This result, no doubt, might be near enough to the truth to serve all practical purposes in the application of this mechanism to its original object, which was that of paring apples, impaled upon the fork K; but it can hardly be regarded as entirely satisfactory in a general way; nor can the analysis which renders such a result possible.

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THE PANTANEMONE.

The need of irrigating prairies, inundating vines, drying marshes, and accumulating electricity cheaply has, for some time past, led to a search for some means of utilizing the forces of nature better than has ever hitherto been done.  Wind, which figures in the first rank as a force, has thus far, with all the mills known to us, rendered services that are much inferior to those that we have a right to expect from it with improved apparatus; for the work produced, whatever the velocity of the wind, has never been greater than that that could be effected by wind of seven meters per second.  But, thanks to the experiments of recent years, we are now obtaining an effective performance double that which we did with apparatus on the old system.

Desirous of making known the efforts that have been made in this direction, we lately described Mr. Dumont’s atmospheric turbine.  In speaking of this apparatus we stated that aerial motors generally stop or are destroyed in high winds.  Recently, Mr. Sanderson has communicated to us the result of some experiments that he has been making for years back by means of an apparatus which he styles a pantanemone.

The engraving that we give of this machine shows merely a cabinet model of it; and it goes without saying that it is simply designed to exhibit the principle upon which its construction is based.

[Illustration:  THE PANTANEMONE.]

Two plane surfaces in the form of semicircles are mounted at right angles to each other upon a horizontal shaft, and at an angle of 45 deg. with respect to the latter.  It results from this that the apparatus will operate (even without being set) whatever be the direction of the wind, except when it blows perpendicularly upon the axle, thus permitting (owing to the impossibility of reducing the surfaces) of three-score days more work per year being obtained than can be with other mills.  Three distinct apparatus have been successively constructed.  The first of these has been running for nine years in the vicinity of Poissy, where it lifts about 40,000 liters of water to a height of 20 meters every 24 hours, in a wind of a velocity of from 7 to 8 meters per second.  The second raises about 150,000 liters of water to the Villejuif reservoir, at a height of 10 meters, every 24 hours, in a wind of from 5 to 6 meters.  The third supplies the laboratory of the Montsouris observatory.

The first is not directible, the second may be directed by hand, and the third is directed automatically.  These three machines defied the hurricane of the 26th of last January.—­La Nature.