SCIENCE NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2913, 12 January 1910, Page 80

SCIENCE NOTES.

—Doctors and Hypnotism.— i Hypnotism was advocated by Dr G. H. | Savage, consulting physician and lecturer on mental diseases at Guy's Hospital, who delivered the Harveian Oration before the Royal College of Physicians. Investigation into hypnotism, he said in his lecture, was not a thing that could be ignored 1 in England, and while other nations were investigating its physiology and therapeutic value ; it was a pity that England should remain in the background. I —An Ingenious Machine. — | A recent patent that should be of particular interest to electricians and plumbers covers a machine for boring holes through overhead beams which does not require the operator to climb a ladder, but may be j operated and directed from the floor. The | machine is mounted on a staffl provided with a foot which rest* on the floor, and this staff may bo adjusted to bring the boring tool against the ceiling or beam. The tool is operated by means of a hand! j crank, and the feed is regulated by a chain, both within easy reach of the opera- , tor. The device- is arranged to bore a double line of holes. ■ j —Sugar as a Disinfectant.— Professor Trilbsrt, of the Pasteur Institute, has demonstrated that burning sugar develops formic acetylene-aldehyde, one of the most powerful antiseptic gases known. Five grama of sugar (77.16 gr) were burned under a glass bell holding 10 quarts. After the vapour had cooled bacilli of typhus, : tuberculosis, cholera, smallpox, etc., were placed in the bell in open glass tubes, and within half an hour all the microbes were dead. If sugar is burned in a closed vessel containing putrefied meat or the contents of rotten eggs the offensive odour disappears at once. The old-time popular faith - in the disinfecting qualities of burned sugar , tppears, therefore, well founded. 1 —A Terror to the Road Hog.— Particulars have been given of an in- . vention for operating in daylight which j trill be as terrible to motor car malefactors I of the road as the Bertillon system and j the telegraph are to ordinary criminals. The deadly invention .consists of a double , lens camera, fitted with a split second j jhronometer. The operator waits until the j whizzing machine baa passed, presenting its j back and the number board. It ta'kes no ' expert jo mak# two snaps at the back of , i speeding car, and if the second image : \s one-third as large as the first, the motor ' must have been 50ft further from the lens, j Suppose the ascertained distance to be j 58gft, while the chronometer registers a ' full second of tiaie, the speed of the motor is proved to be 40 miles an hour. j —The Laughing Plant.— j The laugning plant is not a flower that i laughs, but one that creates laughter, if j the printed accounts of the travellers can j be believed. It grows in Arabia, and is [ called the lauahing plant because the seeds produce effects like those caused by laugh- . ing gas. The flowers are of a bright yellow, and the seed pods are soft and woolly, while the seeds resemble small black beans. Only ! two or three grow in a pcd. The natives j dry and pulverise them, and the powder, taken in small doses, makes the soberest. person behave like a circus clown or a madman, for he will dance, sing, and laugh most boisterously, and cut the most fantastic capers, and be in an uproariously ridiculous condition for about an hour. .When the excitement ceases the exhausted exhibitor of these antics falls asleep, and when he awakes .he has not the slightest remembrance of his frisky doings. —The Age of Fish The age of a fish can be determined with accuracy by inspection of the otoliths, or j bony concretions, which are found in the i auditory apparatus. These otoliths inerea.se in size during the entire life of the fish, each year adding two layers, a light- j coloured one formed in summer and a dark one. formed in autumn and winter. The alternative layers are sharply contrasted and very distinct, so that there is no difficulty in counting them. The number of pairs of layers is equal to the number of years the fish has lived. By this method Wallace has made an interesting study of the distribution of fishes of the plaice species over various sea bottoms, according to age. In this way the rapidity of the growth of fishes and the effect of fisheries on the population of the sea can be determined. J —Nature's Fliers.— The most truly passive and courageous "fliers" are the little spiders, which, crawling over the ground, spin out thoir I gossamer lines from their tails until the . delicate thread, now some 10ft long, is ■ caught 'by th© gentle wind, and the spider I eaila away on an aerial ship upon which : ho' can climb and disport himself at ease. A vast number of seeds of plants—of which those of the thistle and dandelion ar© common examples—are provided with arrangements for passive flight. Those just named are beset with long, delicate processes radiating in all directions; they float for miles on th© currents of air, and, when no- longer Mown along, lightly fall to th© ground, eupported by their springy filaments. An. illustration of the influence of mass and Burfac© in the mechanics of flight is afforded if w© compare a man having three or four ropes a quarter of an inch thick and a mil© or so long tied on to th© tail of his coat, on the on© hand, with an exact reduction, on the other hand, of him and his ropes to the seal© of l-600th. The reduction gives ! you the size and weight of th© little spider | with his 10ft gossamer threads. He sails j away in safety, whilst the man, with exactly similar arrangements, but of larger | bulk, may stand for ever with th© ropes I attached to his coat-tail, and ho will not rise in the air; nor were he to jump from a balloon when thus equipped would his fall to th© ground be perceptibly impeded.— Sir E. Ray Lankester, in the Daily Tele- I graph. ! —Murder by Radium.— i •What is believed to .be the first criminal | case in which radium figures as a deathdealing agent is engaging publio attention «j,t the university town of Liege, Belgium. •A wealthy old bachelor named Pailin was found dead in his flat. A stroke of apofclexr was at first believed to be the cause f p deaTh, but a close examination of the j fcady revealed a curious discolouration of I the scalp. A specialist called in to view j lb* body gave the opinion that the atm

looked as though it had been exposed for a long time, to the influence, of radium. This led the police to interrogate separately all the tenants of the house., which was M. Pailin's property. On that day a chemistry ttudent who occupied an apartment in the building fled. An examination of his rooms by experts showed that he had occupied himself largely with radium preparations. The police theory is that M. Pailin was done to death by a systematic application of radium rays to his head, perhaps during sleep. Radiations of brief duration would do no harm, but prolonged exposure might be .deadly to an aged person in bad health. The dead man apparently had l no relatives or friends, and no on© seems to know anything of his private afiiiire, so that it is impossible to say whether any of his property ifi missing. At the present moment it .certainly looks like a case of deliberate murder by radium. —South Australian Meteorite, — The exceptionally large meteorite, weighing about two and a-half or three tons, recently found in the vicinity of Murnpcowie Run, about 150 miles from Farina (S.A.), represents a discovery of great scientific interest. There is still controversy among scientific men regarding the actual origin of meteoric masses. Poisson, a French mathematician, has' shown that a body shot from the moon in the direction of the earth with an initial, velocity of 7592 ft per second would not fall baofc upon the moon, but would actually, after a journey of 64- hours, .reach the- earth, upon which, neglecting the resistance of the air, it would fall with a velocity of 31,508 ft per second. Dr Sorby holds that they are probably ejected from the sun, though this is difficult to reconcile with the fact that some of them are easily combustible. Others, among whom may be mentioned Daplace, have suggested that they are ejected from the volcanoes of the moon, but the theory, although mathematically sound, has no physical basis, for, as far as one can discover, active volcanoes do not exist there. Sir Robert Ball has speculatively suggested that the matter was expelled from the earth before the surface became solid, and at a time when there was as much activity in the terrestrial planet as there now is in the sun itself. Nor is it probable that these "sky stones" are portions of a lost satellite of the earth, or at© duo to a collision of two planets, for then w© should expect to receive larger fragments, which must have been produced. In November, 1900, Mr H. W. Paine took to Mr G. A. Goyder (assayer to the School of Mines) a specimen of iron which he found at Rhine Villa, The iron, which proved to be of meteoric origin, wasi found on the surface, partly covered 1 with soil and with a few flaky pieces lying around the larger piece. No meteor, had been observed to fall in the immediate neighbourhood. During showers of shooting stars meteorites have been known to fall. In one particular instance, in 1887, at Zaeatecas, in Mexico, a meteorite weighing lOilb fell almost at the feet of a ranchman, who stated that there was no explosion or detonation to be beard. During the night it perfectly rained stars, though no more were observed to fall to the ground, all seeming to' be extinguished when at a high altitude. A great shower of shooting stars is certainly one of the grandest and mo6t magnificent sights in Nature. Those who have witnessed one have never forgotten it, and for many a thoughtful mind 1 the splendour of * pure sky, furrowed in all directions by thousands of shooting stars and "•reballs," has been the impulse for patient research and generalisations of the highest standard. —An Electrolytic Bleaching-Process. —

A well-known electrical engineer has recently perfected an electrolytic bleachingprecess, the introduction of which should prove of far-reaching importance to many industries. Recently, in. the course of some private demonstrations, the possibilities of the new discovery were very convincingly shown. First a pocket-handker-chief was soaked in ordinary office-, red ink, and then immersed in a dish containing the colourless and odourless bleaching-agent. Instantly the red stain disappeared, and the handkerchief was left as white as when new. The same result followed' the treating of black ink and other stains; they disappeared as if my magic from the affected article. In laundries, where the removal of stains from whit© fabrics is at present accomplished by the drastic agent chloride of lime, which rapidly corrodes th© fibres of th© textile, the now process should be found l extremely useful in th© treatment of table-cloths, white dresses, and so fortb, which are so liable to become stained in use. The electrolytic agent can only be used for white .materials, since if applied to coloured textiles it will remove not only the stain but the colouring ot the fabric as well. Th© stain, say of ink, is not merely- dissolved from- the article, but is rendered quite transparent in the electrolytio solution. This was graphically proved by filling a test-tube half full of red or black ink. When the electrolytic solution, was poured into th© tube th© conversion of th© red, black, or blue into the colour of pure water within, the course of two or three seconds was visible, and recalled the magician's well-known trie 3" of converting win© into water in a large decanter, with the exception that in this case ■' there is no deception." The inventor has also applied his process to pulp manufacture, wherein at present the manufacturers ca« only obtain a creamy or ecru tone with the blea.ohing-agents at their command. By electrolytic agency, however, the pulp is rendered the purest white. Though the general modus operandi is to use th© electric current while bleaching is in progress, the liquid can be 'kept for a short while in a non-actinic bottle, and in the event of an ink-stain, say, on a white dress, a little poured from the bottl© on to th© mark will bring about its complete eradication. No rubbing is required, and the absence of any kind of corrosive agent in the solution is an absolute guard l against any deterioration of the fabric.