LECTURE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1902, 11 June 1889, Page 4

LECTURE.

The following is a short synopsis of the; lecture on “ Water ” delivered by Mr J. Aitken, B, A., at Geraldine, on Thursday evening last, in aid of the funds of toe Geraldine Literary Institute. The lecturer commenced by saying that a housewife, an engineer, a physician, or a geologist would each have something interesting and profitable to say about water. In the animal economy the proportion of solid matter to water was about one to nine, so that the cremationist who kept the remains of his first wife in a vase on his bedroom mantelpiece had in reality only'out one-ninth of his former spouse, and when an unsuspecting friend made use of a portion of the vase's contents as tooth powder this proportion must have been considerably reduced. One very important use for such a large quantity of water in the human system was to keep it cool and at a constant temperature. No beverage had ever yet been found to supersede water as a beverage for palates that had not been vitiated by acquired tastes. Some substances such as sulphur, arsenic, phosphorus, iron, gold, and between 60 and 70 others had resisted all attempts to split them up into anything but smaller pieces of the same material, and were called by scientists elements. Others, such as water and oils split up into material more or less unlike themselves, and were called compounds. Water could be easily made to split into two, and only two, substances, both of which were totally unlike itself. By a special instrument called; the voltameter water could readily be made to split up into its two constituents,and moreover the proportions in which they were combined were also made plain. The lecturer, who had a voltameter on the platform, showed the result of the machine at work ; he also showed the intense affinity of metal sodium for water, a piece of which was ignited and" burned brilliantly by the application of a drop of water. The two constituents of water were hydrogen and nxygen. The former had the power of relighting a stick of wood which, had been lighted and blown out and then introduced to a bottle of oxygen which the lecturer prepared before the audience, sulphur and phosphorus also burned brilliantly when placed in the bottle. Oxygen on the other hand extinguished the stick. Sulphur and phosphorus'burnt with a blue flame when a light was applied to it. The former, it was explained, enabled fires to exist, the latter could be burned. This was the only known instance when the combination of two elementary gases produced a liquid, and without this very liquid life on this planet and probably on any other would be impossible. The atheist designated it a mere chance, but it was a very lucky chance for the inhabitants of the world, and he (the lecturer) would say that if anyone with an honest mind enquired into the economy of Nature he would find so many of these lucky chances that ho would be tain to take refuge in the existence of a personal Deity, and thinking a thoughtful and loving God as mors easy of belief than the work of chance, or what the apostles of Agnosticism have called the fortuitous concourse of atoms. He could, bo continued, name a dozen of these so-called chances, but only instanced the humble bee having had to be imported into this country ia order to make the cultivation of red clover seed a possibility. The bee was as essential an eiement in fertilising many flowers as the pollen it unconsciously carried from flower to flower. The spinning of the earth before the sun in a similar manner to which a cook would spin a joint of meat before a tire so that all sides got an equal share of heat was another great evidence of design. Speaking of the physical agency of his subject the lecturer said water had effected great changes upon the land surface of the globe. It existed in nature in three separate forms—-ice, water, and steam. The enormous expansion of water when converted into steam—l7oG times its former buk, hence the marvellous power of the steam engine—woe dealt with, ns was also. The ‘formation from the water evaporated from the ocean. The coastaut wearing away of the land by means of water was alto pointed 'out, and the lecturer slated that there was not a solid foot of land which did not bear ayidenco of having been at one time submerged by water. No substance had such a small range between its freez’ng and boiling point as water. Water frtza at zero, or nothing, and boiled at 100 degrees centigrade. An interesting experiment was given showing that water boiled at a much less temperature when the pressure of the air was decreased. The action ©f ice in the economy of nature w«s also explained. Geologists believed that most of the valleys in the world have been hollowed out by the grinding action of ice’. The habit of water in decreasing in bulk while cooling. and then increasing again wbi e freezing was pointed out. Ice thus becomes lighter than water, which was highly important, as it thereby floated; otherwise in those seas and lakes which get frozen over it would sink to the bottom, and thus they would in time be tun ed to one solid bed of ice which it would be impossible for the eun ever to melt. Here was another proof of the existence and wisdom of an over-ruling Providence, Mr A'tken went on to still further explain the action of ice and water on the earth’s surface. The 1 ecture throughout was profusely interspersed with experiments, and was, as said before, of a highly interesting and instructive nature.