SCIENCE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3127, 6 July 1881, Page 4

SCIENCE.

The London Institution of Civil Engineers receives about twenty-five hundred dollars annually as interest upon funds -which it holds in trust to apply the income to the advancement of engineering science. A considerable portion of this interest is disbursed in the form of . prizes for essays or memoirs on special subjects. Tho Tay Bridge disaster has evidently suggested some of the topics selected this year for these prize essays ; as among those announced we notice the action of the high winds on lofty and exposed structures, and the strength and other qualities of steel and iron for structural purposes. The papers elicited by these prizes may possibly contain matter of interest to the builders of the East River bridge. In answer to the question whether our forefathers were acquainted with the peculiar physical condition known tc us nor as somnambulism, Dr. Regnard, in a recent lecture at the Sorbonne, in Paris, said that one of the most accurate descriptions of Bomnabulism in existence was that in the sleep walking 6cene of Macbeth. As an example of natural somnambulism, the lecturer mentioned the running of horses while asleep ; but we doubt the authenticity of any reported instances of this sort, since although there might be no question about a horse running at a particular time, nobody but tho horse himself can know to a certainty whether he was then asleep or not. The Ynirida River, in South America, is a branch of the Guaviare, which runs into the Orinoco. It has recently been explored by Mr Frederic Montolieu, of the Paris Geographical Society. According to the description which he furnishes to the Bulletin of that society, it cannot be a revy attractive stream. It has many terrible rapids, its waters are so tinged with iron that they appear black; and it abounds in enormous anacondas. From his natural history notes we learn further that otters ai'e very numerous along the Ynirida, and that its valley is exceedingly rich in sarsaparilla. A palm also grows there from which are made cables that are highly valued, because water has no injurious effect upon them. The recent terrible earthquake on the Island of Tschia, opposite the Bay of Naples, by which a hundred persons were killed and twice as many wounded, has generally been attributed to vulcanic disturbances connected with Mount Vesuvius • but K'rofessor L. Palmieri. who is hig ! authority on such subjects, finds n<> evident in hia seismographic (earthquake-writing) instruments that such was the fact. He is rather disposed to attribute the shocks at Ischia to the subterranean dislocation arid sudden sinking of a large mass of earth occasioned by the corrosive action of the mineral springs on the island. It appears that Esparto grass, for papermaking, just as good in all respects as that now imported from Morocco, could be grown very profitably on the waste and bog lands in the West of Ireland. A paper lately read before the Royal Society of Dublin shows that there are a million acres in the country, not now worth twelve cents an acre for any agricultural use, which could readily be made to yield this grass in quantities sufficient to bring ten dollars ta the acre, even at the lowest prices. At the instance of the Secretary of State for the Colonies of Great Britain, Professor E. Ray Lankester has prepared a report on the artificial growth of sponges, which shows that they could be grown in localities where none now exist. Experiments in the Adriatic Sea were made by sinking small bits of sponge in suitable localities, and in the course of seven years these fragments of a single sponge had each grown into a sponge itself, large enough to be saleable.

The experimental lighting of the streets in London by electricity is to be carried on in three selected districts by three different, systems for one year, at an expense of about forty thousand dollars. In these district's gas -will be totally dispensed with. Tho systems are those of Brush, Siemens, and Jablochkoff. In Now York the Brush system is the only one yet tried for street lamps, and gas is kept burning in the same streets.

A comparison of the relative value of various disinfecting agents, made by Mr A. H. Allen, president of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Sheffield, England, has demonstrated the superiority of carbolic acid and the derivative preparations for use on a large scale. This result accords, we believe, with those of several similar investigations in this country. The Merkaski motor, an engine worked by the combined action of compressed air and hot water, has been used for nearly two years, with very satisfactory results, on a railway about four miles long, in the French city of Nantes. It is almost noiseless, and simple enough to be operated by men who are not skilled engineers. Last January was the coldest month in Scotland of which any record exists. The lowest recorded temperature was fifteen degrees below the zero of Fahrenheit, at Stobo Castle, in Peebleshire, about twentyfive miles south of Edinburgh. The Marquis of Bute has introduced the beaver into his lands on the islands of Bute, and the animal thrives there. The beaver became extinct in Great Britain more than three centuries ago. According to Sir Bartle Frere, late High Commissioner of the British Government for South Africa, the area in which the tsetse fly is fatal to the animals it bites appears gradually to bo diminishing.