Scientific and Useful.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1518, 5 February 1886, Page 4

Scientific and Useful.

ANOTHER PLANETOID. A small planet. No. 251, waa discovered by Dr J. Palisa at Vienna on the 4th November raising the number of those found by him to forty nine. A BED OF SALT. Messrs Bolckow, Vaughan & Co. have come upon a thick bed of ailt at their bore hole near Eston Jetty, to the east of Middlesbrough The salt was reached at a depth of 1550 feet, and already 62ft. have been pierced thtough without reaching the bottom of the be J. THE I'OISON OF INSFCTS. The denticula'ed sting of bees, wnsps, and hornets is charged with poison secreted by two gla» ds. According to M Carlot of Grenoble, the secretion of one of the glands is acid, and that of the other alkaline. The poison only produces its customary effect when both alkaline and acid are present in the poison, which is, however, acid in reaction. In wasps and hornets tlie venom is injected by means of a vesicle with contractile walls. In hees the poison bug is not contractile, and there exists a kind of poison that works in the fang us a syringe, so that the syringe is charged and emptied with each ttroke of the piston. A HAIKLEas i ALF. A curiosity in the shape of a perfectly hairless calf was born at Pawnee City, Nebraska, in the middle of March last. The animal, 1 njw about five months old, if well formed, ! and apparently in perfect health, but its skin is quite destitute of hair. It is a male, weighs over two hundred pounds, and shows an appearanee of horns. So far us can be learned, ; there is nothing in its pedigree to account for ' this departure from the normal type. Both 1 of its progenitors were pure-bred shorthorns. Should this unique animal survive, It would be a matter of considerable scientific interest to keep track of its decendants, in order to determine whether this apparently accidental variation is capable of transmission or whether it disppenrs with its first po-sessor. The owner of the*animal, Mr J. H. Bray, has named it Young America.

nn.isjso water row EE. At Treberg. t'e well-known clock-making (own in the Gutn.-h Valley, Germany, the celebrated waterf ill has been utilised to drive h turbine, and the electric light is now supplied to the town at a cost . r >o per cent, in excess of the expense incurred by the use of petroleum lumps; but it is said that more than ten times the amount of light is given. A LARGE AFROUTK An 'extraordinary aerolite seems to have fallen near Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, on September li*>ih. The " Kartli >haken by a Meteor" i- the heading in Americ.ni papers; but the sh n-k whs evidently alarming. A f H rmer n'' ar >ewickl<y sa*v the meteor pa-s through the «ir at grea' spee I, and disappear southward. He describe litas " being larjje a« a barn doo.ln passing over the town it burst and detached pieces tell to the ground. It is reported from Al'Keesport, 14 miles south-west of the jcity, that a piece of the meteor, still hot, was discovered in a clearing in th" wood*- A man, while walking across a field just outside the city and in a south-west direction, ctumbled against a fragment of the meteor, which was also hot. CJtSCfIrECTED EFFECT 01 r^TEAM.

One of the mo.-t peculiar freaks of heat noticed by the Philadelphia insurance inspectors, was in a wooden box lined with cement, which was used for boiling cloth in pure water. On tearing away the box, what was originally 3in. pine plank was found to have reduced to charcoal or carbonised for twothirds of its thickness from the inside. The box or tub contained wa'er, boiled by introducing steam, and from some cause the wood was changed to a condition of charcoal by the heat of the steam. This case of the action of steam heat, says the Industrial World, although almost improbable, naturally attracts attention to steam pipei as a cause of fire. From the experience of those using steam is is now regarded unsafe to allow p. pes to rest on wood. THE MCN-DULUISrO WASP. But the most wonderful fact connected with these m..d building wasps remains to bo told. We have seen that the common yellow wu-p stores up p opolis in her p.per cells; not so the mason wasps, who lid up their nest-tubes eich with a different species ot caterpillar or spider, each victim being in s< me wonderful manner anasthetised and embalmed so as to afford livin'j food to the enlarging grub. Here is a cas- in point which |we can watch ns we write The sudden appearance of a black, or very dark brown catcrpilUr-laden wasp draws our attention to its nesi in the verandah, a series of mud cells opening upwards. As she alights we notice that she is on the back of the caterpillar, holding it in the grasp of all her legs. Quickly she manages to get the tail end of the c-iterpillar, (in tins case one of tho-e green loop-waUing l.rvu) into the cell, emitting the while a curious hum, not alar, but thoracic or vocal, and then presses it with her feet Flying away, she returns with a second loop walker, which is similarly t-eated then with a third and a fourth, and he cell is full It is then carefully plastered over, and a fresh one is begun, tight or ten cells are thus laboriously completed, and provisioned, and then that anxious and laborious mother yields up her life. Some wasps bring brown, others green spider, to their cells. In fart each species sticks to its own caterpillar or spider —* a spider wasp will never bring in a caterpillar, and ricf rer*>t. This I have established as an absolute fact. Having reiched thus far, let us review our position. On the one hand, the common yellow wasp builds her nest of paper, always of the same colour (dull white) and mateiial, deposits in each cell and egg. fills "P with propolis and dies, ller offspring, (taking one individual) has never s<en its mother, never befoie seen the cell from which it emerges, can learn nothing from the outer world as to the material of its cell, nature of its food, or whence both arc procured; yet it has no difliculiy in procuring the proper kind of food, nor, when the fit time arrives, has it any difficulty in procuring the proper paper for its nest of cells, nor in m uldmg the latter with mathematical precision cijual to that of i-s parent. In like manner, on the other hand, the larva* in the mud cell of this wasp-nest has never seen its parent, and, beyond gorging on them in the darkness of its prison, has had no knowledge whatever, beyond thtir taste of the green loop-walkers,"its mother has so carefully collected for it. Yet, when its time con.es, it cons'ructs a similar mud-nest to that of its parent, and stuffs it with similar larvir, and no other. Now, who taught these wasps the wonderful machinery !of their cells, the astonishing processes of selecting particular kinds of animal food for each kind of cell, and of keeping such food alive, but ancpsthetiled, as lot g aa it may be required '< The popular reply will be—instinct; but that tells us nothing. Why should a new-born wasp be better able to provide for itself than, say, a puppy, or even a baby—animals far higher up in scale than itself P—Dr Hutchinson in Knowledge.