NOTES.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 15959, 25 October 1923, Page 4

NOTES.

SPIDER STOCKINGS. Have you seen tho new spider stockings? There was a factory in the South of France where delicately woven spider silk stocking and other trifles were made but it failed on account of the difficulties which attend spider farming on a lai - ge scale. Spiders cannot he penned up like chickens, hut require plenty of room, otherwise they fight and devour each other. Also many attendants are required to feed and tend them. Th o method employed for getting the silk from tho spider requires much time and care. First, the astonished spider is tossed from hand to hand. In its anxiety it emits a thread of silk in order to escape by dropping. A kind of wide-pronged hairpin is used by the winder to gather up the silk. By the time the winder has lowered itself by several hundred feet o fsilk it is allowed to reach tho ground and walk off. “NINETY-NINE” One often wonders why a doctor, when sounding a patient, tells him to say ‘99‘ The sound produced when we sot in operation our “larynx,” or voice box, passes upwards through our mouth, and is converted by our lips and tongue into what w a call speech. At the same time, however, it also passes downwards through the lungs to the wall of the chest, through here it becomes, not speech, but simply a sort of mugled and vibrating echo, its intensity and clearness largely depending upon the condition of the lungs as a carrying medium. Tb o clearness or otherwise of these sounds is, therefore, a. valuable indication to the doctor of the state of bis patient’s health, a diseased lung conveying .only a dull resonance. To set up the required vibration some definite enunciation, of a word is needed, and “ninety-nine” which gives foni clear-cut enunciations, together setting up a really resounding vibration, was found peculiarly suitable, and is therefore in general use. BORN THAT WAY. The doctor was calling on old Mrs. Brown. She was not very ill, hut she always had some question to ask that had nothing to do with her own case l “Doctor,” she said on this occasion, “can you tell me why it'is that some people are born durrih?” The doctor thought for a.moment. “Why—hem! certainly.” he replied; “it is owing to the fact that they prime into the world without the faculty of speech.” The old lady gazed at him in admiration. “There now,” she remarked. “Just see what it means to have had a physic education. I asked Thomqs more than a hundre'f! times why it was, and all he could say was, “Cause they is.” SUNSHINE AND SHADE. Now why should sunshine make some colours fade? Sunlight is made up of a hand of colours which we can see, ranging from red to violet, and of certain other rays which are invisible to our eyes. Some of these rays, known as “actinic” rays, are those which so often destroy colfflurs. The chemical pigments in dye-stuffs are, of course, liable to chemical action, and this action is exercised by the actinic rays,, in the same wav as they have a chemical action upon the film of a photographic plate. No dye-stuff will withstand all chemical actions; the curtaining that will he “fast” <to the most glaring light may not he able for instance to stand salt. It depends upon the chemical nature of the pigments used by the dyer Tf stuff is bought containing pigments chemically subject to the actinic rays, then that pigment will he oxidised, or literally burned up hy the light.