Scientific and Useful.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1521, 5 March 1886, Page 4

Scientific and Useful.

> SUrEBSTITIOK. At Bourr.emauth a woman named Bhoda Burton was charged under the Vagrancy Act 1 with fortune-telling. The prisoner hawked I lace and earrings, and called at a house where the prosecutrix, Dinah Wilcox, wa» a domestic servant, renaurki"g to her that she appeared to be unhappy. She added that it was about a young man, and that she could bring his love back to her. If it had been the Lord's doing she could tot hive interfered, but it was a dark young woman who had set the young man against her. She afterwards obtained a sovereign from the girl, and having produced a pack of cards pointed to one g the dark rival, asking her to place one linger on it and wish. The girl, |at the of tho prisoner, also took off | her left gaiter, in which the sov«reign was placed, and parsed round the pack of card*. After further promising that she should have I a letter frvm the jouug man on the 9th of I next month, si e put the sovereign in her ! pocket. The girl protested that it was the only one she hud ; but Ihe prisot er left, and tbe police subsequently 1 :nl of the affair. The prisoner was seuteiicvu to six weeks imprisonment. TUB VOLGA. The Volpa river is the largest in Europe. The thankful Russian people call it the Mother Voljja. The Volga begins in a marshy locality, about 150 miles N. W. of Moscow in the Tver Government as a small stream a few feet wide, which continually grows, receiving on both sides streams and rivers, some of which, like the Oka and the Kama, rank among the largest rivers of Europe. The length of the Volga is about 2500 miles, the width at the middle part about one, and in the lower part about two and a half miles. It enters the Caspian Sea; by me ms of three cnnal systems it is connected with NorthDvina, Archangel, and the White Sea, and now it is proposed to connect it with the Don river at Tsarlisin, and therefore with the Bhck Sea.

I'Kit MAN EM'S ot CO>'II>EMS AND OCEANS. Manv naturalists are accustomed in lecturing, to speak o( the existing ocean basins as "permanent." Though this must to a large extent be \ true statement, many geologists, a! nil events, must be perfectly aware that nearly all lands, however remote at present, must hare been, perhaps more than once, in coimectwu with each other. Tropical South Ainerie i is perhaps the most iaolat< il continculal province uow existing. I would ask theso naturalists to eipliin how its species of tropiral genera not peculiar to it got there, and how many of tb»ai came to bo represented in Europe in Tertiary times. That the lauds ure always chiefly centred about the saimj.spots, and a'.so the converse, would I think", be an acceptable way of putting it; but that t! Atlantic wa never bridged except towards the Arctic and .mUroiie circles is a statement that is unwarrantable because contradicted by unimpeu'hable evidence.—J.Starkie Gardiner, in Nature.

roLCASIC Ot'TBKEAKS IN JAVA.

Early in Miy there was an eruption of Mount Sin> ro, the p'incipal volcano in Hasten) Jarv which extended over sorno weeks. The lava pour-d down the sides of the mountain in several streams, filling wide deep chasm*, 300 ft deep, and practically destroyii g the wide belt of cjffee plantations which lav - around the bnse of the mountain. Letters from Bat'im say that even yet the extent of the mischief done has not be<'n ascertained; but it is quite certain that oyer 500 persons lost their lives by it. Lately the Merabi volcano, in middle Java has been causing great anxiety nil over the island by its indications of an approaching outburst. Then, on the west coast, in the Krakatoa district, the scene of the great calamity of two years ago, electrical dishes and disturbances have become frequent, accompanied by subterranr&n rumblings and explosions, especially in the neighbourhood of the old crater. The great rock masses which were thrown up from the sea in the cataclysm of August, 1S!?3, have aguiu eui lenly disappeared, and there is now a considerable depth of water where trey stood a few months ago. HVDBAIJLIC DBEDGIXO. One of the bars at the entrance to New York Harbjur, colled Diamond Beef, is composed of indurated clay and boulders, which presented unusual ditliculties in the way of dredging to the drsirrd depth, and is now being r moved by ireans of the attrition of powerful streams of water forced against the bottom by hydraulic dredgers. The mean velocity of the water discharged from the special mechani-m used for the purpose is aboul 7000 feet per minute, and the yautical Gazette reports that this is " sufficient to foree the earth and clay at the bottom into suspen* 6ion, to be canied out by the ebbing ude which is the only time these hydraulic ploughs are used. After the clay is washed away, the boulders are removed by grappling irons. This method has been so successful that it is being applied to that portion of the bar in Goduej Channel, which will secure a depth of 26ft. at low water for a width of 480 ft. At the point selected for this work the bar is about 400uft. in width, and the ebbing tide has a mean velocity of one and a-half miles per hour." sKSIKG ASjj I 1 SARINU. It is • well known fact that those who are deprived of one of their senses have usually some compensation in a greater acuteneaa of the others. The blind will hear sounds that nre inaudible to mo-t people. They hare been known to detect the presence and pi sition of I the smallest sapling on the roadside simply !by the echo of th«-ir footsteps. The deaf J mute, on the other hand* learns to see what bis friend is saying, by the motion of his lips I—a feat which to most of us would be | impossible. The wonderful degree to which the touch may be devrloped in delicacy and power of perception is manifest to all who are Familiar with Laura JBridgmau's attainments. This superior power, however, is chiefly the result of education and long practice. It is ratbtr acquired skill in using the only means Pt band for gaining needful know* ledge thun any oiiginal supremacy in the organ itself. It is strange that with such examples before us of what can be thus aocon.piwhed, and fully recognising the value of such education to those who are deprifdd of one or more of tho senses, men are yet lo nnimpressed with the need of lome similar training for those who are blessed with all of them. With our many complicated systems for developing the mental powers, there is yet no thorough and •ystematie course laid out for the culture of the eye and the ear. Because Nature does so much in this direction, instead of co-operating with her we leare her to do all, and thus aacriflee much of the possible happiness and usefulness of life. Yet these are the channels through which the mind must be fed, the very on which we rely for all instruction, and/indeed, all eonmtuitattion j and it would sorely seem only rational to make them as perfectly adapted to the work as peasihle.^i'fcfatyfriaf