SCIENCE AND ART.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XX, Issue 6817, 22 September 1883, Page 3 (Supplement)

SCIENCE AND ART.

As electric railroad is being constructed between Frankfort and Off-n.iach, a distance of nearly eight miles. It will bo worked by stationary engines and dynamo-machines placed midway between two ends of the line. Boeton has 304 electric liglitf, which cost sixty-five cents apiece each night, and they displace a thousand ga3 lights, which cost less than six cents each. This is, while each electric lamp cost? as much as ten gas lamps, it takes the place of only three. Mr. G. Shatte, of Dresden, has succeeded in producing red, blue, green, and otherwise coloured paints, which have the quality of shining in the dark with the same colour which they poesees in the daylight. It is easy to see that a variety of arti tic effects niav be produced by means of such colours. Universal indignation in expressed iu Holland at the sale of that fanr. us picture, the " Meisje," by Franz Hals, to the Bjroness Rothschild, of Frankfort, for £10,000. It is thought mons'rous that one of the gems of the old Dutch school should have been allowed to go out of the country. Experiments have been made in England with a new telephonoe. A thin circular disc of mahogany veneer is employed to give rut tUe sounds,'and it claimed that this entirely removes the peculiar metallic twang given to tbe voice and found in telephones, wh»re a metal plate ia used. Other advantages tlaimed are that absolutely no adjustment iu roc aired throughout the whole system, and the telephones can be moved about to any position or shipped abroad, no skill being reauirsil to erect them. ' An electric cancelling stimp has just been iavented, which car.noc fail to supersede oar present slow method of obliteration in our post offices. It is so constructed that when the postage stamps are struck in the ordinary Ti-ay, contact k made, and a zig-zag platinum wire, which closes the circuit instantly, becomes red - hot. This burns the ot the postage stamps in such a manner surlace as to render it impossible to erase the marks, while no injury is done either to the eriTelope or its contents. The use of electric light towers is rapidly 3preadiDg in all the large uowne of the United States. Two, recently erected in Unionsquare and Madison-Equare, New York, are constructed in tubular sections of steel plate, three feet in diameter at the base, and tapering to eight inches at the top, which is 250 it. from the ground. These steel masts, as they might be more appropriately called, are embedded in strong foundations 12ft. in depth, where they rest upon a cast-iron plate. Six wrought-iron guys prevent each mast from swaying. The lamps are suspended near the top from a moveable frame, and over them is a large copper reflector, which also serves as a protection. For many years Dr. Petere, of Hamilton College Unite! States, has been engaged upon a work which will when complete represent a most important addition to astronomical aciecce. This consists of a Celestial Chart and Catalogue of the Stars down to and inelusive of those of the fourteenth magnitude. Before the advent of the telescope such star catalogues were produced; but they were naturally of small dimensions, and somprised little more than one thousandstar3. After the telescjpe had brought into view such myriads of unsuspected orbs, catalogues became more numerous, but still their accuracy could not be relied upon. The most extensive of these was that of Ai'gelander, which included stars down to the ninth magnitude. The area of Dr. Peter's chart is iiiue times that of Argelauder's, to give room for the immense increase in the number of the stars tabulated. The work which already has occupied 23 years, has been accomplished with the aid of a thirteen-inch refracting telescope. , . A remarkable paper has just appeared in the Philosophical Magazine by Mr. h. H. Cooke on the carbonic acid in the atmosphere He ehows that IS2 million tons of carbon from the coals we use are annually converted into carbonic acid. In addition to this, onethird more mnst be added to represent the combustion of wood, peat, oil, &c. Next is taken into consideration the fact that there are 1.500 millions of people living on the glob» each one of whom produces 2lb. of carbiuic acid every '2-1 hours. The lower animals may certainly be pat down as producing as much carbonic acid as human beings. Then there aast be considered the amount produced hy the decay of aoimal and vegetable matter Altogether thi3 amounts to 45 million tons of carbonic acid thrown into the atmosphere every day. The principal causes for its removal are plants, and Mr. Cooke shows that at least 24,700,000 square miles of leaf surface must bo eDgaged in the work of its removal. The causes which remove the carbonic acid from the air are thus more powerful than those which add it to the atmoephere.