SCIENCE NOTES.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXVII, Issue 5312, 25 June 1904, Page 10

SCIENCE NOTES.

.ANOTHER “EMPIRE LINK.” A new telegraph cable connecting Great Britain with Australia via Cape Colony is being constructed. Already the first section to the Cape has been laid. The next section will be earned across the Indian Ocean to Mauritius, thence to the Heeling Islands, and from there to Perth, in Western Australia. When this new line is completed there will be three distinct cable routes to Australia from Great Britain via India, the recently laid Pacific cable, and this new one via the Cape respectively, thus offording adequate routes should any one or two be interrupted or-cut by any agency, such as an enemy in war. PEARL PRODUCTION. It is announced from Paris that Prof. Dulbois has found it possible “to inoculate oysters with the disease of which the pearl is a symptom.” Linnaeus persuaded the Swedish Government that by boring a hole through the shell of the river mussel and inserting a grain of sand, the animal could be made to secrete a small pearl around it. The experiment was tried, and succeeded so far as to prove the truth of what Linnaeus had stated, and to secure him a reward of £450; but the Swedish pearl fishery was soon abandoned. THE CAUSE OF AUTUMNAL TINTS. The exchanges of colour of . leaves in autumn are found by Dr Keegan to depend on the mineral matters, especially the silica and line. Leaves that become red are those containing less than 10 per cent of silica, while those that become yellow or brown have more than 10 per cent. The mineral matters seem to flow to the dying deaf, in quantity proportionate to the decay of its vitality, but the vitality of the leaf is limited in England owing to the short summers. JOURNAL DEVOTED TO RADIUM. A new journal will be published shortly in Paris under the name of “Le Radium.” It will appear monthly, and its object, as its name indicates, is to give the fullest and latest particulars concerning the developments of that marvellous and mysterious body discovered by M. Curie. The first number is to contain a special article giving full particulars of the scope of the publication and all the possibilities of the wonderful substance that has been named. A NOVEL USE FOR X-RAYS. That mining fuses should be tested by means of the x-rays has been ingeniously suggested by Mr C. Napier Hake, the Chief-Inspector of iEixplosives in Australia. He states that,with the simplest form of x-rays apparatus the powder column of the fuse appears on the screen “very sharply defined between the faint outlines of its jute coverings, and even the cotton threads going through the powder column are discernible.” The slightest break or irregularity in the powder column can thus be detected, and a considerable length of fuse can be examined in a few minutes without destroying or altering its original con- j dition.