SCIENCE NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2685, 30 August 1905, Page 68

SCIENCE NOTES.

"—Mr Lowell. 'of tho Flagstaff Observa- ' iory, Arizona, United States, sends us [ctxys tlio Liverpool Post) two pieces ot informs - ' tion connected with/ the planet Mars which ■ara nofc without interest. In the first place, he has reen the snow settle very early in tho Martian winter round! the Polar j region, and extending 1 over a large area, of , the planet, leading to the conclusion that th© seasons are as variable and the weather as uncertain on Mars as it is here. The other fact has reference to the disputed! reality of ihs canal system on the planet. Some astronomers fancy these canals to b© double ; some have not been able to see them at all ; some say that they have no real existence, but are due to the mental effort of the observer, trying to see more than can be clearly made out. Now comes • the intelligence from Mr Lowell that he Jias succeeded in photo gi-ajjjaing tines© canals; nofc oae, but several. oSnhany occasions. This evidence ought to put the question at rest apparently. — Houses and the lik® have been built for so many years upon the principle that the walls should support the floors and roofs that it comes ainicst as a shock to find that buildings -are now being erected wherein quite the contrary is the case. The now Ritz Hotel, -a palatial building on the site of (/he Walsingham in Piccadilly, London, is the first exarngle in England of the new method. The floors of this building reached at one stage of its progress several storeys higher than the outside walls. The walls, in fact, play so small a 'art in the constructional scheme of the edifice that they are said to act simply as a protection against the weather and ns a solid basis for decorative treatment. The whole building is erected upon a framework of steel, •which carries the weight of the floors and roof as well as the "walls. In the ordinary buildings wiili which we are familiar the walls arc built to a certain height, and then the joists which form th-e floor are placed .across them, then, another height of wall is built to carry another layer of joists, and so on. But in this new hotel, girders are provided at the level of each floor to carry tho section, of the wall belonging to at The <new method of building hails from America, where it is known as the • cage-skeleton system. — Sim-stroke, whether in its mildest or its fatal forms, is due to the direct action of the solar rays — or some "notes" thereof — upon the central nervous system, which Donsists of the brain and spinal cord. Now, i the lower part of the spinal cord is, as a ) rule, sufficiently protected by the usual 1 Jothing, though, in the tropics, it is often j Well tn have the middle segment of the ccat behind provided with a double layer of cloth. In this country, however, we may SonfLne ourselves to the consideration taerely of that short section of the spinal 50 rd which traverses the neck, a-ntl of the Drain. It is in order to supplement the , protective action of the skin, bone, and j tl ick muscles of the back of the neck that one employs a handkerchief or an appro-priately-shaped hat, or a loose-fitting high collai". The brain is insufficiently protected by the cranial hair from a summer sun, mid though one heartily approves the general principles of the r '"Nb-hat Brigade," its memb&rs do well in the hot weather to .evert to a. custom which, may be defended fcr some three months in the year, however open to criticism during the other mine. It unfortnnateiy needs saying that tho principles of ventilation are strictly applicable to th© scalp as to every area of skin. An unventilated hafc is an abomination and a source of dani?per a 9 well. — A , Physician, in the Pall Mall Gazette. — The Chicago correspondent of the Daily Telegraph: — "T^n of the leading insurance companies of Chicago taking life ri e ks havo « greed to revise their mortality tables 'in favour of big, active, muscular men, as •against fat and spare men.' . . . According to \h& old mortality averages, ican

men wore preferred by the majority ol the companies, but two decades of ccllectting statistics, on the general average of life have induced the examiners to favour heavy, active men to the discredit of tho ordinarily fat men, and leave lean men in a. state of doubt. Th© figures now available undoubtedly show that lean men ax*e nervous, worry too much, and get tuberculosis." ! —It occasionally happens that during a ' severe thunderstorm what is described aa '' a "ball of fire" is seen to travel slowly through lite air, and then to burst before or after it reaches the surface of the earth. The accounts of phenomena of this kind are frequently much more exaggerated, but they are sufficiently accurate to prove that lightning discharges can really take a globular for.n. Tim exaofc nature of tho phenomenon is, however, not understood, and careful observations of the character and '• effects of this globular lightning- arc much to be desired. As a matter of fact, although, ihere eeems to bo no doubt that dazzlingly luminous balls have appeared! during thunderstorm*, no --olid l fragment of eny such "balls of fire 1 ' has even boon recovered. "When lightning strikes loo<«\ sandy ground, it sometimes fuses the part:c!es of fand, and the molten rock frag-n-tnts run together to form rough tubes aiound the line in whioh the discharge lakes Yilace. Those irregular tuJjes, which arc sometimes two or more inches in d.-a-mcter, are well known io geologists, who term them "fulgurite" ; and people who do net clearly distinguish between cause and effect ofton regard them a=i thunderbolts brought to the earth by lightning. The only soli-1 masses which actually fall upon the earth come from outar space, and have nothing tj do with thunderstorms. Enlliant meteors, or fireballs pioperly so called, may be sson. in a clear or a. cloudy sky, and if they are not entirely driven inio vapour by friction against tho air, they reach the earth's surface as meteorites, many of which are prase/ved in museums. Sometimas, when large meteorites fall, explosions occur which may be mistaken for thunder, but they are not_ connected with lightning or any other exhibition of atmospheric electricity. Of course, a meteor-tc cculd fall during a thunderstorm, but the coincidence of the two occurrences would not establish any relation between them. . The whofe point is, then, that so far 03 present knowledge goes, ;ny object which is said to be a thunderbolt is either particles of rock fused together by lightning passing into the earth or a meteorite from cuter "spacs. No solid .Mass of any kind I has ever been obtained from the "balls of I fire' 1 seen during some thunderstorms. — I Leisure Hour for June. I — "Writing in Knowtedge on "Tho ' of Life," Mr Geoffrey Martin arrives at some- interesting "onclusions. Life, ho says, is old, old as the universe ltseh. It lias always exited! generally throughout U'S> \miversc in some form or other, and always will exist, no matter what lis-ppens to our little earth. The protoplasm of the earth I is but the product of evolution of untold , ' eons of a<rcs, coming down to us in an unbroken line from ages when th© world was a vasfc liquid globe of white-hot material. AH the elements have circulated 111 succession through its' structure, and then passed out again. . First at the highest temperatures came the heaviest and least volatile elements 1 ; then, as tho temperature fell, Ih<?y gradually were eliminated, ai,d their places' ware filled by analogous lighter and more volatile elements, ui-til at k*t | living matter assumed its present composi- j tion. 3ut this replacement of denser by lighter elements is now almost complete, for the principal elements already present in living matter are carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen. And these, lb will bo noticed, are among the very lightest nonmetallio elements which, so far as we knew, exist. N lighter elements, then, can replace these already present 'm tl'e organism, and, therefore, there can be no further very great alterations in the temperature of living matter in the coming age«. But the 1

? workl is Ftiil ooolincj. Consequently, age 1-y ago, cntury by century, the. contrast Ikjlwccii tho tonipcnturc. of living matter and tho icmfcrauKc of the surrounding medium is becoming no re and more accentuated, and the difficulty of roaintainng life is steadily increasing. Ho thinks, therefore, ihat so far us the surface of this earth is concerned, organic life is entering \- into its last stage of evolution. — It would .seem difficult to find a better substitute for cork .is a stopper for bottles, although tho glass-marble stopper, rubber, an 1 1 paper-cork arc used to some extent. Mr I<\ W. Mcnzies, Edinburgh, has given a demonstration with an American machine v.'l ich cuts metal corks from prewired strips of tin, inserts a tiny ring of rubber, and by a swift proee-35 on another machine fastens tho tin s-topper over the neck of the bottle so that all air is excluded, and it cannot be removed by hand. The in\cutors are Mr Lewis Railing and Mr Albert Jones, and the machine is made in Baltimore, U.S.A., Strips of prepared tin are. fed below a punch, which stamps out iiio discs. Thess travel round and reecho a. tiny liny of rubber inside, and are dropped out ready for insertion on the neck of the bottl?. It Is said that rhes© stoppers will be sold at Is a gro=?, aiul that with, the patent stopping-machine it will be possible to close from 1500 to 1800 bottles per hour. — 'Writing to the editor o£ the Leeds and Yorkshire Mercury, a writer who sigrs himself "F.'R.&L" bays:— "With regard to the reputed creation of organic life by Mr Butler Burke, I would point out that most media u?ed in bacteriological investigation, is very diffbult 10 sterilise effectively. For ordinary p.ivpo3G3 it is done by exposure to lue steam for half r.ll hoar on three suc-cc-^ive days; but, in my own experience, I have known media, presumably "sterilised" in this way, develop growth of a I actyriologieai nature, and even thick moulds after boin^ stored away for some time, without incubition. Indeed, some germ.> almost refuse to Lie killed, more rspec'ally tboso ni the- upore-bc-aiing varieties. By submitting bouillon to the action cif super hea + «l steam {i.e., steam under pr^saue,* and consequently of a higher temporat:u"c thao, ordinary steam), it can be Rterili«-«d very effectively, but this has ofben a disturbing action on the chemical constituents of the media. I have no wish to attempt to challenge the truth of Mr Burkes resuKs; indeed, I await his final ! letults with -suppressed .excitement; but might it not be possible that the process of sterilisation may only vender the bacteria and other forma of life present dormant, so to speak, and incapable of developing i.nd growing on incubation, and that under the ii-fiuence of the radio-activity of the radium eali. they are revived and stimulated oncl caused to grow. Again, if the form of lif& created is not wholly of a bacteriological i>ature, but is, as Mr Burko says, something which approximates partly to bacteria and partly to something- of a crystalline form, is it not possible that the "form of lifo" may have" existed all aUmg in tho chemical constituents of tlie bouillon, and have merely been called) into play by theaction of the radium. — The Lancet (July 8):— "It cannot be too widely known that not only is theino tho most essential constituent of tea, but also that it h almost as quicldy soluble in hot water as is sugar. The making- of tho infusion is thei-efor© complete in a few minutes, and only tea so prepared is the 'blessed beverage.' The< abuse, of tea, like the abu=o of anything 1 else, is, of course, reprehensible, and the guilty person deserves all the unpleasant symptoms which excessive tea-drinking or the drinking of strong, stewed tea sooner or later brings in its train. . . . The use of plenty of milk with tea is a wise precaution, and must be regarded as a sound physiological proceeding, since the proteids of milk destioy astiingeney, and probably prevent tho otherwise injurious action of tannin on the. mucous membrane of the stomach. In the intestinal juice the proteids are separated, an<l the tannin probably combines with the sodium galls. The immoderate drinking of tea is an Tanqitestionable evil, hut, on the- whole, we are inclined to think that tho ovils of tea-drinking ha\© been exaggerated. The real difficulty is to convince people that a lightly-drawn infusion gives them their moneys worth." ,