SCIENTIFIC AND USEFUL.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VIII, Issue 33, 15 August 1891, Page 264

SCIENTIFIC AND USEFUL.

WATER IX THE DESERT. According to a report recently received, a large body of water has been discovered at El Golea, in the Sahara Desert, about 120 feet below the surface. It throws up nearly forty gallons per minute at present, and it is anticipated that the yield will be much greater when more perfect access to the water is attained. The discovery is regarded as of high importance, as this is the first time that water has been fount in the Sahara at snch a light depth underground. MUSICAL TELEGRAPH SYSTEM. This is likely to be one of the features of the World s Fair as Dr. G. P. Hackenburg, of Austin, Tex., is at present negotiating with the directors for its introduction. Ten pianos will be utilised, each provided with electrical attachments and all connected with a keyboard, which shall be under the direction of an operator, or musical director. The keyboard is supposed to have ten keys, one for each instrument. These would be manipulated so as to make and break the electrical connections between the instruments. The pianist occupies one of the pianos, and has no new duties to perform in playing the combination, as the expression is mainly rendered by the musical director. The whole affair, says the Western Electrician, ‘ could be put in operation for a few thousand dollars, and would make a veryattractive musical feature.’ ADULT CAPACITY FOR WORK. ‘ Opinions differ,’ a writer goes on to say, •as to the limit of daily mental work in adults. Dr. Bain, of Aberdeen says, that in that city there are as hard heads and as hard workers as in any other part of Great Britain, but that four hours steady mental labour are as much as is good for them. Curvier was usually engaged for seven hours daily in his scientific researches, but they were not of a nature to require continuous thought. Walter Scott declared that he worked for three hours with pleasure, but beyond about four hours he worked with pain. Dr. Dally, of Paris, says that a man twenty years old cannot do intellectual work with profit beyond eight hours daily. Beyond this limit there will be fatigue, cerebral an emia or congestion, disgust and impossibility to work. Generally it is necessary to limit the time to six hoars or even less. RAISED FIGURES ON SOFT WOOD. Ordinary moulding and stamped work and the papier mache and pressed sawdust embossed work have been on the market for a long time, and but few people mistake them now for hand work. Basswood can be compressed to a very large extent, and will swell out again to its original proportions upon being steamed. This property is utilised in the following manner : —A piece of the wood is subjected to great pressure under a die or stamp. The stamp presses down parts of the soft wood, in a more or less elaborate pattern, lower than the rest of the surface. This process can be quickly performed, and the piece of wood is then passed to a planing machine, which in a twinkling planes down the surface of the wood just even with the top of the compressed pattern. The piece is then taken over to the steamer, where the warm damp vapour soon swells the compressed parts back to their original size. Thus a handsome raised pattern is produced on the planed surface of the wood, which can hardly be distinguished from "en trine hand-carved work. SOMETHING ABOUT SINGING FISH. It is pretty generally known that in the Pascaeoula River, Miss., strange sounds are frequently heard, as of a musical instrument played at a distance, under the water. Boatin" parties are often startled at the distinctness of this musie They liken it to the sounds produced bv the vibration of musical glasses or of harp-strings. The sound rises and falls as if wafted by the wind, and it is locally known as ‘ the mysterious music.’ The origin of the sound is generally ascribed to a movement of sand at the bottom of the river although there is no evidence offered that the sand does move, or any reason given why it should move. The explanation is probably that fish make these noises, for fish can sing, very nicely, too. It seems rather funny to speak of singing fishes, but many of them do certainly produce vocal sound. Croakers get their name from the noise they make. Bluefish protest indignantly when they are pulled out of the water, but these are not such sounds as constitute the music of the fishes. OUR GREAT DEBT TO SCIENCE. Every time we strike a match we are indebted to the men who have studied science for the mere love of it. The men that worked away at coal tar, ‘ just to see what was in it,’ made the whole world their debtors by discovering alizarin the colouring-principle of madder. And to these men the world is indebted, also, for aniline, antipyrine and more than one hundred other coal-tar products. Scientists, wondering what was in crude petroleum, found paraffin and vaseline. Pasteur wondered what caused fermentation. He found out, and brought a new era to wine making. The singing and dancing of a tea kettle attracted the attention of a brain, and we have as a consequence all the applications of steam. The swinging of a chandelier in an Italian cathedral before the eyes of young Galileo was the beginning of a train of thoughts that resulted in the invention of the pendulum, and through it to the perfecting of the measurement of time, and thus its application and use in navigation astronomic observations and, in a thousand ways w-e nowpass by unnoted, has been of such practical value that the debt to scientific thought even in this one instance can never be known. Science, in its study of abstract truth is ever giving to man new beginnings. While ths devil is engaged in finding mischief for idle hands to do, science is eternally at work finding something useful for them to do