Spanish Protestant Church Proposed to be Built at Madrid


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Among the changes wrought hy the recent Spanish Revolution, are the estahlishment of the right of trial by jury and freedom of religious worship. Several Protestant rooms for preaching the (iospel have been opened at Madrid, and it is now proposed to erect the First Protestant Church. In connection with the historical importance of this event, our read-era will be interested in the architectural design of this church, an engraving of which we herewith present, M.Juan Madrazo being the architect. The elevation is that of the west end of the building. To the Madrid committee tlie municipal corporation have granted, gratuitously, a piece of ground 17,000 square feet in extent, for the purpose of building this church. The entrance to the building will be at the west front, through a sort of cloister or narthex, separating the baptistery from the body of the church, above which the clock and bell tower, with a perforated stone spire, will rise about 155 feet high. Entering the church, there will be found accommodation for 600 persons in open seats. A small court will separate the chancel from the schools and clergyman's house,form-a rear wing. These build ings will be of stone (a kind of Bath stone). Both nave and chancel will have an open timber roof, supported by arches built of brick, spanned across. In the center of the transept a louver in the roof will be provided for ventilation, taking externally the appearance of a spire. This and the roofs will be covered with slates and lead. The cost of the whole is estimated at 10,-000. oil l'"rcsli OTcat Preservation, ly .IToIiii fJaniccc, After many trials, the process which was found to act best was the exhaustion of air from the vessel containing the meat to be preserved, and the introduction of various vapors. Among other substances, the following were tried : Ozone, chloroform, ether, tetrachloride of carbon, bichloride of methylene, carbolic acid, chlorine, hydrochloric acid, and binoxide of nitrogen ; but these were ultimately abandoned for sulphurous acid, introduced into the preserving vessel condensed in the pores of charcoal. " I believe," writes Mr. Gamgee, " that charcoal, saturated with sixty-five times its volume of sulphurous acid, will remain, to the end of days, the cheapest, most manageable, and most universally employed antiseptic that the meat preserver can use. It is, perhaps, bold to predict, that which I do with the greatest confidence, that charcoal and sulphurous acid will, in a few years' time, to a great extent, supersede the use of salt." For various reasons, however, sulphurous | acid could not be used alone ; and the experiments of Hoppe Seyler suggested the simultaneous employment of carbonic oxide, as it was found to preserve the color of the meat and to expel the oxygen from the tissues ; it also acted as a neutral gas to surround the meat in air-tight vessels in place of atmospheric air. The meat to be preserved was placed in a vessel capable of being exhausted by an air-pump ; lumps of charcoal saturated with sulphurous acid were then added, and the vessel was exhausted as completely as possible ; carbonic oxide was then introduced until the normal atmospheric pressure prevailed within the preserving vessel. Meat thus preserved was found to keep perfectly, not alone in closed cans, but in open vessels, and it could not be distinguished, as regards taste, from recently killed meat. Of course the chief obstacle to the adoption of the process is the expensive nature of the apparatus, and attempts have been made to displace the oxygen from the neighborhood of the meat, by driving carbonic acid through the preserving vessel by means of a fan ; it is obvious, however, that the tissues would still remain charged with oxygen. Whatever may be the value of this process on the large scale, there can be no doubt that few inventions could, at the present time, be of greater value to the human race at large than one which would secure the utilization, as food, of the thousands of tuns of meat which are now wasted in Australia and Texas, and the Argentine Eepublic. To allow myriads of oxen to attain maturity, and to destroy them for the sake of their skins alone, seems an act comparable to that of the Roman Emperor who caused several hundred flamingoes to be destroyed that he might be provided with a dish of their tongues.

Scientific American Magazine Vol 21 Issue 19This article was published with the title “Spanish Protestant Church Proposed to be Built at Madrid” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 21 No. 19 (), p. 292
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican11061869-292

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