SCIENCE NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2949, 21 September 1910, Page 76

SCIENCE NOTES.

—Brain Expansion While You Sleep.— Professor R. M. Wenley has concluded a juries of experiments, the result .of which wm to completely disprove a long-accepted theory as to the cause of sleep. It las been said that natural loss of consciousness is due to a lessened flow of blood to the brain. Professor Wenley declares that his experiments have shown the opposite. His summary of what has been demonstrated i s: —The size or volume of the brain increases when the individual goes to sleep and decreases when he awakes-. The size of the hands and feet increase whan a man is asleep and become smaller when he is awake. In some cases the brain becomes smaller at first and then increases as sleep becomes deepar. Striking evidence is furnished that the size of the arterial pulsp from the brain increases 6teadily with increase in volume —that is, the dilating of the arteries after each beat of the lieart is more pronounced. This is particularly true when the subject is propped up. —The Muses.—

I am able, after due investigation, to put my reader in possession of facts unfamiliar to Ihe modern oracles of class cal mythology ! Briefly, it appears, that in tbo best period of ancient Greece nine Muses were reiogiised—namly, Calliope, -the Muse of epic poetry ; Euterpe, of lyric poetry : Erato, of orotic poetry: Melpomene, of tragedy; Thalia, of comedy; Polyhymnia, of sacred hymns; Terpsichore, of choral song and dance; Clio, of history ; and Urania, of astronomy. The last two seem to have very little in common with the addiction to singing and dancing charac teristio of the rest, and are the only oned who can be imagined as feeling themselves at home in a modern museum. Apollo was said to be the leader and master of the Muses, but was not related to them. They were in origin the "nymphs" or "geni" of mountain streams worshipped 'by an ancient bardic race (resembling our own sweet-singing Welsh folk), the Thracians.— Sir Ray Lankester, K.C.G., F.R.S., in the Daily Telegraph.

—Earthquakes and Eclipses.—

The terrible earthquake in Costa Rica recently adds one more to the many similacatastrophes which have happened near the time of an eclipse of the sun. A total sola-r eclipse took place, visible only in the Southern Hemisphcire, and on the day of the earthquake the moon was approaching its eclipse conjunction with the sun. at which time its pulling effect on the earth, reinforced as it then was by that of the sun, was at its maximum, both bodies attracting the earth in practically the same straight line. In addition the moon is in "perigee"—that is, at its nearest approach to the earth. The lunar-solar conditions were such, therefore, that if their combined "pull" ca.i affect the weak places in the earth's interior as it affects the waters of the oceans, it was most potent to do so. The severest earthquakes of late years — such as those in Jamaica, Calabria, Sic'ly, San Francisco, and South America—have nearly always occurred with the sun and the moon situated as above described, and often during a solar eclipse.

—Astronomers and the Starry Universe. — Astronomers once believed that the entire starry universe revolved around a centre of attraction, and the star named Alcyone, in the group of Pleiades, wa3 selected by Maedler as marking that great centre. It has long been known, however, that Maedler's conclusion, which was based on the apparent motions of the stars, was incoiireofc, and if any universal ©enifcro exists it has not yet been discovered. In fact, many of the stars 6eem to be- moving in straight lines, some in one direction and some in another; and among these is our own sun. But it is possible that further observations will show that all the stars are really moving in curved lines. In the meantime, it has been found that there are certain groups or sets of stars which appear to travel together. To what set, if any, the sun belongs we do not yet know; but Delaunay has presented reasons for thinking that those, stars whose distances have been measured (that is to say, those which are nearest to us) group themselves around Sirius, the dog-star, in a mariner similar to that in which the inner planets are grouped around the sun. If this be correct. Snriu-s may possibly bo the master sun of which our orb of day is a distant satellite.

—Strange Remedies.—

Mediaeval medicine employed strange remedies, some of them fantastical but soothing, such as frogs' spawn; others creepy and formidable, sudh as the wood of coffins. Dr Wiedemann, Professor of Egyptology at the University of Bonn, assures us that it is not very long since medicines made from mummies were era ployed in the treatment of disease. The mummies made use of were of two kindsgenuine and artificial. The former were snatched by the Arabs from the burialplaces of the Valley of the Nile and seat into Europe and Asia. The therapeutic virtues of these, according to the Hospital, wero attributed to the asphalt with which the embalmcr had impregnated the bodies, and of which Galen and the other Greek physicians acknowledged he healing virtues in case of colds, eczema, convulsion*, epilepsy, suppuration, and other maladies. The author also asserts that the very name —mummy —is derived from a Persian and Arabic word meaning asphalt, and that it was onlv at a later date that the word was used exclusively to refer to embalmed bodies. Mummies were so generally used i:i Persia as remedies that the Shah oiTered them as presents to friendly Sovereigns. Louis XIV and Catherine rereived gold boxes filled with mummified limbs, and as late as 1809 Queen Caroline of England was ordered mummy extract, by her physicians. In the absence of authentic mummies, such as the soil of Egypt alone could furnish, an artificial variety was manufactured in other countries.

—Why You Talk Nonsense in Your Sleep.—

In a paper on the mechanism and interpretation of dreams, read recently before the neurological section of the Academy of Science. Mr Morton Prince stated that dreams are in 'reality psychoses or typea of delirium, and are characterised by the same general symptoms,- if one may speak of symptoms aside from disease. Mr Prince said he did not believe with Freud that every dream represents the fulfilment of a wish, but rather that it represents the unfulfilmomt of a wish or the fulfilment of » fa«r. Cina wnmaa mentioned bv him

always dreamed that -she was surrounded by a" myriad of cats, and she would usually awake when they seemed to 'be attacking her or when she was thrown helplessly among them. Under hynotic influence it was found that in early childhood this woman had been greatly frightened by a pet cat, which had .scratched and bitten her, and that the memory of this occasion, although seemingly buried deep in the jumble of past experiences, nevertheless had a certain psychological colouring which caused it to be resurrected only unconscious states. Such facts, he said, may explain in a measure the curious and apparently utterly . illogical single words and statements coming from the lips of those in delh-ium; but it will always found that, just as in many hallucinatory l states of the insane, the mind is working at a tremendous rate, much faster than, the organs of speech can record the ideas; and hence what comes to our ears from the dreamer is simply a mass of nonsensiilcal words. —The Davidson Gyropter. — There is, at the present time, under construction at, Amerden Bank, near Taplow, a flying machine of a.n altogether new form. This machine has been designed and is being built by Mr G. I*. 0. Davidson, who has been studying the subject for a largo number of years. . The present machine will measure about 66ft in a fore-and-aft direction and 76ft in extreme width. It consists essentially of a main body, from which extend 12 wings (six a side), in sets of three superposed. Between these wings are arranged, one on each side of the machine, two revolving lifters, or gyroptors, as Mr Davidson terms them. These lifters may be described as being shaped like inverted saucers. Each is made up of 120 'blades, of which 60 extend from the perimeter to the centre, while 60 are halflength blades extending from the circumference for a part of the distance to the centre. The wheels made up of these blades are 26ft lOin each in diameter, and they will revolve at about 60 revolutions per minute. is mounted on a hollow steel spinSle suspended at the upper end in ball joint bearings, from the main rib of the central upper wing. The wings are built on main ribs, which take the form of cantile-ver lattice box girders of tapering section, projecting on either side from the body of the machine. The supporting surfaces which will cover these ribs will be of true bird-wing section, with the thickest part towards the leading edge, tapea-iag awav to a fine edge behind. The machine will ba provided with a tail and also with,a front vertical rudder. The body is large enough to accommodate several persons in addition to the operators. The construction, has throughout been designed to give a combination of lightness with extreme rigidity, and has been worked out in a most interesting manner. —Engineering.