SCIENCE SIFTINGS

New Zealand Tablet, 26 August 1920, Page 46

SCIENCE SIFTINGS

(By "Volt.")

Music's Effect on Animals. . The effect of music on animals was once tested by a violinist in a menagerie. The influence cf the violin was greatest on the puma, which became much excited when quick time was played, but was soothed by slower measures. Wolves showed an appreciative interest, lions and hyenas were terrified, leopards were unconcerned, and monkeys stared in wonder at 'the performer.

When Matches Were a Luxury. Mr. Ohio C. Barber, the head of the American Match Trust, who has just died, had seen the manufacture of matches - develop from the crudest beginnings. He started as a boy by helping his father in the processes carried on in the barn at home. At that time lucifers were made by a “gang” of fine circular saws, so that when the operation was completed the strips of wood resembled a double-edged, coarsetoothed comb. The open ends of the strips were then dipped by hand in a composition made principally of sulphur. J . By sawing through the centre of the comb lengthwise and separating the teeth by splitting each of them loin the main body, a number of slow-burning expensive matches were secured. At that period matches were a luxury. In the homes even of the well-to-do tapers rolled from old newspapers were constantly employed to light lamps and fires—much as we have been employing them of recent years during the war-tim§ scarcity. , About Soap. When science called the soap roll among the nations China came forward with three gifts. The first is the tallow tree, which furnishes a substance very much like animal fat, from the covering of its seeds. 1 lough naturally green, this vegetable tallow can easily be bleached white. The soap it produces cannot be distinguished from the animal tallow soap of other years. r China knows more about soap than she is generaly given credit for. Her people first made soap that would float. The Occident tried to imitate this product by inserting either cork or metal plates enclosing air m the centre of the cakes, and it was a long time before the inventors of the Western world learned China s secret, which is simply minute air cells, thus doing away with these clumsy imitations, Her second gift is the soap nut tree, which has almost as many different uses as a hairpin in the hands of the average woman. The million or more of these trees to be found in California and Florida are treasured almost solely because of their height and their graceful foliage. But few of their admirers know that their wood, when polished, will make a high grade of furniture; that the nuts are valuable because of their medicinal qualities ; that the extract forms a basis for foaming carbonated drinks, and that the hulls make as good a lather as a manufactured soap. The best part about them is that they require no preliminary treatment. When you wish to wash your hands you merely walk out in the garden and pick your soap from the tree:

China’s third gift came in the form of rice bran soap. People of the Occident have a mistaken belief to the effect that the cleansing properties depend entirely on the amount of lather. Rice bran makes no lather, but removes; the dirt very effectively just the same. America has adopted this idea with surprising readiness. Already several chemists have patented processes of boiling up finely ground corn, peas or rice with caustic soda.