SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1877, 11 April 1889, Page 4

SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.

HOMES OF ALL AGES,

An interesting feature of the Paris Exhibition will be a group of fortynine structures intended to give a history of the human dwelling. The different types of shelters represented will include those of the prehistoric period—under rocks, in caves, on water and on land; and from later times those of early historic civilization, of Aryan civilization, of Eoman civilization in the East and in the West, and of rude civilizations disconnected from the general progress of humanity,—the Chinese, Japanese Eskimo, African, Aztec, etc. The interiors, the costumes of the occupants, and the surroundings, will be those of the different epochs studied. THE ELECTEIC AGE. iv Prof. Elisha Gray remarks that electrical science has made a greater advance in the last twenty years than in all the 8000 historic years preceding. More is discovered in one day now than in a thousand years of the middle ages. "We find all sorts of work for electricity to do. We make it carry our messages, drive our engine, ring our door bell, and scare the burglar; we take it as a medicine, light our gas with it, see by it, hear from it, talk with it, and now we are beginning to teach it to write. OJfE TEAK CLOCKS. An important improvement in clocks has been shown the British Association for the Advancement of Science by Mr W. II- Douglass. The new feature is the torsion pendulum, which, with lever and escapement, may be applied to ordinary works, and by its slow rate of vibration makes practicable the conversion of an eight-day clock into one requiring winding only once a year. PnoToaEAPHic Peogeess.

Among recent camera achievements is a portrait copy taken by the light of a Cuban fire-fly in thirty seconds, and a photograph of the Aurora Borealis. To obtain the latter had been declared an utter impossibility.