SCIENCE NOTES.

Otautau Standard and Wallace County Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 168, 21 July 1908, Page 2

SCIENCE NOTES.

A new electric plough Has reached the Chicago market which receives its current from trolley wires transmitted by an insulated wire, which, as the machine moved up and down the field, winds or unwinds about a large drum. The new plough weighs less than a ton. and will range m price from £300 to £400.

At a meeting of newspaper ..proprietors at Chicago the other day a manufacturer strongly advocated the production of black newspapers printed with white ink, declaring that unless something of this kind was done the demand for wood pulp would inevitably result m the gradual disappearance of the forests of the United States.

— A Remarkable Orchid. — One of the most remarkable flowers m existence is that bf a tropical orchid ( "' Angraecum sesquipedale "), which has an enormous hollow process or "spur" over a foot m length. Honey is produced at ithe bottom of the spur, and Darwin, m his famous work on orchids, pointed out that this flower must be fertilised by a correspondingly large insect with a tongue long enough to reach the honey. Darwin's prediction, ridiculed at the time, proved correct, the moth which visits the flower having been discovered.

— Amphibious . Fish. — The 'British Australasian ' gives tm interesting account of the mysterious ap- \ pearance of fish m large holes which had I been dry for long periods, and which had ! suddenly been filled by heavy rains. Mr J. W. Ifingsmill, who has had about forty years' experience m the Far North, states that he has known waterholes to be dry for months,, and six weeks after they j have been filled by rain they have been j alive with fish. He has caught fish-; nearly. half a pound m weight m a. hole 1 ' which had been dry for months only six ; weeks after the rain filled it. The only I possible explanation Mr Kingsmill offers is that when the water is evaporating or sinking and fast disappearing the fish burrow down m the mud and become dormant, or that the eggs are carried by wildfowl.

,- —How They Glow.— After exposure for some time to the sun many diamonds glow m a dark room. One beautiful green diamond m Sir William Crookes's collection, when phosphorescing m. a vacuum, gives almost as much light as a candle, and -one can easily read by its rays. But the time has hfeirdly come, Sir William remarks, when we can use diamonds as domestic illuminants ! Mrs Kunz, wife of the well-known New York mineralogist, possesses perhaps the most remarkable of all phosphorescing diamonds. This prodigy- diamond will phosphoresce m the dark for some minutes after being exposed to a small pocketelectric light, and if rubbed on a piece of cloth a long streak of phosphorescence appears.

— A Meal m Two Seconds. — A plausible motion cherished by a great many people is that the day is fast approaching when the human race will subsist entirely on highly r concentrated food y the time occupied m eating the daily meals will.be saved, it is promised, by swallowing a tablet of concentrated essence, and all questions of fastidiousness for food will be banished, while the dyspepsia arising from an over-bulky and hastily-swallowed meal will finally disappear. The idea of subsisting entirely on nothing but tablets of concentrated food is, of course, says 'Science Sittings,' utterly fallacious, as the ' Lancet ' points out, and plainly opposed to sound physiological teaching. For breakfast and for evening "meal we must content our-selves-with foods served m the good oldfashioned way-, but for lunch— the " quick lunch" of the busy man — the tabloid meal, to consist of one or two tablets, washed down by a hasty gulp of milk or something stronger, is receiving serious /consideration. Such a lunch would not require more than one or two seconds for its consumption, whereas the quickest of "quick lunches" of to-day cannot be eaten under five minutes or so.

—Engineering Hint from the Beaver.— Human science owes many a debt, especially on the practical side, to the instinct of the lower, animal*?. One of' these obligations is cited by aai eminent authority. Engineens frequently build dams straight across streams, the object being, m some cases, to save expense* by sparing material. But the beaver arches his dam against the current, and experience has *nown that this farip. of dam is best to resist floods and the impact of floating ice. Acting upon the knowledge which is instinctive -.vith the beaver, and which human calculation approves, the Great Bear Valley Dam, m California, and some other dams m that State, have been constructed and so made that their stability depends' upon tlie resistance which their arched form presents.