POPULAR SCIENCE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXVII, Issue 7, 9 January 1886, Page 5

POPULAR SCIENCE.

An Italian astronomer declares that the planet Mars is peopled by intelligent beings, who are trying to attract attention from dwellors on this planet. He is now engaged in making experiments with a view to discover what the messages mean.

In the Qerman army salicylic suet is now universally used for foot sores, sores from' riding, etc., and iB found much more satisfactory than the salicylic powder which was formerly employed. The salicylic suet is composed of 2 parts of pure salicylic acid and 98 parts of the best mutton suet. Dr. Mazzotti tells of a man who had a scorbutic affection, which he set about to cure with whisky. He got well of this trouble, but became a hard drinker, and soon found himself the victim pf a rare disease called opisthoporia. 'this curious affection consists in inability to walk forward. When tho patient was told to advance he used every effort to do so, but could only succeed in going backward, and he continued to do so until ho'died.

The Paris correspondent of the " Medical Times" says that 'Hhe dqctrine of premonitory diarrhoea in cholera is quite knocked on the head by the clinical ob servation of facts. It must now be allowed that an attack of cholera may be as sudden as a flash of lightning, however unpalatable the plain truth may be." The cause of the unpalatability of the truth seems to be that Buch facts tend to upset the germ theory, which so many scientists considered fairly proved. Mr Hippolyte Fontaine asserts that he is quite convinced that, in the present state of knowledge regarding the construction of electric machines, it is practically impossible to transmit 100-horse-power with a single generator dynamo-electric apparatus through a resistance of 100 ohms even for ene hour. The Criel experiments of M. Marcel Deprez cannot, therefore, in his opinion, be carried out under the conditions laid down.

A writer in the " Rueskaia Meditz " Bays that he has bad great suocesß in the cure of over three hundred cases of acute and chronic catarrh, or cold in the head, by the use of icecold water. The legs, from the knees downward, are washed with it in the morning and atnight, and rubbed vigorously with a coarse towel. It is necessary to do this for two days only, and many patients are said to have been cured in one day.

A photographic chart of a section of the Milky Way has been obtained at the Paris Observatory, presenting to view about 5,000 stars, ranging from tbe sixth to the fifteenth magnitude. There are 41,000 superficial degrees in the firmament. A representation of the whole, completed in the same way, would require 6,000 similar sections, forming 1,500. elliptical pharts. Such a work would contain the photographß of 20,000,000 stars down to the fourteenth and fifteenth magnitudes.