SCIENCE NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 11923, 22 December 1900, Page 8

SCIENCE NOTES.

— The electric railway started nearly three years ago from the base to the summit of the Jungfrau mountain is to be abandoned. The cost has proved to be far heavier than the en-

giueers anticipated, and now, after three years' work, the whole scheme is to be relinquished. Many say that its abandonment is a good-thing, for (states The King) whereas

other mountain railways, such as those up the Pilatus, the Rigi, and our own Snowdon, enable a tourist to visit places and scenes which are immensely interesting, and which san only be 1 cached with much labour, and in some cases even danger, the incompleted Jungfrau Railway was to carry a tourist to such an altitude as would be absolutely injurious to anyone whose heart or lungs were not of the strongest. Indeed, so rarefied is tho air at the summit of the Jungfrau that no one could stay there much beyond half an hour without feeling ill. There were to have been stations from tho base to the summit, and the journey was to have taken one hour and .40 minutes. The first portion of the railway as far as the Eiger Glacier was opened for traffic last year. Nicola Tesla is regarded as a dreamer by some, as a wizard by others, and as a most remarkable .man and a great electrician by most people. He is very youthful in appearance, and it would scarcely be supposed that he is over 40 years of age. He has spent his entire working life in investigating the phenomena of electricity, and is possessed of a tremendous amount of physical and intellectual energy. Tesla's latest claim to attention is that lie lias recently invented an electrical instrument which he thinks will revolutionise the science of medicine. By means of an oscillator lie proposes to cure consumption, cancer, and other forms of disease which have hitherto resisted all the efforts of medical science, including fevers, on which its effect has been pronounced marvellous. Ordinarily eight hundred volts of electricity passed through the body .of a man by means of the dry-cell method are sufficient to kill him. By Tesla's machine half a million volts can be administered to a patient without, ill effect. One scarcely feels the subtle fluid which, in. smother form, would instantly annihilate him. A peculiar property claimed for the Tesla electricity is that it affects the germs of the disease without destroying the cells of the tissues of the body. Many doctors could cure consumption if "they had only the disease bacillus to deal with. But they hava.to consider the cell structure of the human body. A germicide powerful enough to kill the consumption germ would also destroy the tissues in which this germ is conducting its operaLions. Ordinary electricity passed through the tissue would reduce it to its elemental state. Tho Tesla oscillator is said to be actuilly in u«e by New York physicians, who recurd astounding results. Patients suffering from chronic, consumption have been cured permanently, lien whose hours have been numbered have taken up their beds and walked. In fever cases the oscillator has reduced the temperature from 105deg to nor-mal—9B.2-s—in four seconds. If this invention has all the remarkable merits attributed to it, we may truly take Maeboth's advice and " Throw physic to the dogs." — A message from Newport (Rhode Island) states that the Holland submarine boat has been subjected to a fresh test, which is said to have established not only its value for harbour defence purposes, but also as a powerful agent, for offensive warfare. The Holland and some torpedo-boats were to assume the offensive against two warships in the harbour. The latter swept the harbour with their searchlights, and easily picked up the torpedo-boats before they had'approached close enough for a successful attack. But despite the best efforts of the crew on board the warships they could not locate tho new submarine boat, which, running easily with deck awash, approached within 150 ft of the warships and returned to dock unseen. Both warships were at the mercy of the Holland's totpedoes, and had the test'been an incident of veal war both would have been destroyed. American naval officers consider the Holland a most valuable addition to the navy. . — Piping made of sailcloth and impregnated with india-rubber is being manufactured by a Dusssldorf firm for use in mines for ventihtion Those are said to be much cheaper than piping made of wood or zinc. The pipes arc provided at intervals with steel rings to prevent them from kinking, and they are secured to the shafts and passages by means of galvanised iron rings. These cloth pipes can be easily handled and transported; and one areat advantage in their employment, says the Colliery Guardian, is that when shots are fired in the 'mine the cloth pipes can be folded together and put out of the way in a manner which would be impracticable were the tubes '"!! At the Berlin meeting of the agricultural section of the Natnrforscher-Yersammhing, so far back as September, 1886, the lnte Professor Hellriegel read a paper disclosing results which have revolutionised our ideas relative to the nitrogen nutrition of plans. This paper threw a flood of light upon the path to be followed by practical agruniUunsts n the future. In short, Professor Hellnege roved by evidence which has been accepted , t entire scientific world that the root nodules of leguminous plants are caused and la hi ed by\i species of bacteria, and that tlUe Mctem enable the plants to indirect y eed upon the practically unlimited and costly 'tore of free nitrogen which forms eight-tenths of the earth's atmosphere. True, clover an* other leguminous plants had prev.ously been viluod as soil renovators, but we are now ible to u«e them with an understanding and a confidence hitherto impossible, with the hope that by their u«e as green manure, as food ior farm animals, and as a source of merchantable produce we may maintain the fertility of our field' in so far as the element nitrogen is concerned, without the costly use of artificial nitrogenous manure, the nitrogen compounds of which will thereby be preserved for other industrial needs. There is still some .n^stigation needed to determine the most certain market under the name of ISilrag^n a. germ AmeHct. but the results thus far obtained are conflietinff.