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The Colorado Canon To the Editor of the Scientific Amkricax: Your article last week on the Colorado Canon was very interesting; but the Hance trail, while it may be the shortest, is not considered the safest and easiest. My daughters, two young ladies, were there in the summer of 1902, and went down the Bright Angel trail, a good portion of the way with horses, and the rest of the way' on their own feet, without any ropes, and entirely without the assistance of the guide, except to show them the way, and scrambled up again, also without assistance, to their horses, and while the way was rough, at no point was it absolutely dangerous if proper caution is exercised. The horses were thoroughly trained, and went the whole distance any guidance except to follow the guide's horse, My daughters let them take their own way, as instructed to do by the guide.S. S. Myers. Philadelphia, June 29, 1904. Narrow-Gage Railroads. To the Editor of the Scientific American: I have read with interest the articles on narrow- gage railroads in your issues of May 21 and June 11. I am well acquainted with the D.&R. G. R. R. of Colorado, and its construction was a wonderful achievement at the time it was built, some twenty-five years ago. In 1899 I, as general manager of the E. P.&N. E. Railway, constructed the branch known as the Alamogordo&Sacramento Mountain Railway in New Mexico. The distance from Alamogordo to Cloudcroft is 26 miles. The aHitude of Alamogordo is 4,300, and of Cloudcroft 9,000 feet. The road is standard gage, 30 deg. curvature and 5.2 per cent gradient at its maximums. This road equals the D.&R. G. R. R. in its maximum of curvature, and exceeds it by 1.2 per cent in gradient, and has been in thoroughly successful operation ever since its completion. J. A. Ebdy. El Paso, Tex. , June 21, 1904. The New Element Europium. In 1892 De Boisbaudran observed a spectrum in the case of certain solutions containing samarium which was characterized by three rays lying near together 1 466.2, 462.7, and 459.3. These he supposed to belong to a new element and he designated it by the letters Ze In another case he observed with several similar products a fluorescent band which was included between the rays 1 622 and 611. This element he designated by Later on, Demargay succeeded in isolating a new earth from the oxides of this group and he called the new element europium. This latter element has the spectral characteristics of Ze and ZJ. The solutions also have a slight absorption spectrum for which he determined the wave-length. The new element exists in a very small quantity. as compared with samarium and gadolinum. It lies between these two in the series of rare earths. Demargay obtained it by eighteen fractional operations. More recently this work has been taken up by Messrs. Urbani and Lacombe, and they have separated the europium in sufficient quantity to determine. the atomic weight. They used 610 grammes of oxides which represented the portion containing europium, coming from the treatment of one toil or more of monazite sands. These oxides contain samarium and gadolinum for the greater part. The europium was separated by a series of fractional operations which required three thousand crystallizations in all. The monazite sands are found to contain about 0.00002 of europium oxide. They also formed the sulphate of europium. After precipitating by alcohol, the neutral sulphate is crystallized from an aqueous solution and this salt has the formula Eu2 (S0,)3.8H,,0. It forms well-defined crystals of a slightly pinkish hue. It is not altered in the air, but takes the anhydrous form about 375 deg. C. The anhydrous sulphate is calcined at 1,600 deg. C., and becomes transformed into oxide. When thus prepared the oxide has a well-defined rose color, the oxide which is formed at a low tempera uy calcining the oxalates is almost white. The atomic weight of europium has been calculated very closely by three different methods and the results are almost identical, fixing the atomic weight at 151.79, within a small percentage. <> The Current Supplement. The current Si i'pi.ement, No. 1488, opens with a very exhaustive and fully illustrated article on the Willamette Meteorite by Henry A. Ward. In an article by William J. S. Lockyer, A New Epoch in Solar Physics is described. Herbert G. Wells, whose scientific phantasies have earned for him an international reputation, discusses the discovery of til,- future. Mr. P. L. Sclater of the Royal Society tells .iiuch that is interesting of the Tasmanian wolf. The 7:oelly steam turbine is fully described. The article by Messrs. Stromeyer and Baron on Water Softeners is continued.
