SCIENCE, LITERATURE, &c.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 6051, 9 April 1881, Page 3

SCIENCE, LITERATURE, &c.

Tiie Empress Eugenie will shortly publish the " History of the Life and Death of the Prince Imperial," written by herself. The Queen has commissioned M. de Neuville to paint a picture representing "The capture of Cetewayo by Colonel Martyr." An unacted play by the late Lord Lytton, founded on Plautus's play of '' The Captives," is to be produced simultaneously in London and New York. Among the papers left behind by George Eliot is a complete translation of Spinoza's " Ethics," executed during the Strauss and Feuerbach period. In order to cheapen the production of quinine in Italy an effort is to be made to acclimatize the cinchona tree there. The annual consumption of quinine in that country is twenty-two thousand five hundred pounds. There are more than forty .kinds of devilfish, or octopus. The species callcd Octopus tuberculata lives in the Mediterranean, where it is caught and its fiesh used for food. The lover of devilfish meat can procure that delicacy at Naples and Smyrna. The latest American invention is a safety air-cushion, to prevent fatal accidents from the breakage of elevators, universally used in the States. In the trial experiment, the inventor and a companion fell 75ft., without breaking the eggs or spilling the water in; glasses placed underneath. j Cowper Ranegard has made a communication to the Astronomical Society on rfieteoriq dust, which he says exists to a much greater extent than was formerly suspected. By exposing a sheet of glass, covered with pure glycerine, to a strong wind he has collected on it particles which, by chemical tests, he found to be iron. This was found to be the case only in winter months. A wave of sentiment now passing over America favours decapitation instead of hanging for capital offences. Prisoners about to be executed even favour the change. The fact, however, is that the death penalty is very rarely carried out in America. Last September saw more trials for murder in the United States than at any previous period, and convictions were difficult ix> obtain. Garforth, of Dukeufield, England, has invented a machine for bursting down coal by means of compressed air. By it air has been compressed to 14,200 pounds per square inch. It is small and can be worked by two men. The compressed air was conveyed though wrought-iron pipes to a castiron cartridge twelve inches long, placed in a hole drilled in the coal; and the cartridge, when its known breaking strain was reached, bursted and broke down the eoal. An interesting story concerning Mr. Justin M'Carthy's recently published history is told by Mr, Edward King. He had contracted witli a London publishing house to bring out his book, when the Land League agitation in Ireland bewail to claim his sympathy. His views were so emphatic as to frighten his conservative publishers, and they asked to break the contract. Mr. M'Carthy consented, the forfeit being £200 or £300. Then he took tho book to another firm, aad made a much more advantageous contract than the first one. Dean Stanley, in the course of an eloquent I sermon preached at Westminster Abbey from the text, "God is our Refuge and our Strength," spoke of the great institutions of England which formed the around of his confidence in the future of the country, and passing these institutions in review he came to the press, which he eulogised as "that mighty engine which is wielded as it never before has been wielded in tfiis or in any other country." "We may often and justly complain," he continued, "of the vilencss and folly and vice which a section of the public journals foster and favour . . . and of the bitterness with which the so-called religious journals of the day address themselves to iuilame, pervert and exaggerate every topic of personal and party rancour. But I speak of the great organs of public opinion in all their branches, and I assert that in the reasonableness, in the purity, and in the moderation of their utterances, there is amidst all these shortcomings a ground of hope for tiie future of tho English people that will require generations to shake. Compare them with the like journals of other nations, notably with those whose language and utterances are so unworthy of the groat Republic of the West, and we must admit that even ill those transitory things the Eternal is still our strength and refuge." I