Science Siftings

New Zealand Tablet, 9 November 1916, Page 51

Science Siftings

By ‘Volt.’

Novelties in Bread. Although the Germans are making war bread out of all kinds of materials, they will have to go a long way before they invent an entirely new kind of bread” Beans, peas, maize, and. other substances have been mixed with wheat or rye in the past. Mashed potatoes, mixed with wheat or maize flour, were used by poor people on the Continent years before the war broke out. Bice flour makes yellow bread, while the chestnut bread that forms the chief food of the Corsican mountaineers is very digestible, agreeable to taste, and keeps fresh more than a fortnight. Bread has been made from acorns, especially by the peasants of France. Mosses, dried and powdered, are still used for bread by Norwegians, and other substances have been utilised. Oil from Lemon Pips. The humble lemon pip, of which great quantities are every year accumulated by Australian lemon-squash manufacturers, appears likely to earn respect as an article of commercial value. The Federal Analyst has recently furnished a report to the effect that the dried pips contain a large proportion of oil. By ether extractions the yield of oil was 23 per cent., and by extraction with petroleum benzine 21 per cent. The oil obtained from the pips is clear, of pale straw color, wholly saponifiable, and has slight but rather persistent bitter taste. Possibly the oil expressed from the pips by direct hot pressing would not possess a bitter taste: it so, it would be of value for edible 'purposes, and oemg wholly saponifiable, could, as an alternative, be used for soap-making. A Voyage of Seven Years. Even now the waters of the globe are very imperfectly known, and it is stated that the uncharted rocks, reels and other dangers to navigation reported in the i acme Ocean alone number more than 3500. This quite justifies the great work to be undertaken by the International Oceangraphic Expedition, which has been organised under J. Foster •Stackhouse in the United States tor a voyage of seven years, to chart the seas. There will be some surveying in the North Atlantic, including a search for the rock alleged to exist near the spot where the Titanic sank, and then four years will be spent in the Pacific, with special attention to the little-known coral and volcanic islands. The subsequent work will be chiefly in the Indian Ocean and the great unexplored regions of the Antarctic and South Atlantic. The staff of investigators is to number twelve men, and important discoveries in various branches of science may be expected. • " J Elephants’ Curious Teeth. Whoever has looked inside an elephant’s mouth has seen a strange sight. Elephants have no front teeth, and they never eat flesh or any food that requires tearing apart. Eight teeth are all they have : two above and two below on each side, huge yellow molars as wide as a man’s hand. Over these hay and fodder are shifted y the queerest, ugliest tongue in the whole animal kingdom, a tongue that is literally hung at both ends, having no power of movement except in the middle’ where it shifts back and forth from the side, arching up against the roof of the big mouth like a wrinkled pink serpent. Elephants, like human beings, have two sets of teeth. The milk teeth, which are smaller than the permanent molars, fall out when the animals are about fourteen years old. These baby teeth—which aie, nevertheless, enormousare occasionally picked up by circus men among the fodder and preserved as curiosities.