Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 December 1885 — POPULAR SCIENCE. [ARTICLE]

POPULAR SCIENCE.

Weather vanes illuminated by electricity, so as to be visible at night, have been suggested. C. F. Im Therm, the German explorer of British Guiana, iff climbing Mount Roraima, found, at a height of 5,600 feet above the sea-level, a garden of orchids. <■' The phenomenon of red hail, the coloring matter being diffused throughout some of the stones and the others being White, was lately observed i& the English County of Down. A peculiar black paper of Siam and Burmah, made from the bark of certain trees, is used very much as are slater in Europe and America. The writing upon it may be rubbed out by the application of betel leaves, just as slaterwriting is erased by means of a sponge. It has been found that compressed teak may be made to serve some of the purposes for which boxwood—which is rapidly becoming very scarce—is nos used. A powerful hydraulic press for compressing teak for loom shuttles has just been made in Manchester, E* gland. Remains of gigantic birds lately dii covered in the Thames Valley show, according to Mr. G- E. T. Newton, of the London Zoological Society, that England was once inhabited by birds as large as the famous moa of New Zealand, or much larger flian the ostriclies now existing. Of at least a dozen fishes having electric organs, the electric eel of South America is the most powerful. It reaches a length of six feet, and is provided with a pair of batteries containing some hundred minute nervesupplied cells, which exhibit the same phenomena as artificial batteries. It appears that an alloy of copper, platinum and tin has been extensively used in Great Britain for jewelry, with the object of deceiving pawnbrokers. The fraud has been very successful, as the compound resists the usual nitric acid test for gold. The alloy has even been used for counterfeiting English coin. ... ; There is no record of the distance from shore at which divers have gone down in the Atlantic Ocean. They can go down to certain depths at any part of the ocean. As long ago as 1856, E. P. Harrington, of Westfield, N. Y.,went down 170 feet and recovered the iron safe of the steamer Atlantic, snnk in Lake Erie the year before. He was dressed in a common diver's suit, and remained down eleven minutes. A recent French invention enables men to descend over 800 feet. W. Matieu Williams remarks that the popular notion that mosquitoes are chiefly resident in tropical and subtropical countries is quite a mistake, the home of their mightiest legions being within and about the Arctic Circle. On coasting trips to the North Cape even,vessels are invaded by maddening swarms at every stopping place. It is reported that in Alaska they form clouds so dense that it is impossible for sportsmen to aim at objects beyond. Native dogs are sometimes killed -by them, and even the great grizzly bear is said to be occasionally blipded by their attacks and finally starved in consequence. M. de Pabville has published a paper on the presence of bacteria in the air we breathe. He says that the presence of bacteria in a cubic meter is six in the sea air, one in the air of high mountains, sixty in the principal cabin of a ship at sea, 200 in the air at the top of the Pantheon in Paris, 360 in the Ruede Rivoli of Paris, 6,000 in the Parisian sewers, 36,000 in the old Parisian houses, 40,000 in the new hospital of the Hotel Dieu in Paris, and 79,000 in the old hospital of Pitie in Paris. In Ryder street, St. James's, London, a cubic meter of air contains only 240 bacteria, whereas in the Rue de Rivoli the same quantity of air contains 360. M. de Parvilkj maintains that the superiority of London air, as compared with Paris air, is shown not only by the London air containing bacteria, but also by the London rate of mortality being smaller. The greater purity, or less impurity, of the air of London than that of Paris is accounted for byLondon being nearer to the sea, by its covering a larger extent of ground in proportion to the population and by its bouses being lower.