SCIENCE SIFTINGS

New Zealand Tablet, 21 October 1920, Page 46

SCIENCE SIFTINGS

(By "Volt.")

LAKE THAT DISAPPEARS. In Georgie, near Vladosta, there is a lake which disappears every three or four years and then comes back again, no matter what the weather is like. The lake is three miles long and three-quarters of a .mile wide, with an average depth of 12ft of water. There are natural subterranean passages beneath it, through which the water passes off. It takes two or three weeks to disappear, . when a mammoth basin is left in its place, which furnishes a beautifully sandy beach. After a month or so the water begins to return, and then in a couple of weeks it is the same magnificent stretch of water as it was before.

-ISLAND IN THE AIR. . . Three miles south of the Mesa Encanbada in Mexico is a splendid specimen of fantastic erosian—an "island" in the air; a rock with overhanging sides nearly 400 ft high, 70 acres in area on the fairly level top, indented with countless bays, notched with dizzy chasms. The greater part of the island overhangs the sea like a huge mushroom, and on the top stands a town, which for artistic charm, interest and romantic history has no peer. This little town of Acoma is one of the prehistoric Pueblo architecture. It was only with inconceivable labor this island town in the air was built. It was reached by a mere trail of toe holes up the stem of the "mushroom." The age of the island is not known, except that it was already old in 1540.

A PRIEST SCIENTIST. A great scientist, whose name is little known to the world, perhaps because he is a Catholic priest, has at last received recognition from the Government. This is the Abbe Rousselot, whose work is now to be subsidised by the State. Without doubt it has been of great value to the State and the War Office. The Abbe's scientific discoveries are varied. One of the most important is that he has, by the decomposition of human speech, been able to fix the exact part which belongs to each of the organs emitting sound. The importance of this is that having mathematically estab-. lished by figures and graphiques all the defects accidental or congenital by which these organs are affected, photographs can be taken and the evil traced and remedied. It is in fact a kind of X-ray of speech, for by means of a delicate instrument the tongue, ' the palate, the respiratory organs, the larynx, register on the instrument the tiniest defect in working and the cause of the trouble is thus shown. The Abbe has invented new processes in therapeutics for the maladies of both speech and hearing, and a special clinic is being established on the basis of these discoveries. Another wonderful discovery of this priest will be of value in the next war, which, alas, seems inevitable as things are going just now. The Abbe Rousselot has succeeded in capturing in the air and reproducing as scientific pictures the different noises of canon, from the heavy far off sound to the whistling of the shell through spaces the explosion and the fall. Thus, by certain combinations, the position of the gun and its calibre can be determined exactly. This is a very valuable discovery in war time, particularly when the enemy is placing new guns in a battery. At the moment the Abbe has completed a discovery on which' he was engaged when the Armistice was proclaimed. This will make iti possible to recognise by sound the exact position of a submarine, and to detect the sound long before it is conveyed to the naked ear. Henceforth the laboratories of the Abbe will be subsidised by the Government, who are now taking a great interest in his work.