SCIENCE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3095, 30 May 1881, Page 4

SCIENCE.

We find in the Chemical a communication from Dr. T. : -. Phipson, deserib- i Log the minute grains of silica which he I has discovered in the atmosphere by means of microscopic observations. Pouchet, in France, had previously called attention to their existence. " Thero is no doubt," says the writor, " that the dust of the atmosphere reveals to the microscope, besides the larger mineral fragments mos'ly of an angular shape, exceedingly minute circular or spherical bodies having often not more than onethousandth of a millimetro diameter, and very similar in size and shape, which resist the action of a white heat in contact with the air, and that of strong hydrochloric acid. In some of my obseivations they were remarkably numerous. Both before and after tho action of heat they are more or lass transparent. What can be the origin of these singular objects ?" Dr. Phipson answers his own question with the suggestion that they are probably fosil vegetable organisms belonging to a former geological age. In an essay read at a recent meeting of the Medical Temperance Association, Dr. Benjamin W. Richardson, F. R.S., stated tiat he had never prescribed alcohol in any other form than ethylicalcohol—the ordinary pure but not quite absolute alcohol of commerce. He is opposed to its administration in the form, of wine, liquor, or beer, for two reasons; first, because the quantity of absolute alcohol thus taken into the putient's system is uncer am ; anrl secondly, because when ordered as a common drink, its use ie likely to be continued after its beneficial effect has been attained and when any further consumption can only prove detrimental. Dr. Rv'h'irdson concedes that it is vain and untrue for physicians to declare to their patients that alcohol cannot relieve them under certain conditions j but this makes it all the more important that the medicinal use of alcohol, and its limits, should be generally understood. Twenty years ago, Messrs GL O. Sars and A. boesk were appointed by the Government of Norway a commission to a scientific investigation of the development, life and migratory movements of the herring, —the herring fishe'y being one of the most important of Norwegian industries. 1 review of their work was recently road before the Geographical Society of Halle, in Germany. They have ascertained two facts of much interest, according to the statements in this paper. One is that all the herrings of European wators belong to the same family of fishes, notwithstanding much apparent diversity. The other is that there is no actual diminution in the total number, their aprearance and disappearance being controlled by local and variable causes, such as th* action of ocean currents and the abundance or scarcity of food. A lecture on the photographic study of the spectra of the stars wns recently delivered at the London Institution by Dr. W illium Huggins, F.R.-., who is probably the highest living authority in this branch •of scientific research. After describing the methods by which the light of a star as seen through a prism is photographed, he gave some account of the additions to our knowledge of stellar physics which have been thus obtained. The most interesting related to the probable comparative age of the sun. There is reason to think, he said, that our sun and the star Capella are about equally old. A returns and \lbebaran — the type of yellow stars—are younger. On the oilier lumd, Sirius, tho dog-star, Rigel and Vega are regarded as oiler than the sun.

There is some reason to think that arsenious acid acts as apreven ive of malaria in the marshy districts of ! 'taly about where it has lately been prescribed for laborers who had previously Buffered severely from tho characteristic malar al fever of that region. The effect is said to have been not only complete immunity from further attacks of the disease but a general improvement in the health of the men. '''ho poison was extensively administered during a recent epidemic of malaria at Caaerta; and in order to prevent the patients from taking excessive doses of so dangerous a drug, it was prepared at Venice in the form of gelatine tablets divided into squares, each of which contained a specified quantity of arsenic. These could be broken off and swallowed as directed.

An interesting observation in thermal physics has been made by Mons. Bontigny. Bo finds that when boiling water is allowed to fail upon an incandescent surface —as, fOl example, a red hot stove —its temperature falls. When.water boils, its temperature is one hundred degrees centigrade. When it falls upon a substance heated to inearidescence, its temperature is lowered to ninety-seven degrees centigrade. Mons. Moutigny thin: s the three degrees thus lost represent the work done by the water in assuming the spheroidal shape undef such circumstances.

Some curious experiments upon tho resonance of bell* immersed in liquids have lately been described by Mons. Monfcigny. a Belgian physicist, who procured eleven bells from the chimes of an old clock with which to prosecute his researches. He rang these bells in alcohol, ether, sulphide of carbon nnd water. In every instance the effect of the liquid was to lower the tone of the bell, so that it gave out a graver sound than when rung in the air. 'The denser the liquid, the more the tone was lowered.

Tt tieems the reason why the French government declined 0 purchase the seed of the grape-bearing plants from Central Africa, which the late Mons. Lecard brought, hfime from Soudan, was that he asked the absurd price of one hundred thousand dollars for them. Under these circumstances, we cannot blame the authorities for sending other botanists to the same region in search of the same vines.

in the Comptes Rendus of the French Academy of Sciences it is stated that medical experiments in treating preparations of animal tissue with the milky juice of fig tree indicate that the latter substance possesses valuable preservative qualities. Similar properties have been observed in an extract made by boiling dried figs in milk. We learn from tho Knglish Mechanic thus, on many of the railways in Germany the practice of starting locomotive fires with {ins instead of wood has been adopted and prov s economical, A special apparatus, which costs in Borlin about sixteen dollars, is noet'swirv.