The Galaxy, June 1877 Part 25

In Lieutenant Wheeler's report of operations on the geographical and geological survey of the Territories west of the 100th meridian during 1876, we find the first explanation of the origin of the name California. The mountainous country of Mexico has three climates through which the traveller pa.s.ses in going from the sea to the high country, the hot, the temperate, and the cold zones. The Mexicans call them _tierra caliente_, _tierra templada_, and _tierra fria_. They entered the present region of California from Sonora or New Mexico, and on their way pa.s.sed a lake now called Lake Elizabeth, on the border of the California desert. There a violent west wind blows night and day.

It is a real _sirocco_, dry, and so hot as to remind one of a blast from a furnace. The Mexicans accordingly made the country beyond it the fourth in their series of ascending temperatures, and named it _tierra california_, the country hot as a furnace.

This report is one of the most valuable produced by the survey. During the year the great area in California which lies below the level of the sea was examined to ascertain whether it could be filled and maintained as a lake by a ca.n.a.l from the Colorado river, and the decision is in the negative. The depressed area covers about 1,600 square miles in California, and the difference between the rainfall and the evaporation is so small that if the whole Colorado river were poured into the basin, it would cover only 556 square miles of surface, or little more than one-third the basin. Filling would cease at that level for the reason that the whole supply of the river would disappear in vapor. The slope of the Colorado river is extraordinary, 2.13 feet per mile at Stone's Ferry, and 1.21 feet at Camp Mohave, which may be compared with eight inches, the average fall of the Mississippi per mile. At Stone's Ferry the velocity is 3.217 feet per second and the discharge 18,410 cubic feet. Great difficulties stand in the way of the proposed ca.n.a.l, and the engineers do not think the lake, if it could be formed, would have an appreciable effect upon the climate of the surrounding region.

The primary object of this survey is to carry the grand triangulation of the continent across the country under its jurisdiction, and to map the surface so as to enable the Government to put the ground properly in market. In addition to these objects a great amount of valuable work is done in geology and natural history.

Prof. Jules Marcou, geologist attached to the survey, points out that the valleys of Santa Clara and Santa Barbara in California may become the site of _true_ artesian oil wells. The ordinary flowing oil well is supposed to obtain the force which lifts its oil above the surface level from confined gases in the earth, but in California the lift will be obtained in precisely the same manner as in the case of artesian wells for water. There are strata of sandstone impregnated with the petroleum, and these strata are lifted up on the mountain sides, so that a well bored at a low point in the valley would be supplied from a reservoir some thousands of feet high. The wells will have to be about three thousand feet deep.

The naturalists of the survey noted many singular phenomena of animal life. On the islands off the coast there is a race of liliputian foxes which is supposed to have been derived from the Gray fox, its small size and perfect fearlessness, together with its insect diet, being due to its confinement to the islands. This animal is so small that even the sheep breeders do not fear it. It lies under the cactus plants for its noonday nap, and to this fact must be due the remarkable circ.u.mstance noticed in skinning a number of them. In every instance the interior surface of the hide was perforated by cactus spines, and in one individual the hide was fairly coated within by these spines, some of which had become soft with age. There were so many that a knife could not have pierced the hide without touching the spines!

Another fact developed was that the great dread of the grizzly bear is resulting in his rapid extinction. Strychnine is considered indispensable to the outfit of a California shepherd, and the grizzlies have been killed or forced to the mountains, where they still linger in considerable numbers in the chapparal. It is noticeable that the Rocky mountain grizzly is a tame creature compared with his brother of the Sierra Nevada, who does not hesitate to take the initiative in a combat with man.

A GERMAN SAVANT AMONG THE SIOUX.

Prof. Virchow lately informed the Berlin Anthropological Society that an intrepid young German traveller, Herr von Horn von der Horck, is now (January, 1877) living among the Sioux Indians busily engaged in taking plaster casts for craniological studies. Von der Horck made a journey to the Polar sea last summer, returning by way of Lapland, where he made enormous collections of bones, skulls, and casts. Prof. Virchow says these collections are more complete in Scandinavian ethnology than all that European museums outside of Scandinavia contain. One result of this journey was the discovery of a continuous water way between the Gulf of Bothnia and the Polar sea, though not one that is capable of navigation. A lake, called Wawalo Lampi, lies on the divide between these two bodies of water, and sends a river to each. The northward flowing one is the Ivallo and the southward the Kit.i.tui. We are glad to welcome so enthusiastic and thorough a student to this country. It is precisely work like his that is needed in America, and the time for accomplishing it is rapidly pa.s.sing away. We have too much theory and too little real investigation in American ethnology, and while the men of hypotheses are talking about the origin of the Indians, and endeavoring to trace them to Asiatic stocks through the medium of language, the race is fast losing its purity by intermarriage, as it has already lost the most distinctive of its peculiarities by intercourse with the whites.

BALLOONING FOR AIR CURRENTS.

It is well known to meteorologists that the wind vanes as ordinarily placed near the surface do not give a true indication of the wind. Even when the vane is not over a city or town where the air currents near the earth are affected by the direction of the streets, the varying character of the surface in respect to radiation and absorption of heat will modify them. It is therefore for good reasons that vanes are perched up on high flagstaffs fixed on the roofs of buildings. Some of these are more than a hundred feet above the ground, but recent observations in Paris show that this is not enough. Small India-rubber balloons a foot in diameter and with an ascensional force of about one ounce were sent up, and as they rose slowly, at the rate of twelve feet per second, the effect of the air currents upon them could be easily marked. This was found to be very variable at heights of less than one or two hundred metres (300 to 600 feet). The conclusion was that no observations at lower levels were trustworthy.

THE GREATEST OF RIFLES.

In spite of the familiarity with great cannon which the advances in gun construction of late years have produced, the experiments with the 100-ton gun of the Italian government have not failed to awaken general interest and wonder. It fires a 2,000-pound sh.e.l.l, and a charge of 240 pounds of powder is but a portion of what the gun will bear. These light charges have to be used if the penetrative effects of the gun under unfavorable conditions are to be studied, for with its full charge the weapon simply destroys anything that is put before it.

Comparative results cannot be obtained when the only effect is complete ruin. It is somewhat remarkable that an over confident iron founder should have chosen this weapon to test once more the value of _cast_ iron for defensive armor. His idea was that armor could be made so hard by chilling the surface that the shot would be broken to pieces upon it, and experiments with a good iron and guns of small calibre had encouraged the hope. But a 2,000-pound sh.e.l.l and 400 pounds of powder in the 100-ton gun proved anew the unfitness of this material for armor plating. The shot had a velocity of 1,494 feet per second, and it smashed through an 8-inch plate of wrought iron, a wood layer, and a 14-inch plate of chilled cast iron. The ruin produced was greater than in any other experiment, the cast iron breaking into fragments. The power of this gun, the greatest rifle ever made, is such that a solid 22-inch plate of the best English wrought iron is completely penetrated by its shot.

VIENNA BREAD.

A "Vienna bakery" has been one of the most prominent objects at each of the last three international exhibitions, and probably there are many housekeepers who would be glad to know how this delicious bread is made. Unfortunately success does not always follow imitation, and several attempts to introduce the manufacture of this bread have failed, even when Vienna bakers were employed in the work; and yet there is absolutely no secret in the process. One of the American commissioners to the Vienna exhibition, Prof. E. N. Horsford, gave an elaborate report on this bread, and since he came to the conclusion that it _can_ be made elsewhere, we will recount some of the causes upon which in his opinion its excellence depends. These are the mode of baking, the mode of making, the use of fresh "compressed yeast" which produces no acetic acid in fermentation, the use of selected flour, the mode of milling, and the kind of wheat.

_The Baking._--The loaf should be so small that fifteen or twenty minutes will be sufficient to cook it through in an oven which is heated to a temperature of about 500 deg., or the melting point of bis.m.u.th. The rolls should not touch each other.

_The Mixing._--The proportions are:

8 pounds of flour, 3 quarts of milk and water, in equal proportions, 3-1-2 ounces of pressed yeast, 1 ounce of salt,

which should make about 380 rolls of the ordinary "Kaiser semmel"

size. The milk and water in equal parts are first mixed and allowed to come to the usual temperature of a kitchen, and a small amount of flour is then mixed in it so as to make a thin emulsion. The yeast is added and well mixed in, first crumbling it in the hand, and the pan is left covered for three-quarters of an hour. Then the rest of the flour is slowly mixed in, with thorough kneading. The dough is left for two hours and a half, "at the end of which time it presents a smooth, tenacious, puffed, h.o.m.ogeneous ma.s.s, of slightly yellowish color." It is weighed into pound ma.s.ses (all bread must be sold by weight in Europe), each of which is cut into twelve rolls. The proportions for twelve rolls should therefore be about as follows: 1-4 pound of flour, 1-5 pints milk and water, 1-10 ounce pressed yeast, and 1-32 ounce of salt. The small ma.s.ses of dough have a thickness of three-quarters of an inch, and the workman, laying the back of his left forefinger in the centre of one, pulls out and folds up the corners of the irregular ma.s.s, and pinches them together. The little lump of dough is then reversed upon a smooth board, and after remaining there long enough to finish "rising," they are placed in the hot oven by means of a wooden shovel.

_The Yeast._--Pressed yeast, which is now made in America, is obtained by skimming the froth from mash while it is in active fermentation. The yeast is repeatedly washed with cold water until it settles pure and white in the water. It forms a tenacious ma.s.s which is pressed in a bag. It will keep about eight days in summer, and indefinitely if put on ice.

_The Flour._--Only a selected part of the flour is used in Vienna for the manufacture of white bread and rolls, amounting to about forty-five per cent. of the wheat. Precisely the same grades are not produced in the American process of milling, but Dr. Horsford thinks that good, fresh middlings flour will compare favorably with the average Hungarian flour.

_The Milling._--A peculiar mode of milling wheat has grown up in Austria and Hungary, which is almost the antipodes of the old and crude methods of grinding. It is called "high milling," and consists in cracking the wheat by successive operations down to the required size. First the wheat is run through a coa.r.s.e mill, which takes off the beard at one end and the germ at the other. The resulting powder is then sifted, to separate the grits from the dross and flour, and the central part is again cracked, and the products sifted. Some flour is produced in each of these steps, but the best of the wheat kernel is still in the condition of grits, and the bran and outer coat of the kernel having been separated by the sifting, the pure grits are now cracked once more, and number one flour is produced. All the other flour from these three operations is purified from bran, mixed and ground, making number two flour. In short, the essential characteristic of the Austrian system of milling lies in a gradual process of reducing the wheat, with careful separation of the products, or cleaning, at each step.

These products are quite numerous, as the following list shows:

_Cla.s.s._ _Percentage._

A. { Lady groats.

B. 4.25 { Table groats, fine.

C. { Table groats, coa.r.s.e.

0. { Extra imperial flour.

1. 5.53 Extra fine flour.

2. 5.76 Ordinary fine flour.

3. 5.51 _Extra roll or semmel flour._ 4. 6.48 _Common roll or semmel flour._ 5. 7.12 First pollen flour.

6. 13.30 Second pollen flour.

7. 11.85 First dust flour.

8. 9.95 Second dust flour.

9. 4.36 Brown pollen flour.

10. 6.32 Fort flour.

F. 8.94 Fine bran.

G. 6.87 Coa.r.s.e bran.

H. 3.76 Chicken feed, loss, and dirt.

---- 100

This chicken feed consists of the foreign seeds, the tares, which grow up with the wheat, and which are separated before milling. In the above list only 39 to 40 per cent. of the flour is fit for white bread making.

_The Wheat._--Last of all, in following back the processes of Vienna bread making, we come to one of the essential requirements, a proper kind of wheat. "The virtues of this bread," says Dr.

Horsford, "had their origin princ.i.p.ally in the Hungarian wheat.

These are not due to any particular variety of wheat, or to any marked peculiarity of soil or mode of fertilizing, or to a mean annual temperature characterizing the climate of Hungary as a whole, but to _a peculiarity of climate_, uniting especial dryness of the air during the hot season, from the time of the development of the milk of the berry, through the period of its segregation of the various const.i.tuents of the grain, down to its being housed for thrashing." The Hungarian wheat is red, shrivelled, and hard, and it is this hardness that fits it so well to the successive crackings which const.i.tute the process of "high milling."

Vienna bread is white, fine grained, perfectly sweet, aromatic, agreeable without b.u.t.ter, thoroughly baked, and has a tender crust, and Dr. Horsford shows dearly that this combination of excellences is not the result of an art, but of the joint operation of many arts. Its introduction may be made an economical act, for its peculiar succulence makes b.u.t.ter or other condiment unnecessary. It is, however, essentially a _baker's_ bread, for it should be eaten on the day it is made, and is at its best immediately after becoming cold. There is little room for expecting it to replace the kind of bread in vogue in American homes, for that is just as much the result of peculiar circ.u.mstances as the product of the Hungarian farm, the Austrian mill, and the Vienna oven. Economy in labor is just as much a consideration in most American families as it is in our workshops, and the semi-weekly or weekly baking is the means by which it is obtained. But American housewives can improve their bread by adopting from the Austrian system the whitening of the yeast by washing, the small loaf, and the rapid baking. The use of selected flour can hardly be obtained unless the millers are offered a market for the darker flour that remains. In Europe that is at hand in the nutritious "black" bread which is everywhere _the_ staff of life, white bread being a luxury taken only with coffee. In fact it is American cake that the Vienna roll comes in compet.i.tion with, and the habit of making cake almost daily, which obtains in so many American homes, shows that there is time and labor which can be turned to the production of the Vienna bread if desired.

MODERN LOSS IN WARFARE.

The German government has just published the official statistics of the losses in the war with France. The total killed and wounded was 3,919 officers and 60,978 men. The killed and dead of wounds were 1,374 officers and 16,877 men, the proportion being 1 killed to 3.44 wounded among the officers, and 1 to 5 among the men. The infantry lost 57,943, artillery 4,266, and cavalry 2,236. Fighting in line, and at such a distance as modern weapons command, have made the loss by artillery a minimum; 5,084 of the casualties being due to artillery and 55,862 to rifle practice. One noteworthy item is the proportion--12,717 out of the whole number--that were struck about the head and shoulders. This is held to show that the French troops fired high, but it may also be due to the attention now paid to field defences. It is quite possible also that all modern rifles are sighted a trifle too high.

A NEW TREASURY RULE.

The Secretary of the Treasury has lately issued a circular which affects rather uncomfortably the interests of educational, scientific, and literary inst.i.tutions. They are allowed by law to import books, instruments, and ill.u.s.trative collections free of duty, and the Secretary now says that the sale or distribution of articles imported in this way will not be allowed. They must be retained in the inst.i.tutions that bring them into the country. It is quite probable that advantage has sometimes been taken of the law's liberality in this respect, but we fear this circular will really defeat the purpose of the law. Collections of all kinds in colleges and schools are kept up by a system of exchange, which is very necessary to them on account of the small sums of money at their disposal. To break up this system in the case of European specimens would be especially hard, for each inst.i.tution would then be forced to import single specimens at much greater cost and trouble; or what is more likely, it would be found cheaper to pay the duty; that is, purchase through a dealer. So long as the exchange is confined to the circle of inst.i.tutions which the law was designed to benefit, we cannot see that its provisions are unduly taken advantage of.

A HYGIENIC SCHOOL.

Dr. Agnew, the celebrated oculist of New York, has indicated his idea of a school for little children, in which health should be a first consideration, as follows: "If we could effect some alterations in the style of school architecture in our school houses, especially the primary departments, it would be a great desideratum. One of the greatest evils at present existing is the method of constructing the school room and of conducting the same. I never could understand why children of the primary age are kept sitting on benches for a large number of hours at a time. School houses ought to be built like the hospital building at the corner of Lexington avenue and Forty-second street, used for cripples, where there is in the upper story a large room, called the solarium, which is in fact a large play room, exposed to the sun, where these little ones are kept the greater part of the time. The upper story of the school houses should be so constructed; and children should be encouraged to bring their toys and playthings with them; and then, instead of changing the age of admission from four years, it might be kept as it is; and instead of shortening the hours of attendance, lengthen them. Of course it should be taken for granted that the school house is constructed for the accommodation of the poor children, and in this light it would be better that such children should spend most of the day in school houses having good sanitary conditions, rather than, as they now do, in tenement houses. Thus you would have these primary schools with plenty of air and light, which you can get in the upper story, and children would be glad to come early, and remain until three or four o'clock, or even later in the afternoon."