SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1876, 9 April 1889, Page 3

SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.

A NEW PLOEA. The luxuriant vegetation of Krakatoa was totally destroyed by the eruption in 1883, not a living germ_ being left. Three years later the island was visited by Dr M. Treub, who now reports having found six species of microscopic algae, which coated the rock and seemed to have formed the soil on which eleven species of ferns had taken root. A common grass of Java was growing, and there were quite a number of such species of flowering plants as first appear on coral islands. Seeds or fruit of several coral island trees were found on the shore. Krakatoa is ten miles from the Island of Sibesie, containing the nearest terrestrial vegetation, twenty miles from Sumatra, and twenty-one from Java, INTELLECTUAL INFLUENCE OP THE NOSE. Aprosexie is the name Dr Guye, of Amsterdam, chooses for inattentiveness, and he quite singularly finds that the nose is one cause of it. A dull boy became quick to learn after certain tumors had been taken from the nose; and a man who been troubled with vertigo and buzziag in the ears for twelve years found mental labor easy after a like operation. In a third case, a medical student was similarly relieved. Dr Q-uye supI poses that these nasal troubles affect | the brain by preventing the cerebral : lymph from circulating freely. ]

boilebs exploded by gas. After prolonged official investigation, the most extensive and complete destruction of steam boders on record ihas been attributed to the sudden \ ignition of coal gas, mixed with air, that had accumulated in the flues. The explosion occurred on July 25, 1887, in Upper Silesia, Germany. Twenty-two boilers, each with more than 1000 square feet of heating surface, were instantly blown to pieces, buildings covering half an acre were destroyed, and three men were killed. WASTE Ol’ ENEEGT. In the ordinary sixteen candle power incandescent lamp, according to Prof. E. Merritt, only from four to six per cent of the energy actually expended is available as light, the remainder being wasted as heat. To lessen this loss is one of the greatest electrical problems now awaiting solution.

EUTTJEE science. « What woald one not give,” asks Lubbock, “ for a science primer of the next century? for, to paraphrase a well-known saying, even the boy at the plough will then know more of science than the wisest of philosophers do now.” DELICATE MEASUREMENT, The new radio-micrometer of Mr C. V. Boys —a thermo-electric circuit suspended by a torsion fibre in a magnetic field —shows a temperature change of one ten-millionth of a Centigrade degree. A MECHANICAL NO VELTY. The remarkable Mannesman!! process of making seamless tubes is described by Mr E. Siemens as consisting in passing the red-hot bar _ of solid metal or glass between revolving

conoiclal rolls. These rolls are so arranged that the varying velocities of revolution with which the different parts of the bar are brought into contact, cause the formation of a hollow through the bar’s centre. Tubes a foot in diameter, with a shell enly a quarter of an inch thick, may be produced in this way, and great strength is claimed for them. Tubes with sealed ends may be made, the hollow centre being a vacuum.