Science Siftings

New Zealand Tablet, 26 January 1911, Page 171

Science Siftings

BY 'VOLT'

Locating Springs Telephonically. According to reports from Paris a local engineer named Dienert has been successfully using a sensitive microphone with a listening tube for magnifying the rumbling or dropping of underground streams of water so as to make them audible to the human ear. It is claimed that several subterranean springs were thus located at depths ot about fifty feet, and if further tests substantiate these reports, we may at last have found what believers in the so-called divining-rods had been seeking for centuries. Men, Horses, and Elephants. Interesting tests were made recently in New York to determine the respective pulling power of horses, men, and elephants. Two horses, weighing 1600 pounds each,, together pulled 3700 pounds, or 550 pounds more than their combined weight. One elephant, weighing 12,000 pounds, pulled 8750 pounds, or 3250 pounds less than its weight. Fifty men, aggregating about 7500 pounds in weight, pulled 8750 pounds, or just as much as the single elephant. But, like the horses, they pulled more than their own weight. One hundred men pulled 12,000 pounds. New Stalactite Cave. Explorers have recently discovered a new stalactite cave in the Dachstein Mountains, Tipper Austria, and estimate it to be the largest of its kind in Europe. The principal tunnel measures about one mile and a quarter, with numerous branches of varying length. The cave has two levels. In the upper, two immense ice halls were found, having precipitous glaciers some 300 feet in length. Spread over the lower level were a series of halls, the largest being 600 feet long and 10Q feet high. Among the paleontological specimens found were brachiopods and cave bears. _ , _ . Not Immune From Snake Poison.

It is a popular fallacy that the mongoose is immune from snake venom. ,It has been proved, however, to be considerably less susceptible than other and larger animals to the snake poison, which may possibly be accounted for by the fact of its eating poisonous snakes, and so becoming in some degree inoculated. But the simple reason why it is that during a combat with, say, a cobra, the mongoose appears often to be struck, and yet shows no ill effects, is that when in a fray it sets up the wiry hair on its body, so that if it is. not quick enough always i?o elude the darts of its opponents the chances are that the snake either ' strikes short ' or the poison is ejected without any wound being made. The mongoose, with the other ichneumons, is very susceptible of domestication, and in many of its customs it resembles the cat, possessing all the inquisitive nature of the latter. Besides reptiles, and ' vermin ' generally, the mongoose is responsible for much havoc among all kinds of birds, and its introduction —for the purpose of killing rats —into the "West Indies has been very destructive there to indigenous bird-life. The Development of Motor Traffic. The development of motor traffic in recent years has undoubtedly been startling. The Royal Automobile Club has been collecting statistics, by which it appears that the total number of motor vehicles registered in Great Britain and Ireland at the end of September was 183,773, as compared with 154,415 at the corresponding date of last year. This is certainly a striking increase; but the horse has not yet disappeared. Of the cars registered 7499 belonged to Ireland, 13,093 to Scotland, and 163,187 to England, of which less than one-fiftieth were registered in London. When steam traffic was first introduced into England, a great many years ago, it was prophesied that in another generation the horse would be practically extinct as a ' motive power.' Several generations have passed away since then, but the horse-drawn cart is still familiar. There can be no doubt, however, that the use of the motor is increasing rapidly, as the statistics of the Automobile Club show. An Immense Salt Mine. The most interesting salt mines in the world are said to be those at Wieliczka, in Galicia, which form an. underground collection of streets, houses, churches, and monuments. Their history can be traced back a thousand years, and they are still being worked. The mines form an oval twenty-two miles in length and half a mile in central width. The. aggregate length of the galleries at present accessible .is upward of sixty-five miles, and that of mining railways twenty-two miles. Enormous cavities amounting to 106,000,000 cubic feet have been produced during the last century below the town of Wieliczka by working the rock salt, and as these cavitieskept up artificially by timbering —are continually increasing, the inhabitants of Wieliczka some time ago were fearing lest their town be exposed to the risk of collapsing, and the local building activity was therefore temporarily confined to the erection of wooden structures. Present regulations, according to which those cavities * have to be filled in, in due course gradually removed that apprehension. 's.,