SCIENTIFIC.

Otago Witness, Issue 1898, 19 June 1890, Page 41

SCIENTIFIC.

—Professor R. H. Thurston, in a recent article, gives a graphic description of what electricity will do in the near future. He says it will break up the present factory system and enable the home worker once more to compete on living terms with great aggregations of capital in unscrupulous hands. Great steam engines will undoubtedly become generally the sources of powei in large cities, and will Bend out the electrio wire in every corner of the town, helping the sewing woman at her machine, the weaver at his pattern loom, the mechanic at his engine lathe, giving every house the mechanical aids needed in the kitchen, the laundry, the elevator, and at the same time giving light, and possibly heat, in liberal quantity and intensity.

—A new phonograph, simplified from Edison's model by a painter named Fossati, is mentioned in the Milan papers. It is described as a simple apparatus, taking up little room, and costing less than lOOfr. Fossati'g phonograph reproduces music and the human voice in a marvellous manner. The wax cylinders made by Fossati cost very little, and by means of galvanoplastic he transfers the impressions on the wax cylinders to zinc ones, which can be bought for 25 centimes each.

— We speak of the sun's light as colourless, Bays the author of " The Story of the Heavens," just as we speak of water as tasteless ; but both of these expressions relate rather to our own feelings than to anything really characteristic of water or sunlight. We regard the sunlight as colourless because it forms, as it were, the background on whioh all colours are depicted. The fact is that white is so far from being colourless that it contains every hue known to us blended together in certain proportions. The sun's light is really extremely composite. Nature herself tells us this if we will but give her the slightest attention.' Whence come the beautiful hues with which we are all familiar 7 Look at the lovely tints of a garden : the red of the rose is not in the rose itself. All the rose does is to grasp the sunbeams which fall upon it, extract from these beams the red which is in them, and radiate that red light to your eyes. Were there nob red rays commingled with the other rays in the sunbeam, there could be no red rose to be seen by sunlight. — Iron.

— It is said that all the region round about Peoria, 111., is in great excitement over the universal fuel process of destroying smoke and saving coal. Out of 90 tests it is claimed that an average of 40 per cent, of the coal has been saved and all the smoke destroyed. The master mechanic of the Rock Island railroad reports after a week's trial that it is a net saving every day of between lOdol and 12dol for each and every engine on the road.

— M. Schloesling has made a series of experiments tending to confirm the supposition that certain microbes in the soil secrete nitrogen from the atmosphere, and thus help to fertilise it. Farmers have a partiality for ordinary manures as distinct from artificial fertilisers, and it may be that the former is richer in these nitrogenous microbes. We may add that recent experiments of M. Berthellot, communicated to the French Academy of Sciences, has shown that electrifying soil causes it to gain nitrogen either under the influence of vegetation or without it. It is understood, however, that the soil without vegetation contained microbes. It would thus appear that electricity had a stimulating effect in the fixation of nitrogen in the soil.

— There is in course of constraction in the neighbourhood of London an air ship, designed on an entirely new principle. Its inventor claims that it will be perfectly manageable, and that in calm weather it will be capable of attaining a speed of from 120 to 150 miles per hour, and that against the stiffest kind of head-wind its speed will not be less than 80 miles per hour. Above all things, it will be buoyant. It is to be large enough to carry a crew of several men, and enough dynamite to make it very uncomfortable should it be dropped upon any city or fortress in the world.

— A paper was recently read before the Washington Chemical Society, by Mr Romyn Hitchcock, upon the preparation of the beautiful Japanese lacquer which has of late years become so well known to Europeans. The lacquer is obtained much after tbe manner of collecting india-rubber — namely, by piercing periodically the bark of a tree (Rhus vernicifera). The juice exudes from the horizontal cuts made, and after being collected in a kind of spoon, is transferred to a wooden receptacle. Here, owing to contact with the air, it is gradually transformed from its original greyish-white appeal ance to black. The compound is next strained to free it from mechanical impurities, and is then subjected to heat in order that the water contained in it may be driven off. Lacquer gives a far harder and more lasting surrace than any kind of varnish, while it is not brittle, and preserves its exquisite polish for centuries.

— A Ceylon paper gives an account of the finding of the largest cats-eye gem of which thexe is any record. It weighs nearly 71b. The finder was a man who had been very poor. A few months ago, however, his digging for gems was rewarded by finding a cats-eye which he sold for £1250. Soon after he dug up another, for which he realised £2500, and then his run of luck reached a climax when he unearthed his large stone, which is described as of perfect lustre. He has been offered £19,000 by a syndicate of local dealers, but has refused, as he declares he can cut the gem into 40 stones, each of which will bring £1000. A short time ago he also found a larger cats-eye than this big one, but tbe ray Ttvs imperfect, so that it is not more than one quarter as valuable.

Shakespeare says no philosopher can endure the <■ othaoho patiently, and a system of philosophy might wp'.l be built on the feplinga of n, sufferer who findi Irmself almoßfc free from pain by the time he rea^hos the dentist's door. The liability to pad, j B Hi !••• et ill. though ; just as t.he>-e la t>. liability in the In ir feu turn -rray unless it be property fartd frr and *' ' I"' »'nl°. V w K^ynesi prevented b y fche nae of Mrs o. A. Allen i World » Hair Restorer.