Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 | Page 2

Metric System.--New Turret Musical and Chiming
Clock for the Bombay University, with 1 page of engravings.--Water
Gas and its advantages, by GEO. S. DWIGHT.--Brattice Cloths in
Mines.--Eight Horse Power Portable Steam Engine, with dimensions,
particulars, and 1 page of engravings.--Clyde Ship Building and Marine
Engineering in 1876.--Four Masted Ships.--New Bridges at and near
New York city.--The Sutro Tunnel.--Independent Car
Wheels.--Passenger Travel, New York city.
II.--TECHNOLOGY.--Design for Iron Stairway, and Iron Grilles, with
3 engravings.--The Process of Micro-photography used in the Army
Medical Department.--Direct Positives for Enlarging.--A Monster
Barometer.--Architectural Science, Carpentry Queries and
Replies.--The Carpet Manufactures of Philadelphia. How the Centre
Selvage is Formed, 3 figures.--Glass of the Ancients.--On the
Preservation of Meat; a resume of the various methods now
practiced.--California Pisciculture.--Savelle's System of Distillation, 2
engravings.--New Bromine Still, by W. ARVINE, 1 engraving.--The
Phoenix Steam Brewery, New York.--French Cognac Distillation, 1
engraving.--Schwartz's Sugar Refinery, London. General description of
the establishment.--Vienna Bread and Coffee.--How Pictorial Crystals
are Produced and Exhibited.
III. LESSONS IN MECHANICAL DRAWING. New Series. By
Professor C.W. MACCORD; with several engravings.
IV. ELECTRICITY, LIGHT, HEAT, SOUND, ETC.--Magnetic Action
of Rotatory Conductors.--The Sensation of Sound.--Sympathetic
Vibration of Pendulums.--Protection from Lightning.--Musical Tones,
photograph of.
V. MEDICINE, HYGIENE, ETC.--On the Treatment of Typhoid
Fevers. By ALFRED L. LOOMIS, M.D.--Hydrophobia Cured by
Oxygen.--The efficacy of Lymph, by M. HILLER.--Success of Chloral

Hydrate for Scalds and Burns.--Uses of Cyanide of Zinc.--Dr.
Brown-Sequard on Nerve Disease.
VI. MISCELLANEOUS.--Geological Notes.--A Geological
Congress.--The last Polar Expedition.--Old Men of
Science.--Pre-glacial Men.--Post-glacial period, Esthonia.--Northern
Pacific Formations.
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DATES AND THE DATE PALM.
Even those whose knowledge of the customs of the Orient extends no
further than a recollection of the contents of that time-honored story
book, the "Arabian Nights," are doubtless aware that, since time
immemorial, the date has been the chief food staple of the
desert-dwellers of the East. The "handful of dates and gourd of water"
form the typical meal and daily sustenance of millions of human beings
both in Arabia and in North Africa, and to this meager diet ethnologists
have ascribed many of the peculiar characteristics of the people who
live upon it. Buckle, who finds in the constant consumption of rice
among the Hindoos a reason for the inclination to the prodigious and
grotesque, the depression of spirits, and the weariness of life manifest
in that nation, likewise considers that the morbid temperament of the
Arab is a sequence of vegetarianism. He points out that rice contains an
unusual amount of starch, namely, between 83 and 85 per cent; and that
dates possess precisely the same nutritious substances as rice does, with
the single difference that the starch is already converted into sugar. To
live, therefore, on such food is not to satisfy hunger; and hunger, like
all other cravings, even if partially satisfied, exercises control over the
imagination. "This biological fact," says Peschel, "was and still is the
origin of the rigid fastings prescribed by religions so widely different,
which are made use of by Shamans in every quarter of the world when
they wish to enter into communication with invisible powers." Peschel
and Buckle, however, are at variance as to the influence of the date diet
as affecting a race; and the former remarks that, "while no one will

deny that the nature of the