Science Sittings

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 42, 17 October 1907, Page 35

Science Sittings

By<*' Volt •

The tail of a lish. A fish's tail is its wings. Thanks to the machinery of muscle set along its spine, and to its cleaving form, a trout or salmon can dart through the water .at, a tremendous pace, though its rapid flights, unlike the bird's, are not long ones.. It is soon dead beat. The water is not so friendly to flight as the air. The stroke of the fish's tail is one of great power, and by means of it and the writhing, snake-like flexion" of the body, high speed is reached. A bird's nest of steel. In the Museum of Natural History -at Soleure, m ■ Switzerland, there is a bird's nest made of steel. There are a number of clo.ck-making' shops at Soleure, and in the yards of these are often found lying disused or broken springs of clocks. One day a clock-maker noticed in a tree in his yard a bird's nest of peculiar appearance. Examining it, he found that a pair of wagtails had built a nest entirely of clock springs. It was more than - four - inches across, and perfectly comfortable for the birds. After the feathered architects had reared their brood, their nest was taken to the museum, where it is preserved as a striving illustration of the skill of •birds in. turning their surroundings to advantage in building their nests. • *■ ■. >■ The Vision of birds. ---* Bird's have very acute action, perhaps the most acute of any creature, and the sense is also more widely diffused over the retina than is Ihe case with man. Consequently a bird can. see sideways as well as objects in front of it. The simple fact, that the eye of a hawk and a pigeon is larger than their whole brain gives some idea of what their powers of sight must be and" of how . easily they can fly hundreds of miles, if- they have marks to guide them. A bird sees, showing great uneasiness in consequence, a hawk long 'before it is visible to man. So, too, fowls and "pigeons find minute scraps of food, distinguishing them from what appear to us exactly similar pieces of earth or gravel. Young chickens are also able to find their own food, knowing its position and how distant it is, as soon as they are hatched, whereas a child only very gradually learns either to see * or to underatand the distance of objects. Several birds, apparently the young of all those that nest on the ground, can see quite well, directly they come out of the shell, but the young of birds, that nest in trees or on rocks are born blind and have to be fed. Origin of the sugar-cane. The origin of the sugar-cane' has 1 , always been a debatable point. As wild animals are found"- even now to be fond of sugar-cane, and quite lestructive to it in some localities, it is fair to infer fthat- mankind ages ago discovered the merits of the plant, and found it was good. As sugar came to Europe from the Far East, it would seem probable that the sugar-cane was indigenous in some localities in the East Indies 4 Claims for its origin in the South Sea Islands of the 1 ' Pacific have also been made, and certainly sugar-cane was found in some of these islands at an early date. Ritter is quoted as saying in 1840, that all the varieties of the sugar-cane, known as Saccharum, were found .in India, excepting the variety which was found in Egypt. As Egypt for so "many Centuries has' been producing many of the coarser kinds of the "sorghum family; some confusion may 'have arisen as to the quality of the sugar-cane there first discovered, which perhaps belonged to" the sorghum family, and was not a true sugar-cane. Ritter says that the origin of the sugar-cane was almost surely in Asia-, if any conclusion can be drawn from botanical geography. In the old caravan days sugar is said to have been brought across Asia to Europe, freighted on camels, and later, when Columbus ' discovered America and Vasco da Gama circumnavigated the Cape of Good Hope, and transportation throughout the waters of the "globe became possible, the culture, or at least the growth, of sugar-cane at once became widely spread, and is now carried on in a greater or less degree in all of the tropical and in most of the semi-rtropical regions of the globe.