Scientific.

Auckland Star, Volume XVII, Issue 43, 20 February 1886, Page 5

Scientific.

Oleoze, the favourite German preparation for disguising the taste of most unpleasant remedies, is said to have this composition : One part each of the oils of lavender, cloves, cinnamon, thyme, mace and orange flower, threo parts of balsam of Peru, and 240 parts of spirits.

An association of pharmacists in Paris has been discussing the old quostion of the influence of plants in bedrooms upon the hoalth ot the occupants. The conclusion i. that the plants are beneficial, especially to consumptives, plants without flowers being preferable to those in bloom.

Inannrticlein tho "Geological Magazine" T. P, Jamison reviews the evidence indicating that a land connection formerly exiated between Spain and Africa at a comparatively late period of geology. A riae of only 1,000 feet along tho ridge between Capo Spartel and Capo Trafalgar would unite tho continents now.

A man has exhibited in London a new Byßtem of gas lighting for private houses by means of recuporative lamps. By a ventilating arrangement the lamps conßume thoir own smoke, and tho burners are so formed that tho tetjuieite air is heated to a high temperature and admitted into the lamps nt tho point of ignition. Tho " Union Pharmaceutiquo " says that an ominont chomiat prepared with ereat care a mixture of manganoso, permanganate of potash, and oxalic acid only to find that

the mixture oxploded a fow minutes afterwards in the patient's pockot. It also gives an instanco of. a tooth powder composed of cachou and chlorate of potash oxploding in tho mouth of a person engaged in brushing hia teeth.

Two Italian physicians havo lately discovered minute organic bodies in the blood of patients Buffering from malarial fever, which they beliove to be tho germs of

that disease. These micro-organiama are described bb threadlike in appearance, and by introducting thorn into the veins of others tho doctor.! have sucoeeded in producing intermittent fevor. Tho adminia-

tration of aulphate of quinine causes the filaments to disappear from the blood.

A German physiologis', Professor Eulenborg, has found that different parts of the body are vory unequally sensitive to differences of heat and cold, the sense of tern peruturo boing moat acute in tho forehead and tho back of the hands, and least activo

in the back and uppor part of the abdomen. At tho former ppots differences of about a third of a Fahrenheit degree woro distinctly perceived, but at tho other two points differences wore only detected wheu reaching noarly two dogrees. Horr Mohe, of the Magdoburg Society of German Engineers, Bays that tho deepest borc-holo in oxistence is the one made in searching for coal near tho village of Schladobneh, on tho railway botweon Corbetha and Loipsic, at tho instance of the Prussian Mining Department. It has been drivon by diamond-pointed rock drills and wator flushing to a depth of 4,559 feet in threo and a.half yoara, at an expenditure of §'25,000. Its diameter at tho bottom is

1,872 inchos.and at the top 11 inches. Tho thermometer registered at tho bottom 48 deg. centigrade, or 11S'4 des*. Fahienheit, Ono hundred and fifty million tons ot matter in solution are annually poured into the Gulf of Mexico by the Mississippi. At this rate one foot of land over the whole basin would be removed in 4,000 years. Similar calculations applied to tho St. Lawrence, tho La Plata, and tho Amazon roach the rosult that 100 tons per square mile is removed from the entire American continent every year. One cubic milo of earth is deposited evory year in the Atlantic Ocean from America, Africa, Europe, ond Asia. And co the continents waste away and form material lor now ones in the goologicnl ages. Captain G. B. Philips, who is constructing tho n»w wharf for tho Lighthouse Dopartthat ho has at last eolvod a problem, the men t.sayatheKey a Woat" Democrat" thinkß solution of whioh has puzzled civil engineers for somo time; that is, ho has found tho reason why somo parts of concrete work will remain intact and others will disintegrate a short whilo after boing built in the water. Whilo oxamiuing a concrete pillar last wook ho noticod a peculiar colour to the water, and ho broke off a piece of tho concrete just about to crumblo away. It was placed on a piece of white papor and dried, which process took about a week, when, tohisast.niihmont, ho noticod that tho paper was full of animalcule and the concrete perforated with small holes not larger than tho point of a cambric noodle In speaking of " Hoino-opathic perfumes.' an exchange saysof the odoriferous molecules of musk must bo incomprehensibly small. Wo cannot imngino their smnllness, aa it is said that the same grain of musk undergoes absolutely no diminution in weight. A Binglo drop of tho oil of thyme, ground down with a piece of sugar and a littlo atcohol, will communicate its odour to twenty fivo gallons of wator. Haller kept for forty years papol'a perfumed with ono grain of amborgi ia. Aftor this twno the odour was as strong as ever. Bordenavo bos ovulated a molecule of camphor sonsiblo to the smell of 2,262,284,000 th of a grain. Boyle has observod that ono dram of asafootida exposed to the opon nir had lost in six days the eighth part of one grain from, which Keill concludes that in one minute it had lost one 69,120 th of a grain.