SCIENCE NOTES.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 54, 27 November 1907, Page 5

SCIENCE NOTES.

SATURNS RINGS,

ARE THERE NEW SATELLITES?

■A'writer in the "Sydney Morning Herald" states: —The planet Saturn has always been looked upon as representing an early stage in planetary development, seeing that it possesses a unique system of rings without a-cbimterpart in the solar system. And Sat-urn-it-self, too, has tho lowest moan donsity of any known permanent member of the solar system, its weight scarcely exceeding that of'a'.siinilar globe made of cork. Then aaturn possesses a large number of moons, upwards of ten being certainly identified, it is 'remarkable that the latest discovery jn this direction indicates that Phoebf- mny be quite a recent acquisition to the Saturnine system, as the naturo of its movements, shape of its orbit, and direction of its motion about Saturn are all • at variance with tho conditions of the remainder of Saturn's retinue. Therefore Professor Lowell's announcement (as stated in a recent cable), though a surprise, scorns consonant with the known facts secured to astronomical science. For many years there has been a gradual spreading inwards of the rings toward Saturn, and tho occasional apparition of temporary thinnings put,'in the middle ring, suggest an unstab'c condition likely to produce more satellites to the already numerous family, when the strain may become too great for the rings to keep together. It must be realised that it is an acquired truth of astronomical scienco that 'nothing but an aggregation of small bodies, densely packed together, and each pursuing its own orbit, could possibly exist so near to Saturn.. Tho inside edge of the crape ring is, roughly, 6000 miles "above" the globe of Saturn itself. Now, notwithstanding their discrete character, permitting individual and ■ collective existence, the rings cannot be regarded as a permanent appendago'to the planet's system. Invariably the riiigs Trill be distributed in the shane of moons , about their primary, or gradually collapse and fall towards the globe of Saturn itself. : So it at once appears that rrofessdr Lowell's announcement possesses moro than: ordinary .interest, seeing that- it may hoi 'the fortune of scienco to witness the actual'birth of a satellite, and the instanco aiFords rather conclusive evidence in support of Professor Darwin's theory of the formation of secondary bodies in the solar system. . And further, should the loss to Saturn's rings be appreciable, there will follow a: delicate adjustment of tho balance of the rings, if they are still to remain as the most exquisite example of celestial scenery. Tho present occasion of tho edgewise presentation .'of tho ring system towards tho eartn affords an opportune time to study tho nature of the rings, nn opportunity that will not recur until 1922.

THE LIFE OF THE BEE.

Truth and fiction havo been pretty liberally mingled by those, who havo told the story of the life of tho bee, but the reality is .sufficiently wonderful. Parthenogenesis in" the young .hire-mother is an established fact—tho unweddod queen lays eggs profusely,, but , all of them give birth to drones; and ' it is proved also that the evolution of the "queen" and "worker" typo depends solply on the food given them in their larval stage. The queen is fed on chyle-food, worked up in tho chyle-stomach of .tho nurses until it assumes'tho chrysalis change and emerges a perfect female. The worker, on tho'other hand, is weaned on the fourth day, 1 and then fed on honey and pollen, with' the result that it's ovaries remain rudimentary, and its structure is otherwise incapable,, of mating. Fecundation of the queen Jakes place within a few.days of her quitting hop. "cell/ and lasts for life, the spermatozoa being imprisoned in a special receptacle, and retaining their vitality through.-her lifetime. The special storago of her food is not less remarkable. When swallowed by tho mouth it does not pass into the stomach, but into a.temporary reservoir, tho honey-sac, whence the bee eats when, where, and how sho pleases. A like strange adaptation is found oven in the breathing process. Air is stored in tracheae to last for thre.e minutes. A popular delusion, however, which has invested the bee with mathematical insight is untenable. It has been shown that in no carefully measured piece of comb are all the.,diameters of the different cells, or all the angles of the different plates, identical, and "tho variation is irregular. There may bo found square colls, acuteangled cells, and roughly circular cells. All the bee is trying to do is to make a little cylinder, and only the mutual interference compels tho hexagonal form, which is , produced in the same way, for instance, in a mass of bottled peas. The high intelligence s o£ : tho bee,- however, is not disputed; and it is explained by the fact that the brain forms one-one hundred and soventy-fourth part of the volume _of tho body; whereas in other insects it is sometimes not more than one-forty-two thousandth part; and weight for weight, as is the case with many insects; its muscular power is far in advance of- our own. A bee can, drag 20 times its,own weight; a man rather less than his own. weight under like conditions. It pan flyrl2-miics an hour, and will go four miles fr.om its hive in search of food, and tho wings, possess remarkable mechanical adaptations. It has thrco voices—that of the vibrating wings, that of the vibrating rings of the abdomen, and a true vocal membrane in, the breathing aperture, and tho various notes produced are quite characteristic of the insect's mental moods. But its compound : eycs with their mosaic vision, and deQoient. .muscle adjustment fail to reveal to it tho world that wo see. Whether it can taste or snieil, v/o still perhaps hardly know; and thore are many parts of its otnatomy unintelligible to us, for, as -Mr. T. W. Cowan has said, "it is not impossible that insects may possess senses of which wo can no more form an idea than we should bo able to conceive red or green if tho human race were blind."

■TALLEST BUILDING NEARLY COM-

PLETED.

Piercing the skyline of New York far above all the other skyscrapers, is the lofty building, fast nearing completion. When the towering pile of steel and masonry it will be 17 stories high and 612. feet., from the pavemont to the pinnacle. This giant will.be the highest occupied buiklthe world and will overtop, all other existing structures except tho Eiffel Tower in. pans. • The foundation is sot in solid bedrock 90 feet below tho level of tho street. On,.tho bedrock were built caissons of cement. . A heavy steel bodv laid over the caissons forms tho underbody of the structure; .14 floors of which comprise tho main seotion of the building, from which rises the tower up to 47 stories, with its scores of office rooms. Eighteen lifts will carry the 2500-tenants to their offices. Fifteen thousand incandescent lights, sufficient, the engineers say, to light a town of 25,000 inhabitants, will illuminate the rooms and halways for late office workors. Fifteen miles' of pipe will bo required for steam and water purposes. .

CANNIBALISM: SCIENTIFIC ASPECTS,

. M At the rccont Congress on ' Alimentary Hygiene, held in Paris,, vegetarianism was opposed by several physiologists, the prnciplp". being laid down that the digestion of meat is most easy when tho meat eaten is of,.th°■ same species as tho individual-Gating it. ,'. Tho further the two species, tho eating and thoeaten, nro apart one from tho other the moro different thoy are chemically, and, therefore, tho greater tho labour required for' assimilation. Ono speaker blandly observed that the principle led to a justification of cannibalism, at least chemically.

THE ESKIMO,

. The arrival in the world of the youthful Eskimo is not greeted by tho orthodox cradle and swaddling clothes. Practically till.ho can shift for himself ho lives absolutely naked inside his mother's sealskin blouacj skin to skin kcoping him warm. This arrangemont allows tho mother to go about her work almost immediately, and sho enn also travel and hunt without a perambulator, and without having to leavo anyone at homo to "mind" tho baby. The mother's dress is almost exactly like tho father's, except that it has a long sort of tail'reaching nearly to tho ground, embryo, no doubt, of tho modern "train." Spared the miseries of soap and water, and early weaned to the readily swallowed diet s q£. blubber and raw seal -meat,.the infant

rapidly develops that invaluable subcutaneous fat which, while it enhances the "jolly" appearance of the lads and the shapeliness of the maidens, assist materially in economy in clothing. Thus in their frigid climo, once in their skin tent, tho whole family vrilldivest themselves of every stitch of clothing, unembarrassed by tho fact that so ninny families share tho tent with them. Sociability is early developed when one's next-door neighbour on each side is only separated by an imaginary lino between the deerskin you sleep on and, the ono ho-uses. The winter deerskin serves as bed and heckling at night and as parlour furniture during; the day. Community of goods is almost imperative under this arrangement. Thus when one kills n seal all arc fed, and likewise when he doesn't all go hungry together.

A REMARKABLE DREAM.

Psychologists, writes Mr. C. H. Vickridgo, (in "Science Sittings"), need never despair of food for thought aiid investigation. The following authenticated incident recently occurred in connection with the Crystal Palace. At one Saturday's great gathering at the Palace, a young lady happened to lose what she looked upon as a valuable pin. As it was night time and tho crush was very great —there boing nearly 14,000 persons present— she gave up all hope of recovering it and went home. 'On tho following morning, howover, she appeared at the Palace and asked for permission to enter and secure her pin. She informed the stileman that she had bad a dream, in which sliq saw the exact spot in which her pin was lying. She was allowed to enter tho Palace and at once proceeded to a flight of steps near the grounds where she. actually recovered tho pin. Another remarkable case of telepathy has been reported as occurring in tho village of Santantis, near Capua (Spain), where Andrea Spiccicco, a lad of ten, had a wonderful vision of the death of his father, who was abroad, which proved accurate in every particular. Andrea ran to his mother early in tho morning greatly agitated and screamed put that he had just seen his father dio in a vision. He described the death scene, declaring that the older Spiccicco had been supported in his last moments by two Sisters of Charity. The mother took no heed of the boy's declaration, attributing the impression to heat prostration. But early the following morning a cable informed the mother that the boy's father was dead, adding that bis last moments were soothed by two nuns.

BEST FOOD FOB, ATHLETICS.

Mr. F. \V. Payn recently completed a walking tour among tho volcanic mountains and precipices of Lappland, which even involved struggling for 15 hours incessantly over volcanic rocks. On this he bases some ,views about food values for athletes which he sands to the "Lancet." So great is the effect of boiling water on the efficiency of a man undergoing a forced march of 10 to 14 liours that he feols certain it is more important to provide the soldier on a long march with apparatus for heating liquid than with food. Tho cutout to which boiling liquid can take the place of food was never realised by him until he marched 14 hours on three sandwiches and plenty of hot water. The onormous importance of an adequate supply of sugar in the diet of soldiers performing much bodily exertion (owing to the consumption of the sugar in the blood by bodily exorcise) is most adequately'realised in English military diet. Mr. Payn considers that the private soldier is too often driven to satisfy tho natural craving for sugar after violent oxorciso by drinking alcohol. Hence, he believes that alcohol is natural and does him good. Ho further believes that it could be shown by experiment that men who were allowed a glass of milk with four lumps of sugar m it could undergo a greater fatiguo on that drink.

SiU'EK-KiNDING EXTRAORDINARY

Tho discovery, by a noted water-finder oquippod with a hazel twig assisted by silver coins, of heavy silver deposits in North Devon, is a matter of scientific as well as commercial interest. The "North Devon Journal" gives the-following account of tho experiments which led to the discovery. ''Mr. Gabriel commenced his experiments in the district road a few hundred yards from Harford bridge. The twig soon responded in wonderful fashion to the metal underground, revolving.at a very rapid rate. Air. Gabriel then conducted the party over a largo meadow, and was at great pains r.i convincing them of the prcsonco of sikcr underneath the ground. He established this to their entire satisfaction, and not only so, but in an adjoining field showed exactly where the line of the bed of silver terminated, the hazel conductor becoming perfectly motionless as he crossed the Uno at several points. Mr. Gabriel subsequently led tho party to higher ground belonging to Mr. Dennis, the tests thero being oven more convincing than in the others. The inliuence was so strong as to cause the two hazels used to revolve (and incidently to produce bladders on -Mr. Gabriel's tough fingers) at a tremendous rate, being strained to such an extent as to evontually break in two while being used. Recourse was then had to freshly cut hnzels, and tho result was exactly the snmo. A considerable timo was also spent in this field. , In order to show that bo was not mistaken as to what lay underneath tho surface, Mr. Gabriel gnve a demonstration which scorned to place the matter beyond all doubt. Having first shown, by means of tho hazel twig, where water existed, underground, and.that it was not water which be was mistaking for silver iii Mr. Dennis's fields, Mr. Gabriel placed some silver ore, some gold, and some tin at different points in the roadway, with the unfailing result that each metal responded to its own in his hands and to no other. Ono of the gentlemen wondered whether Mr. Gabriel's hazel would indicate the presence of some gold setting in his teeth, and on divesting himself ot the remaining gold ho had m his possession, and going on his knees in the roadway, tho test was precisely the same as in the other cases. These experiments were no less striking than the actual tests made -n the fields.

As tho result of the experiments, mining operations are to be commenced forthwith.

ITEMS OF INTEREST.

The age at which any nut trees come into boaring depends on the care given to the trees. Some authorities state that fifteen or twenty vears are necessary t, bring them into full bearing from the time the nut is planted. This is a mistako, as trees that have been well cared for should bear a bushel of nuts in ten years, and the quantity will increase rapidly each year after that time.

There, is a river in Spain called the Tinto, which has very extraordinary qualities. Its waters, which are. as yellow as a topaz, harden the sand and petrify it in a most surprising manner. If a stone falls into. the river and rests upon another they both hecome perfectly united and congitinated in a year. It withers all tho plants on its banks as well as tho roots of trees, which it dyes the same hue as its waters. No fish live in its stream , .

One of the mysteries of Mexico is presented by the Maya Indians, who inhabit the Sierra Madre mountains, in the lower part of Sonora. They have fair skins, blue eyes, and light hair, and stiidonts of ethnology have always ' been puzzled to account for thorn. There is a tradition, however, that those Indians arc tho descendants of the crew and passengers of a Swedish _ vessel wrecked on the Moxican coast centimes before Columbus discovered the New World, but this tradition is founded on nothing moro substantial than a folklore tale current among them that their ancestors came over tho big salt water hundreds of moons ago.

The industrial use of the whalo involves a wicked waste of material. For instance, from a right whale 50 feet long may be obtained 250 bnrrels of oil and perhaps 1} tons of whalebone. The .remainder of the vast carcase, some 50 tons, is thrown away as absolutely worthless. There scorns to bo a gold mine hero for anyone with the enterprise and capital to work it. Tho bide of one whale, spread out, would cover 1500 square feet, and when tanned makes excellent gloves and leather.

So many birds arb destroyed yearly for, cooking and hat-trimming purposes, that in some countries they have been almost exterminated. Tho salo in London of exotic plumages and bird skins has been known to reach more than 20 millions in a year. Tho destruction of the birds was so great in America that measures have been taken to stop it. In consequence the trade has had to fall back on soa-gulls, partridges, golden oriole, etc. . . .