SCIENCE AND ART.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XIX, Issue 6422, 17 June 1882, Page 7

SCIENCE AND ART.

Experience proves that less iujury comes to the eyes from the electric than from gaslight. John Collier is to paint Alina Tadema. Lefevre will engrave the portrait which will be published. . A micro-telephone has been used with succcss in discovering underground watercourses in the Tyrol. One of the best water-colourists in London, Mr. T. F. Wainwright, is visiting Boston, ami has joined the Art Club there. Dr. Sawyer of Alabama says that quinine used hypodermically —that is, thrown uuder the skin with a syringe—results beneficially when large doses by mouth have completely failed. Dr. Charles Dorcmus says the milk of the elephant is the richest he has ever examined. It contains more butter and sugar and less water than any other milk, and it possesses a very agreeable taste and odour. It is worth remark that the names of the painters who enjoy the greatest reputation at present in England, France, .Austria, Hungary and Austrian Poland all begin with an M—Meissounier, Millais, Mackart, Munkacsy and Matejko. A new torpedo boat has been launched at Pola. It is provided with all the most : approved apparatus both for. discharging the torpedoes and for the management of other offensive weapons. The boat is lS7ft, long, 27ft. beam, and draws 12ft. of water. An American art student in Paris says the French students are the noisiest and nastiest lot ho ever saw. They are, he says, "very good-natured, full of mirth and wit, but of such a nasty sort as only Paris can create. Their mouths are never shut; they never say a serious thing or utter a refined expression." The Austrian sculptor, Zumbush, is finishing his colossal brouze monument to Maria Theresa, which will be erected at Vienna, near the Museum of Fine Arts. The Empress is represented seated and ten times life size. Figures of Wisdom, Force, Justice and Clemency surround her. There are also statues of the celebrated men of her reign— Prince Kauuita, Mercy, Haugnitz, Marshal Landen, &c. There are several has reliefs. Professor W. E. Ayrton delivered a lecture at the London Institution recently before a large audience on "The Storage of Power." Among other experiments, the lecture theatre was lighted, a circular saw driven, aiul a hoist employed to raise up boxes entirely by means of electricity produced the day before at the other side of Loudon and transported to the institution in Faille's accumulator. The total energy so conveyed was about 50,000,000 foot pounds, or about 23 horse-power exerted for one hour. Clilebowahi, a Polish artist, who was for fifteen years employed at the court of the Sultan Abdul Aziz, acquired in that position a fortune, with which, after the Sultan's death, he went to the French capital, where lie built a splendid residence, furnished in Moorish style. But he did not long enjoy his wealth. Enormous purchases of horses and carriages, and various other eccentricities and extravagances, soon gave evidence

of mental derangement, making it necessary fust to confine him in a mad-house, ami afterwards to send him to relatives in Warsaw.

Modern improvements have increased the power of the microscope so greatly that it is now made to magnify about 100,000 diameters. The best unaided human vision can see no objects smaller than the threc-hunclredtl-.s of an inch in diameter ; but the most skilful mieroscopists, with their best instruments, are able to examine monads a hundred-thousandth of an inch in diameter. Beyond this minuteness is obscurity. It has been estimated that the ultimate particles or atoms composing all matter can be | no more than one-twenty-millionth of an inch I in diameter, so it seems hardly probable that ) they will be revealed to human eyes.