SCIENCE SIFTINGS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVII, Issue 257, 3 November 1906, Page 10

SCIENCE SIFTINGS.

; ! THE RP.IGX OF ELECTRICITY. f I Prof. E. L. Larkiii. of ],oi\e Observatory. Echo Mountain. California, believes . that electricity is the basic constituent j of the universe, and the mother of all I the. natural forces. Boou it will be ad- . mitted, he affirms, that electricity exists in a practically infinite number of modes and forms, ordinary "currents" and "charges" being commonplace. In a ' few years it will be fashionable to .say that a cubic inch of iron and another of water contain equal quantities of matter, since both are nearly incompressible, and that the reason why iron tends towards the centre of the earth with a ' force 7.8 times that of water is because ' |it contains 7.S times as ninth electricity. ! GRANITE AS MANURE. ' j What may turn out to be a great dis- • eovery in the way ..of cheap manuring is indicated in a recent report of the Bu- ■ reau of Plant Industry of the United states Department of Agriculture. It is well known that a good deal of fertility is carried down to valleys simply by the wearing away of rocks in the hills and ' mountains above them, and this led to ; an investigation of the subject. Ordinary !granite rook was ground to a fine powder, and extensive experiments v.vre made with the powder to test its value 'as a manure. The results were excellent, and the report on the subject states that ' a ton of granite, which cost 12/0 for quarrying and grinding, contained fertilising matter which could not be purchased abroad and imported at less than £ 20. MAKING THEM GOOD BY SURGICAju OPERATION. An interesting experiment has been begun in Philadelphia (according to the •"Tribune" correspondent.) by the health and charity officials of the city with a view to depriving children of criminal tendencies by means of surgical operations. Nine, eminent physicians met to sec operations performed upon seven children. There were two operations on the brain, three, on the eyes, and two minor operations for nervousness. These seven patients had been picked from a large number as being children who appeared to be destined to careers of evildoing unless something was done to alter their organisation. Their past history and the conditions of their general health had been made the subject of careful study, and. finally, the consent of the parents was asked and obtained before the knife was used. A LAKE OF QUICKSILVER. A lake of quicksilver, covering an area of more than three acres, and having a depth ranging from 10 to 50 feet, has been discovered in the mountains of the State of Vera Cruz. The value of the product is estimated at millions. This lake has been known to the Indians for many generations. It is situated far up lin the mountains in an almost inacoessI ihln position. Its surface is partly covered by stones. It is believed that volcanic action in the mountains above I smelted the quicksilver out of the cinnaibar ore and that it ran down and filled ; this depression. A tunnel will he driven through t'hp base of the and i the. quicksilver will b» brought down by means of gravity. LONG-DISTANCE TELEPHONY. In a room in Boston. 60ft long and 20ft wide, two men arc employed day by day experimenting with long distance telephony. J n a box about the size of a. portmanteau they have telephone circuits about 1000 miles long. In a smaller box they have the counter-part, on a miniature scale, of an exchange equipment. With these devices they spend their i days attempting to improve long-dis-tance, telephony. They have certain clever arrangements by which they can i introduce the difficulties which, are attendant, on deep-sea telephony, and it is | their fond hope to be able ultimately to offer the world a practical system of telephony across the Atlantic. They have succeeded in passing speech audibly over a distance of 1000 miles, but this falls far short of the ideal, and so they keep on toiling (says the "Liverpool Post").. Vast, sums of money are being expended on the experiments, and various telephone organisations are interested in them. But only the two men know what is happening, for the secret is well kept. PIPING FRESH AIR TO CITIES. The. piping of fresh air to cities is no longer a dream of scientists. It has been practically tried, in an experimental way. in the crowded Whiteehape.l district of London, under the supervision of Dr. T. G. Lyon, one of London's most eminent scientists. The air is sucked into pipes by powerful suction pumps from some high elevation where the. 1 sanitary conditions are perfect aud forced into large storage tanks similar to gas tanks. When .stored in these tanks under pressure, the. pure air is distributed in pipes leading into different houses. The air can be distributed through pipes upward of fifty to one hundred miles in length without losing any of its purity. By opening a switch' the customer gets his daily supply of fresh air in his rooms, while the foul air is allowed to escape through withdrawal ducts. When om-e installed in a city, the supply of pure mountain ozonp can be supplied at little cost, and the scientists estimate that in the congested quarters of London fifty per cent of the ordinary sickness could be moderated if not entirely eliminated. WINNING THE DIAMOND. In the currenrt issue of "The Science and Art of Mining," a paper read before one of the technical societies by the general manager of the De Beers diamond mines is reproduced. The subject is "Winning the Diamond. 7, When the bare statement is made that, nearly 5,000,000 truck loads, or more than 4,000.000 tons, of blue ground have been washed in a year the mind only faintly conceives the prodigious size of the mass that is annually drawn from the old»eraters, and laboriously washed and sorted for the sake of a few bucketfuls of diamonds. It would form a cube of more than 430 ft, or a block larger than any cathedral in the world, and overtopping the spire of St. Paul, while a box with sides measuring 2ft 9in would hold the gems. Diamonds are so highly prized and so im- j perishable that tie amount of these j gems in existence may almost be reck- i oned as the total of the world's production, ranging in value through hundreds of millions of dollars. Mr. Kunz does not estimate a loss of 5 per cent in 100 years, and the South African diamond fields alone have contributed over 400,000,000 ' dollars in value to the world's stock. | Yet the demand increases apace -with the world's growth in wealth, and no diversion of the world's fancy is apparent..