SCIENCE AND ART.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XX, Issue 6829, 6 October 1883, Page 3 (Supplement)

SCIENCE AND ART.

The entire skeleton of a gigantic land lizard, 38ft. long, and quite perfect, has been found in the richly fossiliferous formation of Larame in Dacota.

The Electrician does not expect to see the cost of electric lighting very much decreased. The cheapest mode of producing electricity is by the dynamo-electric machines, and the greatest difficulty in ecouomy with these machines is the extremely low efficiency of the steam-engine as a means of converting heat into mechanical work,

Some time ago Baron Nordenskjold stated that our planet was dusted every year with half a million tons of meteoric dust!- More attention i 3 being paid to this form of planetary accretion than formerly. There can be no doubt it has been overlooked as a geological agent. This dust is usually composed of iron, nickel, and silica. Cne scientific journal goes so far as to declare that much of the iron iound in all soils is due to precipitation from the inter-steller spaces, the particles being first entangled in our atmosphere, and then washed down to the ground by rains.

Mr. F. Varley has devised a new form of electric lamp in which he uses fine filaments in a ropa-like bundle as the poles of the arc. It is said that the Bpace between the two points is so heavily charged with incandescent carbonaceous matter that the resistance is considerably reduced, and the " light" is of much greater area, for the luminosity comes rom the arc itself and not so much from the carbons, which no longer present the cup and j cone formation, although possibly the fila- I ment 3 individually preserve the distinctive shape. One advantage is that the carbons are flexible, can be wound on a reel, and be payed out by means of clockwork. The carbons are made of pieces of rope soaked in paraffin or ozokerite, and carbonised in a crucible kept constantly filled with a hydrocarbon atmosphere. Mr. R. H. Major has received the followlowingletter from Baron Nordenskjold, dated Reikiavik, June *10, 1883 : —" Highly honoured colleague,—Just when I had steam up to leave Reikiavik the spring of one of my chronometers broke. I went ashore to get a new spring put in, and while I waited 1 received the information that an old map was in the possession of one of the inhabitants of Aaden. I went immediately to him, and found that the map consisted of a fragment of a chart resembling Zeno's, The fragment comprises a piece of Greenland with the names Grui, Cher, Boier, Ther ; Iceland very complete, without Bres, Iscaut, Mimant, &c.; England and Scotland, the latter terminating roughly without the incorrect extension towards the east. No degrees of latitude are shown ia it it, but compass lines similar to hose on the chart of Andrea Bianco. A portion of Frisland (?) or Estotiland appears. I cannot, however, determine its age here. I have sent this important find tothelibrarian, E. Dahlgren, in Stockholm, who will at once have it copied. In greatest haste; the anchor is already weighed. With distinguished respect and friendship, A. E. Nordenskjold." The London correspondent of the Manchester Guardian says : —Col. Fosbery created a Bensation at a lecture he gave to an assembly of officers, small-arm inventors, and other experts at the Royal United Service Institution, by suddenly drawing from its place of hiding under the table, a wonderful new gun which he had just brought from LiiSge. He called it a " baby electric gun." It looked like a pretty carbine, but it had no mechanism, and could not possibly go off without being connected up to the source of electric force. That done, it could be fired with amazing apidity, 104 rounds having a few days before been fired from it by its inventor, M. Pieper, of Li(sge, in two minutes.' Col. Fosbery fired two rounds with infinitesimal powder charges. He prepared himself by Becreting under bis vest a small circuit of wire and putting on banderole, supporting what looked like a two ounce phial, but was, in fact, an electric accumulator, with sufficient slored-up energy to discharge 2000 rounds. The cartridges "were very innocent looking mites, and contained no detonating substances—nothing, in fact, but simply powder and a wad.' The opinion was expressed'by. various speakers that the electric gun must once more revolutionise the manufacture of small arma within ■s brief period.