
temptation, and a stimulus to a good
life.
The Diamond Ring and the False Friend.
William and Frank had been fast
lends from their early childhood,
bey went to the same school and
ayed at the same school.
r illiam sometimes engaged in
ctical jokes at Frank’s expense;
t Frank was generous and forgiving,
did not permit William’s little
Us, whioh he ascribed to playful
to cool the warmth of his friend
P
ailed away on a journey which
Id occasion a long absence from
e, Frank entrusted to William
afe keeping, a ring in whiqh was
a diamond of greut value. Frank
,d the ring more as a family hevr-
han a rich jewel. y
Frank, after four years’ alw
returned home, he was not a
urptised to And that William
to avoid him, for he came not
ome him as a true friend
Calling soon after on William, Frank
demanded his ring, and was sur
prised, or rather shocked, when Wil
liam denied having ever seen it.
Brought before a court of justice,
William persisted in his denial of all
knowledge of the ring.
Frank stated that he gave him the
ring while each stood under an oak
tree, immediately before his departure.
But William hastily answered that he
knew no more of the tree than he did
of the ring.
“Go, Frank,” said the judge, “and
bring me a twig from that tree. I
wish to see it.”
The judge, expressing impatience at
Frank’s long absence, William ex
plained that the tree was more than a
mile from court.
“Ah!” said the judge, “I see that
you know about the tree. I believe
you know about the ring too.”
Thus falsehood and dishonesty are
frequently discovered, and indulgence
in petty tricks sometimes lead to the
commission of serious wrong.
Never Be Haughty.
A humming bird met a beautiful
butterfly, and, being pleased with the
beauty of its person and the glory of
its wings, made an offer of perpetual
friendship.
“I cannot think of it,” was the re
ply, as you once spurned me, and
called me a drolling dolt.”
“Impossible!” exclaimed the hum
ming-bird. “I always entertained the
highest respect for such beautiful crea
tures as you.”
“Perhaps you do now,” said the
other; “but when you insulted me I
was a caterpillar. 80 let me give you
a piece of advice. Never insult the
humble, as they may some day be
come your supeiiors.”
The Northern Lights.
An Astronomer’s Views—He Thinks the
Aurora Borealis i» Caused in Some
Manner by tna Spot on the Sun.
“I am sure I don’t know,” said Pro
fessor Sharpless, of Harvard college,
the well-known astronomer, last even
ing to a Press reporter when asked the
cause of the northern lights, that have
recently appeared in such splendor.
“Like a rain-storm, they come with
out apparent cause. It has been no
ticed, however, that they are more
likely to occur in winter than in sum
mer We know that they are the
result of some disturbance among the
electric currents in the regions above
the earth’s atmosphere, but now we
come to a subject about which little is
known. The earth’s atmo-phere ex
tends up about one hundred miles,
but it not known what substance ex
ists above that. I call it substance,
for it is some form of matter. These
phenomena take place at a height of
500 or6t0 miles fbove the earth, as
has been determined by observations
of the same streams of light by differ
ent persons at different stations and
mathematical calculations. The spec
troscope seems to show the presence at
this height of a substance new to sci
ence, and something that is not known
to our atmosphere, but nothing more
than that. There are theories, of
course, as to what this unknown sub
stance in, but they are not well estab
lished, and a good chance is open for
some one to distinguish himself by a
grand discovery. Just at present the
spectroscope is the only means of find
ing out the matter, and as it has not
succeeded, no new discovery is likely
to be made immediately.
The Cause of Auroras.
Dangerous Dome of St. Sophia.
Great consternation has been caused
in Constantinople by a report that the
mo-que of St. Sophia is in danger of
collapsiug; for there is a tradition
among the Turks that the fall of this
basilica will herald the dismember
ment of the empire. The mosque was
restored at a great expense by the Sul
tan Abdul Medjid in 1649, under the
susperintendence of the Italian archi
tect, Fossati. But the work does not
appear to have been very well execu
ted, for the grand done, which is 120
feet in diameter and 270 ftet high, is
so insecure that, according to the re
port of the architect who has been
called in by the Minister of Public
Works, it may fall at any moment.
In other respects the Interior of the
mosque is iu a fairly good state of
preservation. AmoDg the many relics
preserved in the mosque of St. Sophia
is the carpet upon which Mohammed
was wont to bray, and close to the
place where the carpet Is suspended
stands the pulpit from which the
Kbatib reads tbe koran every, Friday
holding in his hand a drawn sword as
sym' olic of St. S >phia having been
conquered from the infidel. Another
of the relics preserved iu St. S >phia is
the cradle of our Savior, wnich, accor
ding to tradition, was brought from
Bethlehem, together with a sort of ba
sin in which his mother washed him.
The walls of the motque are covered
with green slabs, on which verses
from the koran are engraved in etters
of gold.
Forestry.
In answering an invitation to be
present at the forestry convention at
Cincinnati, John G Whittier, who,
like ail men of sensibility, is a lover
of trees, wrote: “My indignation is
yearly aroused by the needless sacri
fice of some noble oak or elm, and es
pecially of the white pine, the grand
est tree in our woods, whioh I would
not exchange for Oriental palms. My
thanks will be due to the # public
school which is to plant a group of
trees iu my honor. I could ask no
better memorial. I have always ad
mired the good taste of the Sakt.kis
Indians around Sebago lake, who,
when their chief died, dug around a
bteoh tree, swaying it down, and
placed his body in the rent, and then
let the noble tree fall back into its
original place—a green and beautiful
monument for the son of the forest.”
Restoring the Color of the Hair.
It is said that equal parts of butter
nut bark and black tea, with water,
in whioh a few rusty nails have been
thrown, will restore hair that is pre
maturely turning gray to ics original
well and saturate the
There is nothing
mixture any raty,
\
“Tbe theory which is now generally
held by men of science as to the real
cause of these auroras is that they are
in some w*iy connected with the sun
spots. When there are the most spots
there are the most auroras. There are
m ire than the usual number of spots
ou the sun just now, and, on the
morning after the brilliant display of
Sjnday night, I examined the sun
and noticed over a doz-n on its sur
face. The proof of this connection
between the two occurences is that
the maximum number of sun spots
and the aurora displays come at the
same time. The periods when these
maximum numbers of sun sp r ta occur
are about eleven years apart, and at
thetimeof their occurrence in 1859 and
1870 it was noticeable that the north
ern lights were unusually br’ght. I
never saw such a brilliant sight as
that of Sunday night, however. The
periodicity of the maximum number
of sun spots being eleven years, and
the last having been iu 1870, last year
should have witnessed the expected
display. It was a little late, but there
were several bright auroras in the last
part of the year, in the fall and win
ter. The time for the displays will
last through this year, I expect, and
they will probably be more frequent
than they have been. For the first
half of the periods which mark the
occurrence of the maximum number
of sun spots there is a diminution i*
their number, so that there were none
at all to be seen in 1875 and 1876, and
after that they began to increase.
This, you see, would bring the time
for the greatest expected display up
to the present.
“By sun spots, whose occurrence in
greatest numbers I have said corre
sponded with the times of the most
brilliant and frequent auroral displays,
I mean tbe dark marks that are seen
on the sun’s surface. They are hol
lows and depressions in the surfaoe
and are due to some change in the
molten liquid substance. The surface
is continually changing and these de
pressions are probably tbe result of
some upheaval caused by tbe gasses
within. They don’t cover a very big
proportion of the sun’s surface, how
ever. Some are as big as 100,000 miles
across, but that is an exception, aud
most of them are below 10,000 miles
in width. They come and disappear
quite suddenly, often, sometimes in a
stormy than others, but I do not con
sider this well established. The
appearance of the streamers all radi
ating from a common centre, which
was bo noticeable Sunday night, may,
in a certain sense, be called an optical
delusion. They are really parallel,
and the centre from which they sferu
to start is really the direction in which
they are pointed. As for the flashing
of the lights, that is probably the ef
fect of the passage of electric currents,
but not much is known about that.
Nor can we tell what causes the differ
ent colors to be seen. Much the same
tflfect is to be produced, however,
by the passing of an electric current
through a vacuum tube. These dis
plays are very apt to extend over the
entire surface of the globe lying in the
same latitude, and it has been noticed
that they usually occur on the same
night here and in Europe. The cause
is the same for all. They are not to
be seen in tbe tropics, but Arctic trav
elers speak of their frequency and
brilliancy, they coming every night.
This is accounted for by the fact that
the north pole is near the magnetic
pole of the earth. Speaking of mag
netism, the sun spots which I have
mentioned have an effect on the mag.
netic needle, and it has been noticed
that during the period of their occur
currence in greatest number the needle
is most apt to deviate from its true
direction. The whole matter is one of
electricity and magnetism. These
brilliant displays may be going on all
day for what we know, but there is no
way of telling. There is no reason to
suppose that the sun would spoil them,
ouly they would be invisible. There
is no telling whether the next display
will be brighter than the last, or when
it will come. That is ail uncertain
But the theory that the displays are
caused by the sun spots is, £ think
well established.”
For the Fair Sex.
green ana
m, worthy of trial.
Yellow flowers trim dark
straw bonnets.
Velvet strings and a velvet Alsatiau
bow trim new bonnets.
Visites made of India cashmere
shawls are favorite wraps.
White suits for summer arc of wool
in preference to lawn.
White net embroidery is used for
neckties and chemisettes.
Soft toques of wool like the dress are
worn with travelling dresses.
Amvia is the name given to a new
and lovely shade of yellowish pink.
Iu Paris children’s stockings musi
match their dresses; this is obligatory
Long stocking mitts will be much
worn with light costumes In mid
summer.
The designs aud colorings of new
stockings are artistic in the highest
degree.
Natural flowers have entirely sup
erseded artificial ones for trimming
dresses.
The newest cloih goods have round
spots as large as the palm of a lady’s
hand.
Mother Hubbard styles are now
confined to morning wrappers and
night dresses.
Fruit and flower designs in close
printed patterns appear on new lisle-
thread stockings.
The favorite blue for children’s flan
nels and cheviots is the old gendarme
or china blue.
Simple house dresses now in prepar
ation for early spring are made chiefly
of soft wool materials alone, or they
have a moderate combination of silk
surah or a flue cord lustrous gros grain.
The latter fabric, having been laid
aside foY satins and lustrous surahs, is
once more being used, aud, consider
ing its durability, ladies of geod taste
wtar it iu preference to any other ma
terial iu the house.
Among the special novelties for sea
side wear are costumes of cheese-cloth,
with bonnet and parasol complete.
The drt sses are trimmed with kilte 1
flounces tuarrow) across the front, al-
newest thing. India pongee has
perienced an enormous revival,
perhaps, to the trouble of procur
other art materials. Pongees we
always—it is not extravagantly
and it is on6 of the :oolest, ci
and daintiest of summer fa
China crepe it revived, but ouly fd
few, for it is to costly for wear by
many. A few pieces of terra-cotta
have been eagerly bought up
made iuto couutry bouse and
dresses trimmed with white,
worn with white lace hat i^d paras
The Tusf-ore silks are fine and sof
very cool, ^nd with their India ti
and clinving quality make oesthe
dresses. In washing materials t
new satinets have easily taken t
first rank. The gowns are well co
ered with lovtly and most original d
signs, and though some of these latte:
are bizarre, there are enough of thosi
that are both pretty and original to re
deem them. The new rose design has
dark grounds—olive or chocolate—an<
some a dull china blue. Upon thesi
are shaded roses, Mareschal Neil
dark red and others, with brown stemi
and fading foliage. There are als
Kate Greenway patterns, the quai
designs of little folks, which are
well known, furnishing the bord
ings to small leafy patterns. The n
row cbene-striped ginghams,
linen finish are among the prett
and most suitable materials for su
mer morning dresses. They are m
with a kilted front, draped back a
shirred basque bodice or blouse wa
and trimmed with Maderia embr
dery or Belgian lace. Very usefi
summer skirts are made short, of
somewhat coarse but churaba. kind
French batiste, flounced, fluish
with a drawing string at the back
ai to mass the fulness into a Span is
flounce. Above this a series of ruffl
supplies all the tournure need
Skirts of this description have her
fore been very high, and only obt
able at a few small importing hou
now they are supplied more freely
at much lower rates. '
Traveling dresses have reached
fectiou, so far as the limifa'ions of t
case will admit, in the English tailo
made coi-tumes imported from the be
house. Only the best cloth, b
shades, best colors, and best workma
ship are put on these seemingly,
pie suits, which are, however, no
all cheap. The stitching and the b
ons are all the trimmiugs; but^
finish is equal to that put upon
finest coats for men. For a long jo
ney one of these suits, a Newmar
coat and a soft felt hat with flexi
brim, along gauze veil and a.yt\
long wash-leather gloves form an
cellent outfit.
ternatiug with pleated ruffles of lace,
half hour, and again they may last for l which are placed partly under those of
Precept and Practice.
The good story is told of an excel
lent American minister who, happen
ing one day to pass by the open d
of a room where his daughters
some young friends wereassem'
thought, from what he over’
that they were making too tf
the character of their neighb^
after their visitors had depaftf
gave his children a lecture on tlie
fulness of scandal. They answe
“But, father, what thall wo
about?” “If you can’t do anyt
else,” replied he, “get a pumpkin
roll it about; that will at least he
nocent diversion.” A short time a
an association of ministers met
house, an# during the evepin
discussions on points of doctrfii
earnest, and their voices were
as to indie ite the danger of loal
their Christian temper ; when his el
est daughter, overhearing them, pr
cured a pumpkin and, entering th
room, gave it to her father, and said
“There, father, roll it about.” Th
mini-ter was obliged to explainjo his
brethern, aud g<#od humor wa
stantly restored.
two or three months. They gradually
grow smaller and decline, and their
average duration is about a month.
It is the general coincidence, though,
that proves the relation between the
maximum number of these spots and
the auroras. The years which witness
tbe most spotB will have the most dis
plays. ^
Th* Sun Spots Connection.
“There may be some connection be
tween these spots and the weathe^
Some have thought that the, y
their greatest numbers we’
the cheehe cloth. The heading is a
band of what looks like embroidery,
but is in reality an application of cre
tonne, outlined with buttonhole
stiteb. This is repeated three times
acioss tbe front aud also upon the
batque,
lace plel
every pari
are imporj
have tal
kuo\
^aud parasol. The fine
also reappear upon
[the dress. TU^Hbumes
complete.
|e place of wl
silkl
The Soothing Panacea. 1
It is easy enough to win a husband.
Most any attractive little dumpling
with a bright eye and a coaxing voice
can gather in a noble husband, but it
is pretty difficult to retaiu him.
Noble husbands aro thicker than hair
on a dog, but the graud difficulty is to
draw out their true nobility and se
cure it at home.
If the wife only understands her
business she can introduce thesoothi
ing racket in hej< qew fic^L
tions and walk
business. Most
and soothed,
the man’s great]
that oan be
with gentleness'
’rffht
vv