SCIENCE SIFTINGS

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 70, 21 March 1908, Page 10

SCIENCE SIFTINGS

THE SENSELESS ANT. In the course of an address on '"The Scientific Application of the Cinematograph," which Mr. Martin Duncan delivered at the London Society of Arts recently, some interesting pictures were I thrown on the screen, a I the life and habits of the ant being received with especial interest. Ants, said Mr. Duncan, were very difficult subjects, owing to their Qmall size, and when lie tried to photograph them they sent out armies and battalions against him. They swarmel all over his apparatus and himself, and it was exceedingly difficult to prevent them walking over the lens and down his neck. He found, too, that the ant was particularly sensitive to the rays of light used in obtaining the photographic image. As soon as the rays were put on him he showed every sign of being sick and sorry for himself, and in a few seconds he turned over and died. Mr. Duncan said he was interested to observe file pugnacity and the fearlessness of the ant, but he could not say that he admired his wisdom. He did not quite see why one should attempt to grasp a thing which was, in the first place, absolutely useless, and was, moreover, about six times as big as oneself. An ant did this, and if he came to a tower, relatively as high as the Nelson column, he did not walk around it, as more sensible people would, he climbed up one side and generally fell down the other. . (Laughter.) The consequences were at times disastrous if the heavy weight fell on the ant. A BLOW FROM ABOVE. In the deserts of Arizona, near Canon Diabolo, there is a peculiar crateriform depression three-quarters of a mile across and about 600 ft. deep, which has commonly been supposed to be of volcanic origin. With the assistance of a grant from the Smithsonian Institution, Professor G. P. Merrill, of Washington, has investigated the problem, and in a report just published pronounces the depression to be the result of the impact of a stellar body. All the phenomena are superficial. About 300 ft. of overlying limestone and 500 ft. of sandstone have been shattered as though by some powerful blow, and the quartz particles in the sandstone have been partially fused, while the underlying sandstone is entirely unchanged. THE RUBBER TREJt. The rubber tree is one of the curious provisions made by nature for the use of mankind. Prom earliest times what is narrowly described as indiarubber has contributed to native life and pleasure It h a cosmopolitan product of the Far Kagtern and Southern worlds, sweeping round to the forests of America and Mexico, the West Indies, and across to West and Central Africa. Dusky maidens, from the Nile to the Amazon, have turned it to account as a means to personal adornment." The rebellious locks of Fuzzy Wuzzy have been brought into subjection by means of it. A forest beauty, said the '-Magazine of Commerce," anxious to secure an unguent, will lightly stab a rubber treo and leave it to bleed to death, so long as her pristine purpose be served from this trickling vital stream of black fluid. Blood in oceans has been shed to secure, in past times, a rubber concession, with as well as without conditions. White traders on the -big , equatorial rivers have betrayed their Christianity to the. limit of sharing in a cannibal feast rather than not " do trade " with a savage king of a rubber track. The lust of rubber and palm oil is bringing even a European kingdom down to the dregs of barbarism. Seen in the weird moonlight of a tropical forest, the grey ghostlineS3 of a rubber tree stems to speaJv to the'traveller of unspeakable outrage, waste, knavery, and of all the cardinal sins of human infamy committed in the name of tfle trade it represents. THE HOUSE PLY A SUSPECT. According to the report of a committee of prominent medical and business men appointed by the Merchants' Association of New York City to investigate the pollution of New York harbour, the common house fly is one of the greatest enemies of man. Breeding among the sewage deposits in the vicinity of cities and towns, it spreads the germs of typhoid fever and other intestinal diseases in millions. In one case a single fly was found to have deposited on a gelatine plate in a laboratory test 100,000 fecal bacteria. The report urges as the only means by which the evil can be removed the strict enforcement of the laws against pollution.

ATTACHED TO A MAXIM IN TWO MINUTES. At present machine gun fire can be heard thousands of yards off, and no matter how good or rapid it may be, the field batteries discover the guns, and rout them before they can become a danger. The role of the machine gun is, therefore, one of secret opportunity to strike a body of troops by surprise "with 600 shots per minute, as in the case of the Maxim and then lie low. But if the gun can operate in silence its possibilities are sensibly widened, not only because a steady, non-overheating discharge of 10*0 a minute can be maintained from time to time throughout an action. ilr Thompson's apparatus can be attuehed" to a Maxim in a couple of minutes it weighs 161bs. and is less than a foot in length. The Indian authorities have submitted to the Home Government. THE EARTH AND THE MOOST. In a recent lecture entitled, "An Outlook on the Universe," Sir Oliver Lod-e said:—Taking an outlook on the universe, let them begin with the earth It was a globe of tremendous size, though astronomically speaking, it "was small' People ought' to realise how big it really was. In this country we knew nothing of big distances. It was only when we found ourselves on one of the great continents that c realised how terrific the size of the earth was compared With the human body, which was our standard of size. If one wrapped a string ten times round the earth, and then stretched it out, it would reach the moon. And what a curious, crusted old satellite the moon was, with its mountains, and craters, and volcanoes, and cracks, with no water and no perceptible air, with plenty of frost, but no "weathering," no rivers to wear the mountains down, as on the earth. In contrast to the moon, the earth had a pleasant, picturesque, homely, friendly sort of s-urfacc, except in a "few places like the Sahara. The surface of the earth might be called a watery surface in contrast to the surface of the moon, which had a fiery surface, left just as the heat had shaped it. The earth was a heavenly body, and people were apt to forget this. They did not think of it as heaven; but it was as much heavenly as anything else, and might be made more heavenly if people only knew how to live in it properly.