into parlors, and some day
will entirely replace the magic lantern therein. The excitement caused
by the catastrophe at the Charity Bazar is now calmed, and it has been
ascertained that the accident was not due to the lamp of the
projector, but to a carelessly handled can of ether. So the extension
of this sort of spectacle, momentarily arrested, is taking a new
impetus, which will be further aided by the apparatus under
consideration, for the description of which and the illustrations we
are indebted to La Nature.

* * * * *

THE RECLAIMING OF OLD RUBBER.

By HAWTHORNE HILL.

The complaint of high prices of India rubber is as old as the rubber
industry, one result of which has been an unceasing effort to discover
a practical substitute. Never was the secret of the transmutation of
metals sought more persistently by ancient philosophers than the
secret of an artificial rubber has been by modern chemists, but, thus
far, the one search has been hardly more successful than the other.
One discovery has been made, however, by which our rubber supplies
have been so far conserved that, for the want of it, we might be
obliged now to pay double the current prices for new rubber. This is
the reclaiming of rubber from worn-out goods, in a condition fit for
use again in almost every class of products of the rubber factory.

Soon after the vulcanization of rubber became fully established,
attempts began to be made to "devulcanize" the scrap and cuttings of
rubber which accumulated in the factories. So extensive were these
accumulations that one company are reported to have built a road with
rubber scrap through a swamp adjacent to their factory, while most
other manufacturers were unable to find even so profitable a use for
their wastes. As time advanced there came to be large stocks, also, of
worn-out rubber goods, such as car springs and the like, all of which
appealed to a practical mind here and there as being of possible
value, since the price of new rubber kept climbing up all the while.

No fewer than nineteen patents were granted in the United States for
"improvements in devulcanizing India rubber," or "restoring waste
vulcanized rubber," beginning in 1855, or eleven years after the date
of Goodyear's patent for the vulcanization process. In that year
Francis Baschnagel obtained a patent for restoring vulcanized rubber
to a soft, plastic, workable state, by treating it with alcoh