SACCHARINE.--This new substance said to be 200 times as sweet as sugar is manufactured from coal tar. It was discovered about six years ago in the laboratory of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, by Prof. Remsen and a student named Fahlberg, who has since taken out patents upon it. It is greatly superior to sugar, as it is free from fermentation and decomposition. A small quantity added to starch or glucose will make a compound equal to sugar in sweetness. It is a valuable antiseptic and has valuable medical properties. SUGAR has been discovered to have great value as an addition to mortar, as it has a solvent action on lime. An English builder wrote an important letter to the authorities of Charleston, S. C., on this subject, after that city had suffered from the earthquake. ARTIFICIAL IVORY.--We shall no longer need the elephant for ivory. Compounds of a celluloid character, made from cotton waste, can now be made hard as ivory, or flexible or soft as we wish. White and transparent, or brilliantly colored, it can be handled like wood cut and carved, or applied as a varnish. An artificial ivory of creamy whiteness and great hardness is now made from good potatoes washed in diluted sulphuric acid, and then boiled in the same solution until they become solid and dense. They are then washed free of the acid and slowly dried. This ivory can be dyed and turned, and made useful in many ways. PAPER PIANOS.--Pianos have lately been made from paper in Germany, instead of wood, with great improvement in the tone. SOCIAL DEGENERACY OF THE WEALTHY.--The _Boston Herald_ says: "The spirit of the age is censorious. There is no doubt of that, or that with every new day the tendency toward pessimism increases. But even taking these facts into consideration, there is no denying that the young man about town of the nineteenth century is a blot upon our boasted modern civilization. His is not a pleasant figure to contemplate, though it is one that we all see very often and know very well--clothed irreproachably in the most expensive raiment that London tailors and unlimited credit can supply. He lives lazily and luxuriously on his father's money and his wife's, and, being after his natural term of days laid away in a tomb at Mt. Auburn, ends his existence without making any more impression upon the world's history than a falling rose leaf, or an August cricket's faintest chirp."