Scientific and Useful

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 21, 25 May 1907, Page 31

Scientific and Useful

HOPE FOR THE SUN. Tlie old theory was that the sun poured its energy into frigid space, never to be recovered; and that the great globe •would grow cold and expire. And then came the hypothesis of conservation of energy, saying that neither matter nor force can be annihilated. But no explanation was offered as to how energy found its way back into heat and light again. But in very recent years researches seem so minute that the atom of hydrogen is large beside them. Radium emits corpuscles, and some of these assume the form and properties of helium. It is known that vast quantities of helium exist in the sun. Thus corpuscles shot out from the sun, as Professor E. L. Larkin points out, may be returned and thus keep up an eternal circulation, causing the sun to radiate eternally. This interchange of corpuscles between the earth, all the planets, and the sun, and between all the billions of suns themselves, in the present state of science, seems to be the life of the universe. Thus everything is eternal. The light ot the sun will never wane and die. The earth, according to this doctrine, is eternal and can be inhabited until eoal and other fuels are exhausted. Al] doctrines are upset by the wing of the butterfly-— "Science Siftings.” ♦ + ♦ THE FAMOUS BONE CABIN. "The queerest house in the world,” said a zoologist, "is undoubtedly the famous Bone Cabin in Wyoming, near the Medicine Bow river. This cabin’s foundations are built of fossil bones. “Bones of dinosaurs —jaws of the diplodoeus. teeth of the brontosaurus, knuckles of the ichthyosaurus, vertebrae of the camarasaurus, chunks of the barosaurus, the eetiasourus, the brachlosaurus, the stegiosaurus, the oinitholestes, or birdcatching dinosaur—all entered into this wonderful cabin's foundations, making it the most curious and the most costly edifice, not excepting the Pennsylvania Capitol, in America. “This hut was built by a Mexican Bheep-lrerder, who had happened by chance on the grandest extinct animal bed in the ■world. This was a plot about 50 yards square, wherein lay in rich profusion the bones of all the animals of the Reptilian age. The heaviest and the lightest, the largest and the smallest, the most tranquil and the most ferocious lay side by side. “Tire place was evidently once a river bar, and the dead bodies that floated down the stream were here arrested, to lie for hundreds of thousands of years till a sheep-herder came along, and, rooting among bones as big as boulders, set about the building of the world’s queerest cabin.” ♦ + ♦ TELLING THE AGE BY PULSE BEATS. The human pulse lias rather a wide range even in perfectly healthy persons (says “Sciertee Siftings”). The female pulse always beats faster than the male, and from birth to death the pulse speed steadily decreases. It has been asserted by many eminent specialists that there is no doubt that by the beat of the pulse alone the sex and age of a person could be told. Babies at birth have a pulse beat of 100 times a minute in the case of girls and 150 a minute in the case of boys. At the age of four or five the pulse beats will have fallen respectively to 110 and 100. Maidens’ and youths’ pulses average 95 and 90. Mature women and men average 80 and 75. Elderly women and men have an average pulse beat of 00 and 50. An old woman's pidse rarely, if ever, sinks below 50, but among old mon a boat under 50 is very common. There are, however, great variations consistent with health. Napoleon’s pulse is said to have been only -14 beats •o the minute.

THE ORE DIVINER SUPERSEDED. The fact that a luminous emanation of variable shape will appear in the dark at sueh points on the surface of the earth below which there are extensive ore deposits at a more or less considerable depth was recorded in Germany as far back as 1747. Immediately before or during a thunderstorm these phenomena are said to be especially striking. Similar observations have more recently been made in North America in the neighbourhood of ore deposits. Though much should be ascribed to superstition and to errors of observation, the faet, nevertheless, has been confirmed by recent investigation. The electric emanation given off from the surface of the earth has, in fact, been repeatedly ascertained photographically by Mr. K. Zenger. Plates coated with fluorescent substances were used. It may thus lie taken for granted that the emanations in question occur with ah especially high intensity at those points of the ground where good conductors of electricity are found in large amounts in the neighbourhood of the surface of the earth; in other words, above ore deposits, which are very good conductors of the electric current. Lignite and coal, especially when containing pyrites, are fairry good conductors. The difference in the intensity of radiation as compared with points free from any ore would seem to be recognised by means of photography, thus affording to geologists a rather simple means of locating ore and even coal deposits. + ♦ + WHERE GEESE ARE SHOD. “Goose is better than turkey,” said the grocer, “and I know where they shoe geese. They shoe them in the country round Warsaw, in the Vilna district. They do this because the geese have a long annual journey to make—a journey to the goose market. You see, in the late fall and early winter a goose market is held at Warsaw, and geese to the number of 5,000,000 congregate in the town. These geese march to market on foot. Some come from 100 to 150 miles away. The average distance they come from is 60 miles, and to protect their feet on this long journey they are shod. To shoe the geese, the gooseherd first makes them walk back and forth in melted tar. With a eoat of tar on their feet, they then walk through fine sand. The result is that they sire shod with a good strong shoe of mixed tar and sand that protects them well on their journey to the Warsaw goose market.” ' PECULIARITIES OF THE INSANE EYE. The traits of the insane eye arc described by Dr. E. C. Spitzka, one of the world’s most famous specialists in nervous diseases. These traits, he tells us, are:—(l) Permanent drooping of one or both upper eyelids; (2) pale, bloodless condition and unnatural colour in the whites of the eyes: (3) pupils differing in size, one from the other, and taking irregular shapes from day to day, the form seldom following a time circle; (4) the pupils, which, in normal persons grow smaller in the presence of light, in the paretic (referring to a kind of paralytic insanity) eye do not respond together, one contracting more than Hie other, and failing in what is scientifically described as “co ordination.” - ",Science Siftings.” ♦ ♦ ♦ CURIOUS PEARL. A queer pearl of a lavender colour, with delicate stripes, and about the size of an acorn, was recently found ih ,a mussel shell in the Pacific. It is said to have been growing constantly since it left the shell. When it reached the. present owner it weighed 41 grains. He took correct measurements, and if tue reported growth continues, he will invite the opinions of scientific men as to the cause-