SCIENCE SIFTINGS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLII, Issue 149, 24 June 1911, Page 15

SCIENCE SIFTINGS.

'ANIMALS AND RAILWAYS. Animals accommodate themselves in many ways to the altered conditions of life when human beings trespass upon their wild haunts. The coming of the railway into savage countries has been followed by the development of a real railway fauna, composed of a wide variety of birds and beasts that find their living along the tracks.

Perhaps there is no more remarkable instance of this known than that reported by a distinguished scientist who spent some time in North-Western Canada studying the forms of snow and snowwaves. He found, states the "Philadelphia Record," that the -wolves/ and coyotes, which formerly followed herds of buffalo or camps of travellers across the prairies, picking off stray animals and getting the refuse from the ca-mps, had become modernised into hangers-on of the railway companies.

Every through Continental train carried one or more dining-cars, in which is produced much waste, which is thrown out at the cleaning-up time after each meal. This the animals learned, and they haunt the line in localities where the garbage is usually thrown out, to get 'the broken bread, bones and trimmings.

Sometimes a grey wolf will be seen, the v«ry personification of cold and famine sitting by a sage brush in the drift of snow powder lifted up by the icy morning wind, his sharp nose sharply uplifted, the cutting blast ruffling the fur on his back, waiting for the sun to warm him and the dining car to bring ■him a beef-bone for breakfast. On the Siberian railroad jackals and foxes follow the through trains for the same purnose.

In another locality, where frogs breed one one side of the road and commonly migrate across the tracks to the other side in large numbers, crows have established a and live upon the frogs which they catch between the tracks

Perhaps the oddest of all such incidents is reported from Mauritius, where railways have been installed to carry sugar-cane from the fields to the mills. Monkeys, learning of the practice, used to set out sentinels to give warning when a train was approaching a certain grade, where it was forced to slow up, and the whole tribe would leap upon the cars and throw off cane until the top of the hill was reached. A special guard had to be set to keep these "hold-up" animals from the road.

STRONG GLASS. A new glass has recently been produced by a firm of French glass-makers ■which is intended to be proof against the ordinary attacks of burglars. So many cases of robbery have been committed by the breaking of show-windows and the snatching of valuables on exhibition that a special effort has been made to end this particular form of depredation. The glass now produced is made by a secret process, but the makers admit that thickness and care in its manufacture are the principal essentials. It is made about three-quarters of an inch thick, and, on test, has resisted the blow of a ten-pound iron disc thrown against it from distances .ranging from ten to twenty feet. A hole four-tenths of an inch in diameter at the outer surface was made by the impact from the greatest distance. The same blow would have shattered ordinary plateglass completely. >~

DAHLIAS AND POTATOES. By a kind of horticultural irony it has been found that the dahlia, that popular flower that so often forms a conspicuous display at flower shows, has a dreadfully prosaic parentage. It has been developed from the Mexican tubers introduced about 120 years ago by the Swedish naturalist', Dr. Dahl, for the purely commercial purpose of supplementing the potato! The doctor's scheme did not meet with favour, and the dahlia dish soon disappeared from British tables, but gardeners at once perceived the great , potentialities of the flower, and accordingly proceeded to produce the double dahlia and other delightful floral fantasies. The tubers of the dahlia, too acrid for most tastes, are still eaten in some parts of France.

REMOVING A SPLINTER. When a splinter has been driven deeply into the hand, says a "Times" writer, it can be extracted with pain by steam. Nearly fill a wide-mouth bottle with hot water, place the injured part over the mouth, and press it slightly. The suction will draw the flesh down, and in a minute or two the steam will extract the splinter and the inflammation together. MARKETING OF A GLACIER.

The rather poetic term "houille blanche" ("white coal") is applied in France to the Alpine glacier ice, because of the mechanical power supplied by the streams to which it gives rise. One of the greatest of these rivers of ice is the Glacier dcs Borrons, on the northern slope of Mont Blanc, at Chamounix. Within recent years this glacier has become a source of supply of ice for domestic purposes. More than 100,000 pounds of the glacier ice is sent to Lyons every summer. It is remarkable for its extreme purity. The ice is detached from the mass of glacier in blocks of suitable size by exploding gunpowder in drilled holes. Dynamite was tried, but it shattered the ice, and also imparted to it an objectionable yellow tinge.

IRON IN MILLING WHEAT. An English firm of millers, troubled with dust explosions, set about discovering the cause of ignition of the dust. The mills use the steel roller process of patent flour, and iron or steel particles in the grain were suspected of coming in contact with the steel rolls and emitting the spark, causing the explosions. Accordingly an apparatus was designed by which all the grain subject to the rolls first was passed over highly magnetised steel arresters. The result was strikingly in proof of the theory. These electro magnets collected steel and iron particles ranging from the microscopic up to box nails several inches long. With a standard equipment of arresters capable of passing 1000 bushels of grain an hour, so much metal collects that several times a day the magnets must be swung aside and brushed clean of their accumulations.

FIREPROOF JEWEL CASE. A new French case for protecting money, jewels, and important papers from fire consists of two asbestos boxes of different size, one being placed within I the other and prevented from touching by a number of asbestos blocks. The poorly conducting asbestos and the insulating air space combine to keep the Inner box quite cool, while the outer one fa strongly heated.