SCIENCE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3053, 8 April 1881, Page 3

SCIENCE.

Some meteorological observations taken during a residence of three years at Stanley in the Falkland Islands, by Mr F. E. Cobb, indicate that the weather which prevails in that group is of a decidedly uncommon character. The annual rainfall is small, being only twenty inches, yet the frequency of rain produces an impression that it must be large, as there are two hundred and thirtysix rainy days in the year. The winds are usually high, and the mean temperature ranges from a monthly minimum of 35 degrees to a monthly maximum of 52 degrees, making altogether "one of the most disagreeable climates of the globe." 'We find a notice of these observations in Nature. The Falkland Islands are situated in the Atlantic, about three hundred miles east of tho southern extremity of Sculh America. They are about two hundred in number, and are all small except East and West Falkland, which are respectively three thousand and twenty-three hundred square miles in area. Stanley, where Mr Cobb resided, is on East Falkland.

In a note on the presence of sulphur in illuminating gas, communicated to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, Mr H. Grimshaw says that " to expose such objects as valuable pictures and books to the

extensive action of the products of combustion of such coal gas as we at present consume is most injudicious, and is, there can bo little doubt, the cause of a. great deal of irreparable injury in many cases. My own opinion is, now that mineral ancl other oils for illuminating aro so cheap, and lamps for their consumption are so admirably constructed and so elegant in design, there is not the slightest reason why valuable collections of pictures and books should be exposed to the sulphurous emanations of coal gas. " We suppose one of the advantages of the proposed introduction of electric lights in libraries will be the entii'o absence of any injurious effect, such as is above referred to, upon the bindings of the books. Professor W. Stanley Jevons describes tho displays of the aurora which were visible at Christiania, in Norway, on the 12th and 13th of August last as the finest he ever witnessed, although he saw the magnificent auroras which occurred in this country in August and September, 1859. The most remarkable features of the Norwegian auroras were the coruscations or waves of electric light " following each other every second, or even several times in a second, so as to produce at last a kind of rustling or dancing appearance." After thinking over the subject for several months, Professor Jevons ventures the suggestion that these coruscations arise from highly tenuous matter, in what Mr Crookes calls tho radiant state, projected through the higher parts of the atmosphere.

The solar prominence observed by Professor C. A. Young, of the College of New Jersey, on the 7th of October last, was tho subject of a paper recently read before the Royal Astronomical Society (London) by Mr A. C. Ranyard. Ho calculates that this prominence rose 132,800 miles in less than half an hour, and the observed conditions of its rise indicate that it was thrown upward within some resisting medium—a fact of much interest in relation to the possible existence of a coronal atmosphere. Several comets have passed so near tho sun that it is believed they must have encountered the insistence of such an atmosphere, if one exists. A composite South American plant, botanieally known as Mikania guaco, is employed as a remedy for snake-bite in New Granada. According to a communication in the English Pharmaceutical Journal, a preparation of this plant when promptly administered is an effectual antidote against the bites of even the most venomous serpents, which would otherwise cause death. The leaves yield a tincture which is given internally, and they are also used to poultice the wound. Further knowledge concerning this remedy might be exceedingly useful in any country where the rattle-snake is so common. The high temperature which prevailed in Switzerland last winter, followed by numerous heavy rains during the summer, produced a notable effect upon many Alpine glaciers ; and one of the most careful observers in the country reports that the retrograde movement of the glaciei'3 during September was greater than he had known before in seventeen years. The phylloxera insect is devastating the vineyards at Geelong, in Australia, to such an extent that one of the European commissioners to the Melbourne exhibition, presumably an expert vine-grower, has expressed the opinion that all the plants ought to be destroyed, to prevent the further spread of the pest. Mr W. 8. Hartley, of the Royal College of Science, Dublin, attributes the blue color of the atmosphere partly to ozone, and thinks that the comparative blueness of distant objects is probably determined by the proportion of ozone in the intervening air. When this is at its maximum, distant objects are viewed through an intensely blue medium, which fades as the ozone decreases, and sometimes becomes quite transparent when it is present in minimum quantities.

A chemical process for distinguishing human blood from that of the lower animals has lately been described by H. Schmidt, a German chemist, who steeps the blood which is the subject of experiment for twenty-four hours in potash lye. He then measures the corpuscles. Those of the blood taken from a dog, he says, are invariably smaller than those of blood taken from a man.

A suggestive remark concerning the great inventors who lived early in the present century was made by Alderman W. H. Bailey at a recent meeting of the Manchester Scientific and Mechanical Society. Those eminent discoverers, he said, were nearly all men of inherited mental power, who did not have too much to do —men who were neither oyer-worked nor overworried.

A curious plan for preventing colliery explosions has been proposed in Wales by the Rev. Taliesin Jones. It involves the distribution throughout the mine of a substance (the precise character of which is not disclosed) that will decompose the dangerous gasses which may be present, so as to permit the free use of uncovered lights by the miners. The project will soon be tested.