Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 March 1887 — POPULAR SCIENCE. [ARTICLE]

POPULAR SCIENCE.

An obse er must stand 6,667 feet above the level of the sea to discern a vessel one hundred miles distant, and 26,666 feet when it is distant 200 miles. Whalss are not fishes. They have no scales; they have warm blood; they give milk to their young, anil finally, they would be drowned if they were to remain longer than half an hour under water. Cut an earth worm in two and place the two halves in a flower pot with earth kept constantly moist, and in less than a year you will find two whole worms. A head will have grown oro the half that had but a tail, while a tail will have grown to the half that had none. It seems that Lieut. Greely believes in the theory that thero is an open sea, some 1,500 miles in diameter, rpund about the pole, that never freezes, the conjecture being that the pole itself is the center of an ice-capped land, covered mtli ice from 1,000 to 4,000 feet thick. Mr. Elliott denies the courage and ferocity commonly attributed to the huge, hideous monster known as tlv. walrus, or sea-horse. It is, on the contrary, abjectly timid, and so covered with a wrinkled, warty, pimply, hide as to recall degraded human “bloats.” Its enormous ivory tusks are used only in digging clams, and are very loosely planted in their osseous sockets. Hf.nry W. Elliott, in his book on Alaska, says that the sea-lion at its full • growth is twice the size of the fur-seal, yet inferior in perfection of physical organization, in intelligence, and even in courage, at least against man. As it has no fur, its skin has little commercial value, but the Aleutians make abundant use of its flesh, fat, and sinews. The sea-lion common off the Bay of San Francisco belongs to a different family, and attains not much more than half the size of its namesake of the Behring Sea. Dr. G. Keller, of Zurich, claims that spiders perform an important part in the preservation of forests by defending tire trees against the depvedation of aphides and insects. He has examined a great many spiders, both in their viscera and by feeding them in captivity, and has found them to be voracious destroyers of these pests; and he believes that the spiders in a particular forest do more effective work of this kind than all the insect-eating birds that inhabit it. Ho has verified his views by observations on coniferous trees, a few broad-leaved trees, and apple trees. _ The fur-seal has been many times confounded with the hair-seal. Two animals more dissimilar in their individuality and methods of living can hardly be imagined, although they belong to the same group and live apparetitly upon the same food. The liairseal, white or gray in color, common on every marine shore,, has no generic affinity with those seals with which it has usually been associated, the fur-seal and the sea-lion. It no more resembles them than does the raccoon a black or grizzly bear. Lightning does not'alwaysfallon the earth at every discharge of electricity from the clouds. There are flashes that take place between the earth and the thundercloud, and it is in such cases that things on the earth are struck. In most cases lightning flashes from one. cloud to another, one cloud being cjiarged with positive and the other with negative electricity. * These clouds discharge themselves on coming near each other. Lightning is accompanied by a great noise, which we call thunder, that is produced by the displacement of air during the passage of the flash. This noise is often prolonged by echoes, rolling from cloud to cloud. The flashes that pass between thb earth and a cloud produce only a sharp, short thunder clap. “