Science & Invention

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 661, 10 February 1909, Page 7

Science & Invention

The effects on the body of high-fre-quency electric currents have now been traced by two French experimenters to increase of body temperature. This gives them value in arterio-sclerosis ,nardening of the arteries), Blight's disease, and other maladies, and as a mild substitute for warm-baths and other heat applications.

Helium has at last been liquefied by Professor Onnes. It was the only gas known to resist liquefaction. Intense cold and great pressure are needed for the work which, it is believed, may lead to valuable and important results. IS THE EARTH DRYING UP? Extraordinary Diminution of Rainfall. That the annual rainfall has been lessening ever sinoe the glacial period, and that the end will be a dry and parched earth, unable to sustain life, is asserted by G. Guilbert, a French meteorologist. The progressive diminution of rainfall is a fact that is becoming better and better established, and even universally known. As meteorological observations are perfected and prolonged, the phenomenon is more and mo.c certain, and forces itself upon our notice.

Besides the Calvados Commission, which noted it in 1894, and many others since, the Meteorological Commission of Meurthe-et-Moselle has just made an important contribution to the study of this question, which is so important for the future of the whole globe. The learned secretary of this Commission, Mr. Millot, Professor of Meteorology in the Faculty of Sciences at Nancy, has analysed the results of 30 years of observation, and gives the following as the average rainfalls for fiveyear periods at Nancy : Years. Millimeters. 1878-1882 896.1 1883-1887 794.0 1888-1892 760.4 1893-1897 680.5 1898-1902 688.9 1903-1907 628.1 This diminution of rain at Nancy is truly impressive; it is even more rapid than that at Calvados. While the rainfall passes here from an average of 596.1 to 628.1, or a diminution of 268 millimeters, the corresponding years at St. Honorine-du-Fay show only a decrease of 157.3. The extraordinary importance of the figures noted at Nancy causes Mr. Millot to say that "if the rainfall should continue to decrease in the same proportion, before the end of a century France would become another Sahara, without its heat." But he adds— Is the drvness goino- to increase indefinitely ?" We may reassure ourselves on this point. We have to do here only with oscillations of somewhat long periods, which appear in all natural phenomena. In nature everything vibrates, everything oscillates, the molecule as well as the ocean, and the more the rainfall decreases, the nearer will come the time when it will begin to increase. Perhaps this is not far distant." „, Nothing- could be truer. The rainfall cannot go on decreasing constantly at this speed. It is certain that a natural law should bring about a rainy period after a drv period. Without this oscillatorv phenomenon, as Professor Millot well says, France would

be a Sahara before another century. But even admitting this periodic oscillation, we may nevertheless affirm, basing our statement on both the universality and continuity of the observations, that the diminution of rainfall is a persistent and progressive,phenomenon, which nothing- has checked since the origin of rain on the globe, at least since the glacial period, and which nothing will modify in the future.