SCIENCE SIFTINGS

New Zealand Tablet, 19 January 1922, Page 46

SCIENCE SIFTINGS

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WHAT ANIMALS SAY, N Many of the popular ideas of the cries of animals are altogether wrong. This is shown by experiments recently carried out by means of phonographs to discover the sounds" which the creatures really do make. It is commonly supposed that sheep say “Baa.” What the animals really say, according to a phonographic record, is something like “Maa.” A close examination of the mouth of the sheep shows that the animal cannot form the letter “B” at all. The shape of its mouth is all wrong for that. How many people if asked to imitate a dog barking would say something like “Bow-wow”? But the dog does not say this at all. On the phonograph the sound is just like “Wow-wow,” without any suggestion of a “B” at all. Most folks think it would be quite right to speak of the growl of a tiger. As a matter of fact this creature does not growl at all. Its ordinary cry in its native jungles has "been shown to bo a kind of cough. This resembles a sort of a “Wouf-wouf,” although as a matter of fact it is very difficult to put the noise into words. An attempt to take the so-called “laugh” of the hyaena proved interesting on account of the fact that no one was able to suggest words that would describe it. Just two birds were tried in order to see what kind of a noise they make. Rooks and crows are said to “caw,” but the sound they actually make resembles a “haw” much more nearly. It was shown that pigeons do not “coo,” the cry they utter being more like “hoo.” , THE ORIGIN OF CHESS. e , Chess is one of the oldest of games, though not nearly as old as was generally believed fifty years ago, when Duncan Forbes and other historical authorities insisted that the game as we know it is the lineal descendant of a primitive four-handed dice chess played in India 5000 years ago. All we can say for certain, however, %is that chess existed in India in the seventh century, A.D., and that it had already reached Persia then —farther back than that we can see nothing clearly, even with the electric flashlight of modern scientific research. In his History of Chess, Mr. H. J. R. Murray tells us all that is really known as to the origin of chess and its diffusion from India. Its early advance was westward into Persia; the eastward diffusion took place later along three main lines. Persia passed it on to the Eastern Empire and, later on, Islam acquired the game as a result of the Mohammedan conquest of Persia. From that time on the Moslems became the great pioneers of chess, carrying it as far west as Spain. Christendom was learning to play as early as 1000 A.D., and from the shores of the Mediterranean the knowledge of this “Game of Kings” passed through France and Germany to England, to Scandinavian lands, and even to far-away Iceland, where it was played by all classes of the community —not, as in other countries, remaining a prerogative of the nobly born. . ■MINE RESCUE APPARATUS. Ever since the invention of the miners’ safety lamp by Humphrey Davy, Great Britain has devoted keen attention to the subject of safety devices in mines. Experiments recently conducted by . the British Scientific and Industrial Research Department have resulted in the design of two new types of rescue apparatus which are proving most successful. Both types of apparatus are what is known as “regenerative”; that is to say, the air expelled by the lungs is purified, supplied with oxygen, and returned -to the lungs. Therefore, when a man wears this apparatus he is able to enter smoke or poisonous atmosphere without suffering ill-effects. The apparatus and the lungs really formed a closed circuit, and the lungs serve as a pump to circulate the air round that circuit. In one type of apparatus the oxygen is supplied from liquid air and in the other type it is obtained from a solution of compressed gas. Both pieces of apparatus'are designed to enable the wearer to undertake continuous heavy physical exertion for at least two hours. As a matter of experience they can satisfy all the breathing needs of the wearer for three hours.