Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 June 1882 — SCTENCE NOTES. [ARTICLE]

SCTENCE NOTES.

French hydrographers find the water of the Meoiteranian Sea to be ..The aIXLQI. Bondonjiuring a fog h found to contain a large excess of carbolic afidptfr the The electric light will affect the sunlight. tns.nqhiflv a In France there are 259 establishwwwo these JmimM Employ what isi knowxi as the diffusion process, a method ' whicn is likely. soon to be in general usGq * ' states that he has prepared Wood’s alloy, which melts at 95 d ,tty ’compressing, at 7.500 atmospheres,iron filings with Bismoth,cadmium and tin in proper proportions. He has so obtained Rose ’s alloy, which consists of lead, Bismuth and tin and also brass,by pressure of the constituent metals. The electrical piano of Boudet is a ecent novel application of electrict . An ordinary instrument is provided with two sets of hammers, the upper or electrical series being brought into action by pressing certain Keys. An organ-like effect Is produced by the electrical hammers, which continue striking the wires ra pidly so long as pressure on the corresponding keys is given. Late experiments by prof. Phillips appear to confirm the theory of Freytag that plants absorb all soluble matter indiscriminately through their rootlets, and that the absorption of poisonous metals causes no disturbance until a certain degree of concentration is reached, when the plant rapidly withers and dies. It is thus of the greatest importance to prevent any crop growing soil from becoming impregnated with any poisonous elements.

When the vessel La Providence, which sank in the Bosphorus, was being raised,the telephone was added tot he diver’s equipment. One of the glasses of the hejmet was replaced by a copper plate in which a telephone was inserted so that the diver had only to turn his head slightly in order ttf.receive his instructions and report what he had seen. The adoption of this means of communication in diving operations will, in case of danger or accident, tend to insure safety to lives that otherwise would have been sacrificed. In determining the eouivalent of carbon by the combustion of the diamond. Prof.H. E, Roscoe employed the same arrangments as M.M. Dumas and Star, but substituted Cape for Brazilian gams. Gape Diamonds do not contain a trace of oxygen, though they leave a little ash. If Oxygen is equal to 15,96,carb0n becomes 11.07. M. Dumas, while communicating the above results to the academy of sciences, Paris remarked that if Oxygen is represented by 19. carbon becomes 12,092’ that is a whole number within one two thousandth part. The great earthquake record of Mallet catalogues between 6,690 and 9,000 earthquakes between the years 1605 B.C. and A.D. 1842. Probably the most memorable of these is the terrible earthquake which destroyed Lisbon in 1752., Wi th scarcely a moment of warning, a rumblelug violent shock came which overturned the city and in six minutes 60,900 persons had perished, and a portion of the town was permanently engulfed at a depth of 600 feet belqw the surface of the bay. The shock was felt with greater or less severity over a great area, extending from, the Baltic to the West Indies, and from Canada to Algeria. Humboldt estimates that a portion of the earth’s surface equal to four times the size of Europe was affected. Professor Othniel C. Marsh,of Yale contributes \o the American Journal of Science and to a recent Nature a description of one of the meet curious of fossil wing-fingerea reptiles. The solitary specimen is at New Haven, but was found in Bavaria in the same series of slates that has shown a number of famous fossils, among them the Archoeopteryx, a reptilian bird with feathers and a long jointed tail. The described fossil is a Rhamphorynchuß,to which Professor Marsh has given the name of phyllurus, owing to a long rat-like tail which ends in a broad, leafshaped rudder. The wings of this ancestor of bats are membranous like those of bats, but much slenderer and more graceful. The head is comparatively long and large, with a formidable supply of teeth* The specimen was no larger than the ordinary fox-headed bats seen alive in menageries, and not so large as some of the living Indian and African bats. Professor Reinsch.in a lecture lately delivered gave the result of his researches regarding the manner in which coal bad been formed. He had examined with the microscope not less than 2,500 sections of coal, and had come to the conclusion that coal had not been formed b'y the alteration of accumulated land plants, but that it consists of microscopic forms of a lower order of protoplasm, and although he had carefully examined tbe sells and other remains of plants of a higher ordet he computed that they have contributed only a fraction of the mass of coal veins, however numerous they may have been in some instances. He referred * to the fact that Dr. Muck, of Bochum, ’ held that al gab have mainly contritei uted to the formation of coal, and' that marine plants were rarely found in coal because of their tendency to decompose, and that caloarous remains of mollusks disappeared on account of the rapid formation of oar bon ic acid during the process of combustion. •