SCIENCE SITTINGS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 172, 20 July 1907, Page 10

SCIENCE SITTINGS.

WONDERFUL TINDS. Surgical study or a nesrt that ceased to breathe some four thousand years ago is only remarkable to the uninitiated. To those versed in archaeology it is known that modem anatomy has reached much further back to remote antiquity. There has been , discovered in the course of research among the tombs of the Pharaohs the heart of Rameses 11., so perfectly preserved that Professor Lortet, dean o*f the Lyons Faculty, was enabled to make a detailed study of it. It is explained, however, that lying under a stratum of eight yards of sand there have been found the bodies of a race long anterior to that of the Egyptians of the time of the Pharaohs, an£ it was still possible to study the muscular fibres. HOW LONG WILL COAL LAST? The world has still a, considerable supply of coai. Germany is credited with 280,000,000,000 tons, sufficient to last 2000 years at the present rate of consumption; Great Britain and Ireland claim 103,000,000,000 tons, with an annual consumption about double that of Germany; Belgium ha*s 28,000,000,000 tons; France, 19,000.000,000; Austria, 17,000,000,000; and Kus3ia 40,000*000,000 North America is believed to have 681,----000,000,000,000 tons, more than the total of the other countries named. It is the tremendous increase in the use of coal that, perhaps, justifies alarm, for, while the supply of the United States would, last 4000 years at the rate of consumption in 1905, it would be exhausted within a century if the rate of increase of the last 90 years continues. No estimate of the coal of other parts of the world can be made, but Asia is known to have an enormous store. A PLANT THAT COUGHS. "I heard a cough, and looked behind mc nervously," said a huntsman, "for I was stalking gazelles in that lion-col-oured waste, the Sahara Desert, and having gotten' rather too far South, I expected at any moment to become a pincushion for the poisoned darts of the dread Touaregs. " But there was no one there. The flat desert quivered in the sunshine, and here and there a dusty plant stood wearily. But. though I commanded the landscape for a radius of. fifty miles, not a living creature was in sight. "Another cough. I swung round quickly. The same plant, yellow with dust, drooped in the dry heat. That was all. "Hack! Hack! " "On my left this time. I smmg round again. A like plant met my eye. The thing was growing rather ghastly. " And as I regarded this last plant, a cough came from it. Believe mc, the plant coughed. It shook all over, and then, tightening up as a man does when ■he is about to sneeze, it gave a violent cough, and a little cloud of dust arose. '"I found out afterwards that the plant was the coughing bean, -which is common in many tropical countries. In the long, dry heats, this weird growth's pores become choked with dust, and it would die of suffocation were it not that a powerful gas accumulation inside it, which, when it gains sufficient pressure, explodes with a sound precisely like the human cough. The explosion shakes the plant pores free of their dust, and the coughiag bean is in good health again." ■ ■ . ' ~ THE EARTH'S MOVEMENTS. Here are the 12 movements of the earth (says a writer in the "English Mechanic")., as given by M.-Flammarion: -*T. Daily rotation. 2. Annual revolution. 3. Precession; period, 25,765 years. 4. Monthly movement of the earth about the centre of gravity of the earth and moon. o. Nutation; period, IS J years. 6. Secular variation of fhe obliquity of the Ecliptic. 7. Secular variation of the eccentricity of the earth's orbit. 8. Displacement of the line of apsides of the •arth'S orbit; period, 21,000 years. 9. Perturbations of the orbit caused by change of planetary attraction. 10. Displacement of. the centres of gravity of the Solar system. 11. Motion of the Solar system in space. 12. The motion of the axis of rotation in the earth's figure, better known as the cause of variation of latitude. Some of these may seem j rather far-fetched as movements of the earth; but M. Flammarion: is no doubt . right. NIGHT AND DAY SIGNALS IN ' WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY. A valuable contribution to practical ] wireless telegraphy is made in a paper , by Mr Elliot Woods, who spent" some , time in a Trans-Atlantic sending sta- . tion. In the course of his remarks on some of his experiences he stated that daylight, signals as received were weak- , er than night signals, and that signals , could be better heard on cloudy nights ! than on clear ones. Instances were cited which seemed to indicate that interven : ing land areas have an effect on the receiving of messages. One of the con- s elusions he reached on studying the re- ] latibns of atmopphtric "conditions to j "wireless conclusions" was that there was no doubt in his mind as to the < ability of the wireless receiver, aided by the static conditions which it registers, to show even ahead of the barometer \ the oncoming of a serious Aange in the i weather, even when the sky does not t indicate such a change. It is Mr Woods' 3 belief that the greatest field of labour \ lies in studying the relations of atmos- \ pheric conditions to form waves sent in t under the present method of wireless t transmission.