SCIENCE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3112, 18 June 1881, Page 4

SCIENCE.

TYTr Edward Whymper, tlic distinguished mountainier and urtisfc, recently gave the Alpine Club an account of his great ascents in South America last year. On Contopaxi his party pitched their tents two hundred and fifty feet from the edge of the crater, and here they were exposed on different sides to the most extraordinary differences of temperature. Within the tent the mercury indicated 110 degrees Favenhoit, on the side nearest the crater, and but 50 degrees on the opposite side, while in the middle it stood at 72i degrees. Without the tent, at this time, the cold was intense, a thermometer on the tent cord registering only 13 degrees. The crater of Cotopaxi ranges from a thousand to fifteen hundred feet in diameter, and is a thousand feet deep, with a circular spot of glowing fire at the bottom, measuring about 200 feet, across. On tins Tolcano, as well as on the Chimborazo, chlorate of potash was taken to relievo the distress due to the low pressure of the atmosphere, and it had a good effect. Several months later Mr Whymper witnessed an eruption of Cotopaxi, in which he thinks two million tons of ashes must have been thrown out. The Prince of Wales attended the meeting at which he described the journey among the Andes, and thanked the AlpHne Club for the treat they had given him in inviting him to be present. A paper describing experiments made in Augmt of last year to determine the force of gravity on the summit of Fujiyama, in Japan, is contributed by Mr T. C. Mendcnhall to the latest number of the American Journal of Science and Arts. It contains an interesting account of the monntain, from which we extract the following: Fujiyama is an extinct volcano, whose height is known to be 2.35 miles very closely. It is renowned for its almost perfect symmetry of form, and for the fact that it rises solitary and alone out of a plain of considerable extent. Without any great error the mountain may be assumed to be a cone. The rock, as far as can be discovered, is quite uniform in its composition throughout. It is a part of Japanese tradition — for ifc can hardly be called history —that the mountain was produced in a single night in the year B.C. 286. Many geologists are of opinion that it is mainly the result of a single eruption." Mr Mendenball's observations indicate that Fujiyama is deficient in attraction, a fact which he deems of considerable importance to geologists engaged in the study of mountain structure. Mr Henry H. Howortb, writing in the Geological Magazine on the ancient climate of Northern Siberia, comes to the conclusion that it could not have been as cold as it is now when tha country was inhabited by the mammoths whose remains are still so numerous all along the arctic shores between the Ural range and Behring's Strait. The plants associated with the bones of these gigantic creatures indicate that in their lifetime the climate must have been very much like that which now prevails in the southern part of Siberia, where the bison lives and the larch and willow grow.

A chemical examination of samples of the lime-juice supplied to the merchant, marine as a preventive of scurvy lias recently been made in England by direction of the government. It turns out that the juice is liable to deterioration, and new regulations have been issued by the Board of Trade providing that all lime-juice more than two years old must be re-examined as to quality before it can be again shipped as stores upon any vessel.

A paste of calcined magnesia and water has been employed in France with wonderful success in treating burns caused by boiling sulphuric acid. The mask formed of this paste must be removed and renewed as fast as fissures appear in it. Two cases of terrible burns in the face, occasioned by an explosion in a chemical lecture-room, have lately been so thoroughly cured by this method of treatment that no trace of the injuries remained visible.

Commercial bismuth is usually sensitive to light, and undergoes some alteration by exposure to its action. We learn from the English Mechanic that Herr Schneider, of Berlin, has found that this property is probably due to a, slight admixture of silver with ordinary bismuth, for when the silver is absent no change occurs. In the Harz Mountains of G-ermany bismuth commonly occurs associated with ores of silver.

The geological survey of the Sta f e of Pennsylvania can be finished, says the latest official report, in three years. Forty-two counties have been fully surveyed and eighteen partially, while there are only six on which no work has yet been done. It is said that the survey will pay for itself a hundred times in the increased facility and certainty it has afforded for exploring for coal, iron and oil.

European journals announce tho death, at Albizzate, in Italy, of Baron Ercole Dembowski, a well-known astronomer, at the age of seventy. He was particularly distinguished for his observations of double stars. Three years ago the Royal Society of London bestowed upon him a gold medal. He led a very retired life. John Duncan, the Scotch weaver and botanist, whoso collection of plants was recently presented to the University of Aberdeen, and who is now living in extreme destitution at the advanced age of eightysix, did not begin to study flowers scientifically until he was nearly forty years old. A treatise on the natural history of British Holies, of which the preface is dated only two days before the author's death, was the last work writteii by tho late Francis T. Buckland, the well-known naturalist.

Tbe recent cold weather in England hag developed the fact that the common thermometers in ordinary use there are inexact to the extent of threo or four degree 3in registering low temperatures below the freezing point.

An analysis of tho coal obtained in Grin nell Land by the last British Arctic expedition shows that its composition closely resembles that of carboniferous bituminous.

Crystalline sulphur, recently formed, has been found under portions of the city of Paris in excavating on the site of the old moat which was filled up with refuse material about two hundred years ago.