Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 December 1894 — POPULAR SCIENCE. [ARTICLE]

POPULAR SCIENCE.

The greatest altitude in Maine is Katahdfn Mountain,which is 5:200 feet high. Prof. Ball says the actual momentum of some of the tiniest meteors is equivalent to that of a cannon ball. At sea level an object one hundred feet high is visible a little over thirteen miles. If five hundred feet high, it is visible nearly thirty miles. If two tuning forks of the same pitch are placed facing each other, the one sounding, the other silent, in a few seconds the silent one will be giving out a distinctly audible note. Scientists have determined that more than twenty terrestrial elements exist in the sun’s atmosphere. Among these are calcium, manganese, nickel, sodium, magnesium, copper, zinc, cobalt, aluminum, and hydrogen. The protection afforded to the earth by snow is shown by Ebermayer in the “Influence of Frosts.” In one observation, the temperature of the air above the snow was 6 degrees below zero; under the snow the rmometer stood at 33 degrees. According to Mulhall, the average number of days on which snow falls every year in St. Louis is eleven, in Lisbon one, in Paris thirteen, in Vienna thirty-three, in Copenhagen twentythree. in St. Petersburg sixty-two, in Moscow seventy-one, in Greenland eighty. At a late meeting of the Royal Botanic Society, the Secretary raised the question of the vitality of longkept seeds. He said that fifteen xaars was as Idng as he had undoubted evicence of a seed being kept and then germinating. He scouted the idea that seed from the hands of mummies had ever developed. The evidence of such a claim was unscientific and untrustworthy. Sir B. W. Richardson, at the same meeting, said that he had planted many seeds -found with mummies, but none had ever developed.