SCIENCE SIFTINGS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXV, Issue 205, 27 August 1904, Page 10

SCIENCE SIFTINGS.

AN ANCIENT CLOCK. _ Peterborough Cathedral has the oldest working clock in England. It was | erected about 1320. and is probably the , work of a monastic clockmaker. It is the only one now known that is wound up over* an old wooden wheel. The clock j is said to be of much more, primitive construction than that i made by Henry de Nick for Charles , V of France in 1370. The dock, chamber is in the north-west tower, some 120 ft high, where the sunlight has not penetrated for hundreds ol years, and the winding is done by the light of a candle. Tbe gong is the great tenor be I of the cathedral, which weighs 32cw_, aud it is struck hourly by an bOlb hammer. NELSON RELICS, .inong the most sacred relics of Santa Cruz. Tenerifle.. are two flags. These are the colours taken from Nelson (all he ever lost) wheu his attack on the place, made to seize the treasure ship El Principe de Asturias, was repulsed with sr-rious loss. It was in this cn,,em«it a the admiral had his right arm Ottered by a cannon ball, and afterwards amputated. The colours taken by the victors were at one time hung uncovered in the Church lnglcsia de a Concepcion. Now they are carefully cu.ard.cl by being rolled round poles and enclosed in long glazed cases suspended on th- walls of the chapel on the north side ot the church. DANGERS OF HAND SHAKING. V Belgian expert has just published a treatise on hand shaking, which, he states, is most dangerous, a mutual pre« Sure of the hand being nothing more than an exchange of undesirable microbe* SO.OOO of which inhabit every baK-inch of the hand. The most dantctous people to shake hands with, it sre.m- are doctors, surgeons, nurses, hairdresser*. hutcherS, sausage makers, tripe merchants, tanners, aud leather dressfr.-. whilst the. least dangerous person seems to be a worker in metal, because the metal sets up an oxidation, which acts as an antiseptic. The only safe course left to us is to salute only with our heads and our hats, or always wear gloves. INCREASING SENSE POWER. Human sense organs iack the refined delicacy of the instruments of science. Dr. Carl Snyder points out that counties millions of stars are discovered by the photographic plate and the telescope in place of .he 3000 visible to the eve. and that an object 1-10-000 of an inch in diameter is comparatively large in a powerful miseroscope, although one of 1-200 of an inch is scarcely visible to the unaided eve. The 'tread of a fly. which requires a delicate car to detect, is magnified by the microphone to the tramp of cavalry. The .haaige in temperature of less than 1-5 of a degree, is not perceived by the most sensitive, skin, but the bolometer registers on a scale an increase or decrease of a millionth of a drpree. and actually notes th* rise in the lemperature of a room wdten a match is lighted a mile away. HOW ODOURS ARE SPREAD. It has long been known (says "Science Sittings") that odours move with Ihe air, or diffusa through it like gases, and do not pa>s through it in waves. as rounds do, or in swiftly-moving particles like the radium emanations. Some recent experiments on the propaganda of f.~ents through small tubes have proved this fairly conclusively. In such tubes there can be. no general motion of the air, and the rate of travel of ah odour is extremely slow. That of ammonia took over two hours to get through a tulx- a yard and a-balf long. The presence, of the ammonia coidd be delected chemically at about the same time that its smell was noticed. It seemed to make little difference in the' speed whether tlie lube was held horizontally or vertically, or whether the odour moved up or down. CO. .FORT FOR SMOKERS. After all tbe ills which have at various times been prognosticated for smokers, ,t is pleasant lo learn that the statement that tobacco prevents lung disease is true lo a certain extent. It is dear that tolwcco smoke is an antiseptic of considerable power, and that ts action on the pulmonary- circulation s useful in relieving any tendency to dironic congestion of the lungs. Many loctors have remarked the comparative rrununity from pulmonary diseases enoyed by workers in tobacco factories. There are also cases recorded (by Rued) if persons who exhibited serious symp,oms of consumption, such as emacia.ion, blood-spitting, and cough, and who rot rid of them all after working for a ime in tobacco factories. Tassinari. in 'taly, has proved by elaborate, experinents that tobacco kills microbes, and ie strongly recommends smoking as a irotection against cholera. Visalli, durng the influenza epidemic of'lßßo. noiced that w-orkers in tobacco factories ilmost entirely escaped. HOTTEST PLACE ON EARTH. Death Valley, in Southern California, is usually referred to as the hottest ~pot on earth, but it isn't quite that. S'lys a writer in the "Weekly Budget." This rather unplrasanf distinction belongs to a. portion of the shore of the Persian Gulf nt and in ihe vicinity or Bahrin. Statistics prove that the mean, annua! temperature of the Persian Gul.i furnace is lldeg. hicrhcr than that of ileath Valley, and the sridness of holhj places is about on a par. Yet while; Death Valley is inhabit oil hy practically none and permanent life tin-re is. deemed well-nigh impossible. Bahrin has' i population of several thousand peo-i pie, and has had an existence as a village for many centuries. Of course, the people are stunted mentally and to a slightly less extent physically—a fact due. to the. fearful conditions under which they live; but •they do live there. and are probably the nearest, approach to salamanders in the human family. What do they do for water and food? Why. tbe latter is brought lo them in boats and sold in exchange for the fertiliser they dig from the desert, and the latter they have in fairly good ."-b----undance near them. Bahrin is probably the only place on earth where fresh drinking water is secured from a salty sea. The water gushes up in considerable volume from springs on the bed ol the saline gulf, and is secured by divers. The divers plunge to the bottom with empty goat skins and place the orifice of the. skin br.g directly over the motiith of the spring; it fills in a few seconds, and the diver closes the orifice and is pulled back to the boat by a rope. That is the way the water sup ply for the eomumnity on shore is pro cured.