FLY’S FORTY WINKS.

Hokitika Guardian, 4 July 1925, Page 3

FLY’S FORTY WINKS.

• LONDON, May 17. The most indifferent visitor to the Royal Society yesterday evening, when the annual conversazione was held at Burlington House, Pieadilly, was a large blue-bottle fly, disporting itself in a small glass vessel. Close by, on an elaborate apparatus, n record was being made of the amount of carbonic acid gas produced by the fly’s breathing. "When the fly gets sleepy it hardly breathes at all. hut if stirred to action it begins at once to breathe lustily. A suspicions lull in the curve at 2 p.m. seemed to indicate that the fly takes forty winks after its luncheon. The apparatus measures the exahalation of plants. A new colour test for A itamin A -was exhibited. A drop of cod-liver oil or butter, which contains this vitamin, ■is turned to a brilliant ultranim ine blue when the new indicator is mixed with it.

An artificial larynx was shown, a simple contrivance of india-rubber and vulcanite which restores the powers of speeclTto persons who have had thi larynx removed, so that the voiceless patient can be heard over the tele phone.