Part 6

The same remarks apply to coins and other objects. Every week I receive requests to price old silver and copper coins, and when I reply that the U.S. coins are worth their face, and that the foreign coins are usually worth their weight as old silver, I do so convinced that my correspondents will feel disappointed. Previous to 1834 most of the silver money used in the U.S. was Spanish. Millions of these coins are still in existence, and to-day they are not current in any country, and are bought up by coin-dealers at about forty-five per cent. of their face value, and are melted into bullion.

Old Roman and Greek coins are found in large quantities every year in tombs and in the ruins of old houses. Messrs. Hunt and Grenfell found two large jars of Roman silver and gold coins in Lower Egypt last winter in which were over 4000 coins in perfect preservation. The latest coins were those of Hadrian (A.D. 138) and Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 161). All over Europe, Asia, and Africa similar finds are frequent. In June, 1833, some boys found a box containing 7000 coins, which were mostly English, of the reigns of William the Conqueror (A.D. 1066) and William Rufus (A.D. 1109). In 1832 the sexton of Hexham Church, while digging a grave, found a brass bucket containing over 8000 coins of the early Saxon Kings of England (about A.D. 800). In High Wycombe a shepherd boy found a large number of British gold coins which had been hidden over 1800 years. In 1831 a chest containing over 200,000 coins of Edward I. and II. (about A.D. 1300) was unearthed at Tutbury, and not far from this find another box was dug up containing over 7000 gold and silver coins, mostly Saxon (about A.D. 850), but containing many foreign coins. It was probably the entire stock of some money-broker who was obliged to flee for his life.

This list of great finds could be continued indefinitely, but enough has been said to show how common old coins are. The old Greek gold coins are scarce, and lately a demand for these has arisen, which has pushed up prices to nearly double what they were a year ago. Ordinary coins remain the same. Now nothing is more interesting than a collection of coins. For instance, specimens of the common coins of all countries and all ages. They are just as interesting as if they were all rare, and can be picked up at small prices with patience and a little going about. Gold coins would, of course, be out of the question, but copper and silver illustrate the different periods just as well. I know a collector who has over 500 coins, no two of the same reign, and representing over one hundred different countries. They give the owner and his friends much pleasure and information, and their entire cost was less than $125.

PHILATUS.

ADVERTISEMENTS.

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This Department is conducted in the Interest of Bicyclers, and the Editor will be pleased to answer any question on the subject. Our maps and tours contain many valuable data kindly supplied from the official maps and road-books of the League of American Wheelmen. Recognizing the value of the work being done by the L.A.W., the Editor will be pleased to furnish subscribers with membership blanks and information so far as possible.

This week we begin describing the trip from Chicago to Waukesha. A trip in the vicinity of Waukesha was given last week as being one of the best rides in that part of the country. The quickest way, of course, to reach Waukesha is by train, but it is a pleasant ride all the way from Chicago there on the wheel, and there is no reason why a wheelman with some time on his hands should not begin his journey at Chicago instead of at Waukesha. There are several ways of reaching Waukesha, but the one that we shall give in the next three weeks is usually considered the best, since it goes through the most attractive country, and over, on the whole, the best roads, although the distance is somewhat greater than by one or two other routes.

The first stage will be from the Court-House in Chicago to Wheeling, a distance of about twenty-five miles. Leave the Court-House, and run out Washington Boulevard, through Union Park to Hoyne Avenue; then turning to the right into this, run to North Avenue, and turn here sharp to the right, and a moment later to the left into Milwaukee Avenue. Milwaukee Avenue runs out beyond Grayland, turns here slightly to the northward, and crosses the railroad track. It is what used to be called the old toll road, and crosses the railroad track at Jefferson Park. Immediately after crossing turn to the left, and follow the track up through Norwood Park, which is two miles further on, thence through Canfield to Park Ridge, and at Park Ridge leave the railroad track and turn right into the road that runs northward. This should be followed as marked on the map, with a sharp turn to the left and right about a mile out of Park Ridge, and a mile further on another sharp turn to the right, bringing the rider again into Milwaukee Avenue. Here keep to the left, and run northwestward through Grove to West Northfield, seven miles from Park Ridge. Thence the road zigzags three or four miles on to Wheeling.

The road most of the way is reasonably good, partly block pavement, and partly ordinary country road in good condition. The run can easily be made in two hours by a moderately good rider; in three hours by any one who is able to ride twenty-five miles. If the rider has time it is well worth while to do this ride in the morning, and spend the afternoon at Wheeling, or running out here and there in the vicinity of that town--to Deerfield, for example, and back. Or it is quite possible to make the next stage of the journey to Waukesha in the afternoon, and this will be given in the coming week.

NOTE.--Map of New York city asphalted streets in No. 809. Map of routes from New York to Tarrytown in No. 810. New York to Stamford, Connecticut, in No. 811. New York to Staten Island in No. 812. New Jersey from Hoboken to Pine Brook in No. 813. Brooklyn in No. 814. Brooklyn to Babylon in No. 815. Brooklyn to Northport in No. 816. Tarrytown to Poughkeepsie in No. 817. Poughkeepsie to Hudson in No. 818. Hudson to Albany in No. 819. Tottenville to Trenton in No. 820. Trenton to Philadelphia in No. 821. Philadelphia in No. 822. Philadelphia-Wissahickon Route in No. 823. Philadelphia to West Chester in No. 824. Philadelphia to Atlantic City--First Stage in No. 825; Second Stage in No. 826. Philadelphia to Vineland--First Stage in No. 827; Second Stage in No. 828. New York to Boston--Second Stage in No. 829; Third Stage in No. 830; Fourth Stage in No. 831; Fifth Stage in No 832; Sixth Stage in No. 833. Boston to Concord in No. 834. Boston in No. 835. Boston to Gloucester in No. 836. Boston to Newburyport in No. 837. Boston to New Bedford in No. 838. Boston to South Framingham in No. 839. Boston to Nahant in No. 840. Boston to Lowell in No. 841. Boston to Nantasket Beach in No 842. Boston Circuit Ride in No. 843. Philadelphia to Washington--First Stage in No. 844; Second Stage in No. 845; Third Stage in No. 846; Fourth Stage in No. 847; Fifth Stage in No. 848. City of Washington in No. 849. City of Albany in No. 854; Albany to Fonda in No. 855; Fonda to Utica in No. 856: Utica to Syracuse in No. 857; Syracuse to Lyons in No. 858; Lyons to Rochester in No. 859; Rochester to Batavia in No. 860; Batavia to Buffalo in No. 861; Poughkeepsie to Newtown in No. 864; Newtown to Hartford in No. 865; New Haven to Hartford in No. 866; Hartford to Springfield in No. 867; Hartford to Canaan in No. 868; Canaan to Pittsfield in No 869; Hudson to Pittsfield in No. 870. City of Chicago in No. 874.

Any questions in regard to photograph matters will be willingly answered by the Editor of this column, and we should be glad to hear from any of our club who can make helpful suggestions.

MYSTERY OF SILVER PRINTING--(_Continued_).

Chemists have proved that no substance is sensitive to light when perfectly pure and kept by itself in a dry place. If silver chloride is placed in a glass tube, the air exhausted, and the tube hermetically sealed, it may be exposed to sunlight, and will remain unchanged in color.

The action of light on the silver chloride is to separate the chlorine from the silver, but there must be some substance with which the chlorine will combine, or the light will not decompose the chloride. (Decompose is to separate the parts composing a compound body.)

For purposes of photography some substance must be used which will combine very quickly with the silver, and such a substance is found in silver nitrate. The chlorine set free by the action of light combines at once with the pure silver in the nitrate of silver. The chemical nature of the dark-colored substance produced by the action of light on the silver chloride is not yet fully determined, but most chemists agree that the silver chloride, when decomposed by light, produces silver sub-chloride and chlorine. (A sub-chloride is a chloride which contains more of the base than the acid. A molecule of silver chloride contains one atom of silver and one of chlorine, while a molecule of sub-chloride contains _two_ atoms of silver and one atom of chlorine.)

This silver chloride is white, but passes through different shades of coloring, from a reddish-violet to a deep purplish-black, according to the length of time it is exposed to the light.

When paper coated with a sensitive silver solution is placed under a negative and exposed to the sun, the light reaches the paper through different degrees of thickness, or density, in the gelatine film. In the part of the negative which represents the sky the film is quite thick, while in the part which represents the deep shadows it is thin, sometimes being almost transparent. The part of the paper which is under the portion of the negative representing the sky is scarcely affected by the light, but in that part representing the shadows the light acts at once, and quickly decomposes the silver chloride. When the paper is taken from the printing-frame it contains different grades of the deposit formed by the action of light on the silver chloride.

NOTE.--The first article in the series of "Chemistry of Photography" was published in No. 867 (June 9). This article was on the chemical elements, and contained the following paragraph:

"Each element is represented by a symbol, this symbol being the first letter or letters of the name of the element. The symbol of hydrogen is 'H': of oxygen is 'O'; of gold, 'Au,' the first two letters of the word 'Aurum,' the Latin name for gold. Each symbol also stands for the weight of one of its atoms. (An atom is supposed to be the smallest possible division of a substance.) Hydrogen is the _lightest_ element known, and is taken as the standard of weight when comparing the weight of other atoms. The symbol 'H' would therefore not only stand for the element hydrogen, but for its atomic weight, 1, or a unit. An atom of oxygen is _sixteen_ times as heavy as an atom of hydrogen, and an atom of gold is 196 times as heavy."

In the next number of the ROUND TABLE a list of the chemicals mentioned was given, but either through a typographical error or an error in copy, the weight of hydrogen was given as "11," and that of oxygen as "12." It should have been hydrogen "1," and oxygen "16." Those who read the first paper would of course perceive the mistake; but this correction is made for those who may not have seen the first article, or may have forgotten the explanation.

CAPTAIN JACK AND THE CANNIBALS.

"Well! well! well!" said old Captain Jack, as Bobbie and Tom appeared before him on the beach in front of the Ocean House. "You boys back again, eh? Why, do you know, I never expected to see ye again? For a fact I didn't."

"Why not?" asked Bobbie.

"Why not?" echoed the old seafarer, as he leaned back against the old wreck and laughed. "Why not? Why, I takes the town paper, I does, an' las' winter I seed a squib in the town paper as said that two hungry cannabiles had descended on New York city, an' et up the whole poppylation. Mebbe you didn't belong to the poppylation. Some folks don't join everything there is a-goin'. Wasn't ye et up?"

"How you do talk!" said Bobbie. "If we had been eaten up how should we be here?"

"Simple enough! simple enough!" returned the old Captain, pulling away on his pipe. "I was et up once, therefore why not ye, says I," he added.

"Eaten up? You?" cried Tom. "How could that be? You are here, aren't you?"

"Yes, I be," returned the Captain. "But so also are you in spite of the fact that ar town paper says that two cannabiles has et up the poppylation of New York. If it's a-comin' to manufacture apologizing, it's your turn first."

"Well," said Tom, "we don't want to make you mad, Captain Jack. If two cannibals ate up the population of New York, we escaped. Maybe we were in the back of the pantry, where they couldn't find us," he added, with a sly wink at Bobbie.

"That's where I was," said Bobbie, resolved to be on good terms with the Captain anyhow. "I heard our next-door neighbors hollering away like everything, so I and my whole family hid away behind the ice-box."

"Exactly," said Captain Jack, with a smile. "You was sensible, you was; an' so you escaped being et, but I never had no such luck. Cannabiles got hold of me oncet, an' if it hadn't been for my presence o' mind I wouldn't ha' been here now."

"Why, what did they do?" asked Tom.

"They et every bit o' me except my head," said Jack. "First they et my feet, then my legs, then my arms, an' then the rest o' me, except my head"--and Captain Jack sighed as he thought of it. "An' I tell ye, boys," he added, with a sad shake of his head, "it hurt awful, 'specially when they were pickin' my bones."

"But you're here now!" cried Bob.

"Yes," said Captain Jack; "but from my collar down I'm false. I've one wooden leg, one cork leg--which keeps me up when I go in swimmin'--one wax arm, and another arm which I've growed since the cataract."

"Cataract?" said Bob.

"Cat-as-trophe, I guess you mean," said Tom.

"One o' the two. I dun'no' which," said the old sailor. "I ain't never been particular about cats."

And then he rose up and walked away, leaving the two boys wishing they had brought a few pins along with them to stick into him to see whether his legs were really cork and wood, as he had said.

* * * * *

AN EXPLANATION.

"Jacky, you ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Mrs. Harkins to her boy. "Mr. Hayseed tells me you picked all his cantaloupes and threw them into the well."

"I did it for you," pleaded Jacky.

"Me?" cried his mother.

"Yes, I did," said Jacky. "They was only muskmelons, and you said you liked watermelons best, so I put 'em in the well."

* * * * *

STARVED TO DEATH

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Catching and Mounting Butterflies.

Will you kindly tell me how to catch, how to kill without pain, how to mount, and on what to mount butterflies?

ZELL STEEVER. "THE CAIRO," WASHINGTON, D. C.

To properly catch butterflies for a collection do not use your hat or your fingers. Provide a net as shown in the illustration. Bend a light wire so as to form a hoop ten inches across, and fasten the two ends into a section of a fishing-rod or other light pole about four feet long. Over this hoop stretch netting as shown. Immediately the fly is in the net turn the hoop over, that it may not escape. If it be of large size, catch it at the base of the wings by your thumb and finger. Press hard enough to kill, but not to crush the body. If of small size, or if it does not hold its wings above its back, put your killing-bottle inside the net, drive the fly inside it, and let the poison do the rest. This killing-bottle is of glass, with a large mouth, and has a cork that projects sufficiently to be easily handled. Into the bottle put a piece of cyanide of potassium as big as a chestnut, and pour over it, to depth enough to cover it, plaster of Paris, letting the latter harden.

To mount butterflies prepare a setting-board as shown in the illustration. Put the body into the groove, as here shown, and then, using a fine needle, spread the wings well, the front wings being quite well forward, and the hind wings well away from the body. Get the antennæ in position, and put two pins crossed under the abdomen so it does not fall. Put over the wings pieces of stiff cardboard, as in the cut, and bind them down with the string. Let them be on the setting-boards one week after you think them thoroughly dry. If insects become too dry to spread they can be softened by putting them, for a few hours, into a closed jar in which there is wet sand.

There are various ways of arranging a permanent butterfly collection, but the best way is to provide a light box, two inches deep and 20x24 inches square. Have the bottom of cork, and over the top put a cover with glass in it. Cover the cork bottom with white paper. Insects should be arranged as they are classified in science, each with a label below the insect giving scientific name, date and place of capture, and with both sexes present. With each ought to be placed the other stages of its life, if possible: egg, caterpillar, pupa, and cocoon, if it makes one. Some prefer to set insects on pins arranged to show their color to the best advantage, but this is not so good a plan from a scientific point of view. Designs might be a crown, a star, a wasp, or a butterfly, using beetles, wasps, and dragon-flies to vary colors.

* * * * *

Storing and Transferring Wheat.

In this city are stored vast quantities of wheat. This wheat has to be kept somewhere between crops, so to speak. Formerly it was stored in great wooden structures called elevators. You have seen such buildings, of course. But there were two serious objections to wooden buildings for keeping grain. One was that rats, weevils, and worms easily got through the wood. The other was the danger from fire, and the consequently increased cost of insurance.

In Toledo the experiment was first tried of erecting immense steel tanks for storing grain. These tanks would not burn, and rats could not dig through them. Furthermore, they can be made air-tight, and hence they preserve the grain.

A short distance from here, on the line of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway, a new method has just been tried for putting wheat into and getting it out of these tanks. The grain is transferred by a system of tubes, through which are strong air-currents, and the wheat is carried by the air just as a chip is carried along by a stream of water. These air-tight tanks make the flour you eat better than formerly, and the tubes for transferring the wheat lessen its cost.

FRANK F. CLARK. TOLEDO, O.

* * * * *

Answers to Kinks.

No. 14.--Pope Gregory IX. Found by using capitals.

* * * * *

No. 15.--Spear, pear, ear, ar.

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No. 16.--Hot-ten-tot. An-a-gram, Mush-room.

* * * * *

No. 17.

Turtle, cod, salmon, duck, goose, onion, pea, olive, tongue, orange, plum, strawberry, sugar, milk, cold water.

* * * * *

No. 18.

1, General Sher (Shire) man. 2, U. S. Grant. 3, B. Franklin. 4, Chauncey Depew (chance, seedy, pew). 5, Salmon Portland Chase. 6, P. T. Barnum (pea, tea, bar, numb). 7, Patrick Henry (pat, rick, hen, rye). 8, Abraham Lincoln (a, bray, ham, lin, con). 9, G. Washington (gee, washing, ton). 10, James A. Garfield. 11, Noah Porter. 12, Phil Sheridan (fill, sherry, den). 13, Daniel Webster (Dan, yell, web, star). 14, Benjamin Harrison. 15, Henry Ward Beecher (hen, reward, beech, err). 16, Oliver Wendell Holmes (olive, are, double u, homes.) 17, Thomas Edison. 18, J. Russell Lowell (jay, russ, cell, low, well). 19, Kit Carson. 20, Captain Kidd (cap, tun, kid).

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Questions and Answers.

"Can you tell a New York city boy, who is interested in architecture, where he can get a chance, without expense, to read the illustrated architectural papers or magazines as they come out? Can you suggest the names of those which are best suited to help a boy ambitious to become familiar with this study?" You can read all the periodicals and books on this subject contained in the Astor and Cooper Institute libraries free of expense. Consult the _Architectural News_, which you will find on the Institute table; also _Gunton's Magazine_--advertisements as well as contents. Lewis J. Mather: No pins of the Order are in stock just now. Notice will be given on this page when a new stock is ready. "Would-be-Marine" should read the article by Admiral Gherardi in _Harper's Round Table_ for June 30 last. He can procure it through any dealer or direct from the publishers for five cents. In it he is told in great detail how to enter the navy, the requirements, pay, and chances of promotion.

Will "H. K. M.", an autograph-collector, send us his or her full name and address? A Knight in France writes: "Will any Western Knight or Lady write to Sir Victor Cartier, 3 Rue Beauregard, Troyes, Aube, France, how farmers are making their own oatmeal, and about sweet-corn culture? He shall answer them any question concerning France. Sir Victor would like, too, to trade French stamps with people living in Africa, South America, China, Australia." Josephus Cinquemont: Ask your newsdealer for HARPER'S ROUND TABLE, which is HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE under a different name. You give no address. To insure a reply it is always best to send your address. Evon Foucht, 105 Bank Street, Dayton, O., is interested in magic, and wants correspondents who have ideas to trade with him. He is informed, in answer to his question, that the St. George and the Greek crosses are one and the same in form--as nearly as the types will allow us, this +. Look in Webster for a picture of the Greek cross. The St. George is not given there.