Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 April 1896 — SCIENCE AND INVENTION [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

SCIENCE AND INVENTION

A Water Bulwark. The new ram Rafahdlh, of the United States navy, Is so shaped 1 hat her deck In front curves down to the waterline, and as she rushes ahead a huge wave is raised oyer her bow. It has been suggested that this Wave would be a means of protection to the ship from an enemy firing at her as she approached. She lies very low in the water, and with the liquid wall at her bow is practically behind a kind of fortification. The Secret of the B|rds In a recent review in Science of a new book on birds it Is stated that “there is as yet no proof that the muscles of birds exert any unusual power; on the contrary, birds which, like the larger petrels, have mastered the problem of sailing flight, not only have small wing muscles, but have very Tittle strettgth ln .them.’’ —If men of science could only talk with birds, as the farmer in the "Arabian Nights” did with the animals in his barn-yard, the secret of flight might be revealed.

Horseless Carriages. Special efforts are being made in France to popularize tile use of carriages driven by small engines enclosed in the body of the vehicle. It is proposed, if the consent t of the city authorities can be obtained, to place these automobile carriages on—the streets of Faria for hire at the regular rates now demanded for cabs drawn by horses. In England the use of horseless carriages on highways has been opposed on the ground that they are, in effect, ‘-locomotive engines, - ’ and as such cannot bo lawfully used on public roads without the special authorization of an act of Parliament. Mount Washington's Inhabitants. Mrs. Annie T. Slosson lias captured on and near the summit of Mount Washington belonging to no less than eight hundred and thirty different species. While many of these species also live in the valleys below, some are peculiar to this mountain-top and never leave it, their relatives being found only in northern Canada and Labrador, where similar climatic conditions prevail. It is an old theory that the ancestors of these Mount "Washington insects, as well as certain peculiar plants found there, came down from the north in the glacial ages, and were left behind when the ice disappeared. How Streams Rob One Another. The Schoharie Creek, which in many parts of the world would be called a river, rises in the heart of the Oatsklll Mountains aud flows northward until ft joins the Mohawk. The Kaatersklli and Plaaterskill creeks also rise in the Catskills, but flow eastward into tha Hudson. At a recent meeting of the Geological Society of America Mr. N. H. Darton showed how the two lastnamed creeks have robbed the Schoharie of some of its head-waters by gradually wearing away the mountain slopes behind them until the watershed inclining toward the Hudson has encroached on that which supplies the Schoharie. About Brains. Professor Ranke lias recently brought out a new fact concerning the brain of man as compared with that of other animals. It has long been known that the brain of a man does not weigh as much as that of a whale or an elephant, and that there are birds and apes whose brains are heavier than man’s in proportion to the weight of •their bodies. But Professor Rauke showed at a recent. meeting of the German Anthropological Society that the way to reveal the actual superiority of the human brain is to compare its weight with that of the spinal cord. Measured in this way, man’s brain Is proportionately far heavier than that of any of the lower animals. Singnlar Discoveries. A very strange thing happened to the Prince of Monaco’s steamyacht Princesse Alice, near the island of Tereeira in the Azores last summer. The prince has devoted his yacht to the study of the ocean and its inhabitants, and many important facts have thus been gathered for science. On the occasion referred to a sperm-whale, or cachalot, about forty-five feet long, was harpooned by some fishermen, and In its dying struggles it made direct for the Princesse Alice. If it had struck the little yacht the consequences might have been very serious, but just when the collision seemed inevitable the whale dived, and coming up on the other side of the yacht, turned upon its back in the death-agony. At this instant the bodies of three gigantic ceplialopods—the class to which cuttlefishes belong—were ejected from the whale’s mouth. These were secured by a boat from the yacht, and later the bodies of.a number of curious Inhabitants of the sea tyere found In the whale’s stomach. The cephalopoda belong to a new spdcles. Other captures that the whale had made were so Interesting as to lead Mr. J. Y. Buchanan, the naturalist, to .remark in a recent number-of Nature: “The cachalot whieh was killed by NW’ Wfiatere of Totcetr* almost under tihe keel of the Princesse Alice seems as If It had been guided In the pursuit of its food by a desire to devour nothing but animals which, np to the present, are completely unknown.’’