SCIENTIFIC.

Otago Witness, Issue 1989, 7 April 1892, Page 43

SCIENTIFIC.

— A large steel-producing plant for the Celestial Empire is at the present moment on its way to China, after being constructed by an English company at Middlesborough. It forms a complete Bessemer plant, and the entire machinery for a large rail mill, as well as for plate and bar iron. Twenty puddling furnaces are also contained in the plant and two large blast furnaces, capable of producing 100 tons of pig iron per day. China is fast placing herself in a condition of independence of all "outside barbarians" for material for use both In peace and war. At the rate of improvements in progress in tbat country, China will soon become one of the most powerful nations on the globe. The senseless opposition of the common people to outside improvements is fast giving way to the inevitable. The governing classes have long seen and recognised the advantage and importance of putting their country in the van of universal progress.

— The chief direction in which rail way inventive enterprise might now make advance is in the reduction of noise and jar or vibration. This desirable consummation is well attained in the Chewin de Fer Glissant, or " gliding railway," which attracted so much attention at the recent Paris Exhibition, and at Edinburgh two years ago. After failing to get beyond the experimental etage in Europe, this system of locomotion appe irs about to reach the dignity of practical application among the novelty-loving Americans. It is stated thab a company has been formed in Chicago to build a railway on this system, with the privilege of extending it to a distance of 500 miles, and it is announced that it is contemplated to carry the line as far as Milwaukee. The general opinion of engineers in this country was that the thiDg was too good to be true ; but if the enterprising Americans prove that the 3ystem is by any means practicable, people will soon refuse to put up any longer with the noise and rattle of wheeled vehicles. It may be, indeed, that a change second only in importance to that brought about by George Stephenson is looming up. At present, however, it does not loom very large.

— When Sheffield first became famous for its cutlery, a peculiar-shaped knife, designed for a variety of uses, was made with great care and Bent to the agent of the Cutlers' Company in London. On one of the blades was engraved the following challenge :—: —

London, for thy life, Show me such another knife. The London cutlers, to show that they were equal to their Sheffield brothers, made a knife, with a single well-tempered blade, the blade having a cavity containing a rye straw 2Ain in length, wholly surrounded by the steel ; yet notwithstanding the fact that the blade was well-tempered, the straw was not burned, singed, or charred in the least. It is needless to add that^tbe Sheffield cutlers acknowledged themselves outdone in ingenuity.

— A curious statement has been made bj the pilots of Havre with reference to two lighthouses at La Heve, one of which was fitted with electrical lighting apparatus, while the other continued to burn oil. They say that during foggy weather the brilliancy of the electric light is very much more reduced than that of the oil lamps, so much so that sometimes, in very foggy weather, while the light from the oil lamps was plainly visible it was impossible to discern that of the electric light. The Electrical Review (London) states that a deputation of ship captains has also represented at Trinity House that the electric light in some of tbe lighthouses, more especially those near the entrance of the Thames, sometimes becomes invisible, while the lights from the lightships and lighthouses burning oil can still be distinctly seen, even the gas lamps from towns on the neighbouring coast being visible at tbe time. The effect has been supposed to be due to peculiar atmospheric conditions.

— There is a good deal of room for doubt as to whether the tendency of scientific men to go in for public display is likely to be beneficial to science in the long run. Professor Virchow's seventieth birthday was recently celebrated in Berlin with a lot of pomp and a lot of that formality in which German official circles appear to take a childish delight. Processions of faculties and presentation of addresses recounting the recipient's praises to his own face can give little satisfaction to the genuine man of science, and must be rather of the nature of an ordeal to him, while chiefly gratifying busy-bodies who head the deputations and roll forth their own eloquence. Surely science offers enough to gladden her votaries on their way to make needless all resort to the commoner artifices of the deputation and the address.

— One consequence of the short duration of lightning is an apparent diminution of its brilliancy. It has been proven that light cannot produce its full effect on the eye unless it remains at least as long as one-tenth of a second; but lightning lasts only the ten thousandth part of a second, and it follows from this that what we see is one hundred thousand times less bright than it really is. When we recollect that even thus diminished, its brilliancy is such as to cause temporary blindness, if too closely watched, we may feel grateful that we cannot see it in its true vividness, for our human powers of vision would be too weak to bear such a sudden" and overwhelming illumination. — Gaillard'e Electricity.

— A striking, not to say sensational, experiment was performed by Professor Dewar, at a lecture recently delivered before the Royal Society. Liquid oxygen, in a crystal

dish', was placed below the poles of a large-electio-magnefi/ On the magnet being exoited the oxygen left the dish and clunjf to the poles of the magfiet — just as a mas» of iron filings would have done — until it wa» dissipated by evaporation. It would be rash to say that this vivid demonstration of the highly magnetic qualities of oxygen will never be turned to any practical use, but at present it seems difficult even to conjecture" in what way it could be turned to the service of man. Meanwhile, it affords scope for the play of the peculiar talent ' for turning thiDg3 to account which distinguishes electrical quacks — "all diseases cured by inhaline magnetised oxygen I" " Magnetic pills," and pills " highly charged with electricity," already play their parts in the economy of quackdom, go why not magnetised oxygen 1

— Several machines (says an American paper) have been devised and put into more or less extensive practice to supplant the slow process of picking cotton by hand, bnfe until in the one below described we have never met with one which Beema to have received the full confidence of any extensive cotton-grower. We infer, howerer,' from what appears below that success has now been reached in a recent invention by Mr Angus Campbell, a native of Ontario County Canada, but for the last 12 years a resident of Chicago, which is pronounced nearly, if not quite fully equal in value and impor tance for picking cotton to the invention of Whitney's cotton gin for clearing that product of its seeds. It is described as a marvellous triumph of mechanical skill in accomplishing, by rapid machine work, the slow and expensive handwork now employed in picking cotton. Several inventions for accomplishing that work have heretofore been made, some of them have met with encouraging success, but Campbell's machine is said to be a complete triumph. Picking cotton is a very complicated work for amachine, from the fact that choice and judgment must necessarily enter largely intothe work. The cotton plant is loaded at the same time with ripe cotton, unripened bolls and blossoms. No machine can be a success unless it will pick what is tipe and all that is ripe, leave uninjured the unripened bolls and blossoms to develop for a later picking. This Mr Campbell's invention will do, and 100 Southern newspapers have proclaimed the fact that their representatives have witnessed its successful performances in the cotton fields near Waco, Texas. The Southern planters were at first too incredulous to give it serious consideration, but after they have witnessed its operations they have 'become very enthusiastic, as they know that it costs more than 100,000,000d0l to pick the cotton of this country. By the use of this machine it is confidently predicted the same work can be done at a cost of not mere than 25,000,000d01. A saving of 75,000,000d0l annually in this country alone in putting on the market one of our most needed products, and one which does or should enter largely into the daily wear of every human beiDg on earth, is a matter of inestimable importance, and it will add still another bright laurel to the genius of American invention. Mr Campbell may now take rank with the great inventors of the world, and it goes without saying that both himself and his associates, who are engaged with him in putting thi3 invention before the world, will reap enormous profit*.' A company, with a capital of 5,0Q0,000d01, has been organised to build factories and enter upon the manufacture of the machines, for which there must soon be an enormous demand.

— An enterprising journalist who is bald offers a reward of L2OO for a tale that will make his hair stand on end.

— " The laßt time I ocoapied this pulpit,' said a minister one Sunday, " a lady oritio of the congregation found fault with the service as being too short, and for this reason— that the dinner would not be quite ready. , Let me say that I am not here simply to fill up an interval while the mutton is roasting."