SCIENCE SIFTINGS

New Zealand Tablet, 4 December 1919, Page 46

SCIENCE SIFTINGS

■MIXBy "Volt.")

Chinese Astronomical Instruments. ,11 Under the peace terms Germany is to return to China an tne astronomical instruments seized in 1900 and 1901. ,w« IT y in Potsdam are five bronze astronomical SSSJ^S? 1 ° f , wond f rful workmanship. Germany- appropriated them from the Royal Observatory of Pekin after 2nAw- U?n^l- in * 1 ?? ) - 0ne ' a bronze quadrant, was sent by Louis XIV. of France to the Emperor Hang-Hi: another is thirteenth century. work. Certainly the most interesting and precious instrument of the whole loot is a nuge armi lary sphere, some seven feet in diameter. It is tne work of a famous Jesuit missionary, Father Ferdinand Verbiest, who more than two centuries ago, along with his religious brethren, directed the Royal Observatory at Pekin It was made wholly under his supervision, and he himself assisted in the making. . It is a standing testimony to the skill of the Belgian Jesuit, and the high degree of civilisation attained by the Chinese. By fostering the innate love of knowledge which the Chinese possessed the missionaries hoped to lead them to an appreciation of Him by whom all men are saved. That they should be returned to China once more affords food for thought. What would happen if by a self-denying ordinance the Great Powers returned all their loot? Spanish Cork. The cork oak grows plentifully in Spain, and the peasants make use of the bark to light their houses at night. The bark is placed in a kettle from which protrudes a spout; and when it is hot enough it gives off a gas which burns with considerable brilliance. If the family sit up late, several kettles of cork bark are used during an evening; but the lighting is not expensive, and the peasant is careful to save the carbonised cork refuse, for he can sell it, as it is known commercially as Spanish black, one of the intensest black-browns known among pigments. A Stone Barometer. In Finland there is a stone which, like a barometer, forecasts the weather. This stone, it is said, turns black or blackish grey when rain or bad weather is approaching, yet becomes covered with small white spots at the approach of clear weather. Many attribute the changes to the stone's fossil mixed with clay and containing rock salt, nitrate or ammonia, which, according to the humidity of the atmospherethat is, according to the amount of water vapor which the air —attracts the dampness or gives its own off. When it attracts it becomes black; when it gives off moisture and the salt gets dry, the stone becomes white, indicating that the air contains little moisture. A Ceaseless Combat. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Leonard Spray tells a fascinating story of the reclamation of a considerable area of the sandy part of the peninsula of Jutland. The peninsula is, in large measure and geologically speaking, a continuation of the great Prussian heathland. Where it tapers northwards it is—or wasa desert, a spot of sand washed by the North Sea waves and swept by spuming winds whose fury is unbroken by anything more substantial than dunes, which themselves often seek to retreat before the foe. Abandoned to the elements, a wide strip of Jutland might now have disappeared, or certainly would have been uninhabitable, with a large part of the country which lies behind. But a generation or two ago the men of Jutland took up the challenge of Nature and won, and are still winning, the combat—a ceaseless war, without either end or armistice, so that now there are spreading forests where once was desert, and smiling farmsteads where once was only ever-moving sand. ——————^—