SCIENCE AND ART.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XX, Issue 6667, 31 March 1883, Page 1 (Supplement)

SCIENCE AND ART.

CiiEsTKliFir.D was the first town in Fngland to take up electric lighting, and, in reply to a question from a neighbouring borough the town clerk has written as follows: — "The majority of the corporation of Chesterfield are satisfied with the lighting of the town by electricity on the groumt of eflicienoy and economy. We have :22 Brush arc-lights and !)!> Lsnu-Knx incandescent lamps at a Co3t fur the present year or £SSS, in the place of —00 gai lamps costing i'l'so per aunum. A writer in the Scientific American suggests a novel " burglar-trap," which is worth attention. As he very justly observes, the present burglar-a'::irm in use only alarms the burglar, who immediately runs away. The proposition is that the contrivance, instead of ringing the alarm, shall turn 0:1 momentarily the*full glare i f the electric light, aud at the ■ same instant expose a plate in a camera ready to take an instantaneous picture. The burg-

lar will of coarse take to Slight, but will have left his portrait behind. The alarm used is to *>e an electric mat set in a eeLCam place on the iloor, that spot being covered by the focus of the oan.era. In the ease of banks aud cilices the electric mats might be placed in front of the iron safes. Preparations are beinc: made at Windsor Castle to illuminate part of tbe exterior with the electric light. The Great Western Railway Company have adopted it in their large goods-yard at Nine Elms Station. The Manchester Exchange has just been lighted by 10 Brockie are lights, each ."?,GOO-candle I power, as well as by 400 incandescent lanvis | of 15-eandle power each. Several j steamships have recently been fit ted with t : ie incandescent lamps, one vessel being engaged in the Noiv Zealand trade, aud anoth-r sailing for the Brazils. The electric light at the New Northern Docks at Liverpool, which has been employed for twelve months, has given so much satisfaction that it has been determined to extend it so as to light an additional area of 200 acres. The extensive railway-carriage works of Messrs Brown Marshall, and Co., at Saltley, near Birmingham, extending over an area of 10 acres, have just boon lighted with 40 Brush arclights of 2,000-cinJle power each, and the result is said to be mast satisfactory both as regards ifticiency and economy. Electric lighting is also making very considerable progress on Tyneside, more especially in the shipbuilding yank and engineering works of that great industrial dirtrict, more than 120 "Brush arc-lampe being now in use. Messrs. Campbell, the well known and extensive dyers at l'ertb, have introduced electric illumination into their works. Several sugar firms in Glasgow and Greenock have also adopted it. It is usually supposed that men of great intellectual powers have large and massive heads ; but according to a writer in the new number of the Journal of Sciencc, the theory which Dr. Gilbert, physician to Queen Elizabeth, was first to suggest is not borun out by facts. An examination of busts, pictures, and medallions, hitaylioK, kc., of the worlds' famous celebrities almost teuds the other way. In the earlier paintings it is true, men are distinguished by their large heads, but this ia attributable to the painters, who agr-.cd with the general opinion and wished to Hatter their sitters. A receding forehead is mostly condemned. Nevertheless this feature is found in Alexandria the Great, aud to a lesser degree, in Julias Ca'sar. The head of Frederick the Great, as will be seen from one of the portraits in Carlyle's work, receded dreadfully. Other great men have positively small heads. Lord Byron'sjwas "rcmark- , ably smail," as were those of Lord Bacon and Cosmo di Medici. Men of genius of ancient 1 times have only what nwy be called an | ordinary ormrydiiyforehc.id, and Herodotus, 1 Aleibiadea, Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus, among many others, are mentioned aa instances. Some are even low-browed, as 1 Burton, the author of "Tim Anatomy of 1 Melancholy Sir Thomas Browne, aud Albert ' Durer. The average forehead of the Greek sculptors in the freize from the Parthenon is, we are told, ".lower, if anything, tha-i whar, ; is ffei. nin modern fi-reheads." Th? god;; ' themselves are represented with "ordinary, I if not low browr." Thus it appears that the r popular notion of the matter is erroneoun, • and t\at there may be greit men without J big heads—in other words, .-i Geneva -watch , is capable of keeping as good time as an clock.