Science Sittings

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 9, 5 March 1908, Page 35

Science Sittings

Photographs by Wireless Telegraphy. Pascal Berjonaeau, an inventor, exhibited recently in Paris before a number' of persons interested in scientific investigation a new telephotography apparatus which can be adapted to the wireless system or to the ordinary telegraph wires system. He transmitted the picture of one of the audience without xhe aid of wires from one end of the hall to the other. The inventor claims that distance does not interfere with the effectiveness of his method. Photographs,' he says, can foe sent by \t between New York and Paris. The Floor of the Pacific. The red clay .which covers the deep floors of the Pacific and the Indian oceans is made up of refuse and residue — that which can withstand the strong chemical action of the gases. In it may be found 'decomposed yolcanitc rock, ipumice, zeolitic. crystals, manganese, oxides, meteoric iron, teeth of sharks, and ear bones ' of whales. Few if any shore deposits are apparent in it. T'»e rock is vitreous refuse, belched forth by subterranean or insular volcanoes. The minerals are supposed to be of cosmic origin— planetary dust and meteoric fragments that- have fallen into tne sea and have become disintegrated. The great quantity of sharks' teeth remains quite unaccounted for — at least their apparent gathering . together in these ocean basins is considered very' strange. How Celluloid is Made. Celluloid, the chemical compound which bears so. close a resemblance to ivory, is a mixture of collodion and camphor, invented in 1855 by a Birmingham man. The process of manufacture is as follows : Cigarette paper is soaked in a mixture of nitric and sulphuric ac 4 ids until it becomes nitro-cellulose. After thoroughly washing, to free it from the acids, this cellulose is dried, mixed with a certain quantity of camphor, and coloring matter if required, and then passed through a roller mill. It is next formed into thin sheets by hydraulic pressure and afterward , broken up by toothed rollers and soaked some hours in alcohol. A further pressure and a hot 1 rolling process finish r i't, and results in ivory-like sheets half an inch thick. The Zuyder Zee to Give Place to Land. Holland, with its 5,000,000 people, living safely beMnd their wave-washed dykes, is about to make a new conquest from the old enemy, the ocean. Already Dutch engineers have begun the tremendous task which will result in turning the Zuyder Zee into 1400 square iriles of dry land. Where of old the great Dutch war fleets gathered, where now 1000 fishermen sink their nets, there will rise happy ullages, broad pastures, roplar-bor-dered roads, and sleepy canals — new farms and bomes for 50,000 Dutchmen. The task to be undertaken is a tremendous one. It will cost nearly £15,000,rp0. In return the government expects to secure annual rentals of more than £1,000,000 from those who occupy and till the hard-won ground. A Plant that Coughs. 1 I heard a cough, and looked behind me nervously,' said a huntsman, ' for 1 was stalking gazelles in that lion-colored waste, Sahara Desert, and, having gotten rather too far south, I expected at any moment to become a pin-cushion for the poisoned darts of the dread Touaregs. But there was no one there. The flat desert quivered in the sunshine, and here and there a dusty plant stood wearily. But though I commanded the landscape for a radius of fifty miles, not a living creature was in sight. Another cough. I swung around quickly. The *same plant, yellow with dust, drooped in the dry heat. That was all. " Hack ! Hack ! " On my left this time. JL swung around agaftoi. A like plant met my eye. The thing was growing rather ghastly. As 1 regarded this last plant a cough came from it. Believe me, the plant coughed! It shook all over, and then, tightening up. as a man does when .he is about to sneeze, it gave a violent cough, and a little cloud of dust arose. I found out afterwards that the plant was the coughing bean, which is common in many tropical countries. In the long, dry heats this weird growth's pores become- choked with dust, and it would die of suffocation were it not that a powerful gas accumulates inside it, which, when it gains sufficient pressure, explodes with a sound precisely like the human cough. The explosion shakes the plant pores free of their dust, and the coughing bean is in good -health again.'