Science Notes.

Freethought Review, Volume I, Issue 1, 1 October 1883, Page 11

Science Notes.

Professor Huxley has been eledted President of the Royal Society in place of the late Mr. Spottiswoode.

Several interesting additions have been made to the Assyrian collections of the British Museum, including some curious early Babylonian contract tablets, dating from b.c. 2700. They are from the mounds of Tel Sifr, in Southern Babylonia, and each tablet is in duplicate. One is smaller than the other, and contains within it a bull’s head about gin in length and depth and ein wide, carved and chased with great skill and finish out of some hard white wood resembling ivory, which suggests a comparison with that found at Mycenae by Dr. Schliemann.

By the evaporation of ethylene in vacuo, Messrs. Wroblewski and Olszewski have obtained very low temperatures —as low as 136 below the centigrade zero, or 213 below Fahrenheit’s zero. By this means they succeeded in freezing absolute alcohol at—130.5 C,, equivalent t 0—203 F. It forms a white solid after passing through a viscous state at —129 C. Its solidification thus resembles oils and fats. They also easily obtained liquid oxygen and nitrogen, both of them being colorless and transparent. It will not be long before these difficult operations are brought within the pale of leCture experiments.

Dr. G. Decaisne has submitted to the Society of Public Medicine the results of some interesting observations concerning the effedts due to the use of tobacco among boys. Thirty-eight youths were placed in his charge, whose ages varied from 9 to 15, and who were in the habit of smoking, though the abuse of tobacco varied in each case. The effedts, of course, varied, but were very emphatic with twenty-seven out of the thirtyseven boys. With twenty-two patients there was a distindt disturbance of the circulation, bruit at the carotids, palpitation of the heart, deficiencies of digestion, sluggishness of the intelledt, and a craving, more or less pronounced, for alcoholic stimulants. In thirteen instances there was an intermittent pulse. Analysis of the blood showed in eight cases a notable falling off in the normal number of red corpuscles. Twelve boys suffered frequently from bleeding of the nose. Ten complained of agitated sleep and constant nightmare. Four boys had ulcerated mouths, and one of the children became the vidtim of pulmonary phthisis—a fadl which Dr. Decaisne attributed to the great deterioration of the blood, produced by prolonged and excessive use of tobacco. Treatment with iron and quinine give no satisfactory result, and it seems tolerably evident that the most effective, if not the only cure, is to at once forswear the habit, which to children in any case is undoubtedly pernicious.—Lancet.

L’Astronomic says:—On a beautiful summer’s night, August, 22nd, 1704, Jerome and Lefrancais de Lalande noticed a star in Aquarius, which they estimated of the 71 magnitude. Six years later they thought it of the 8 magnitude. In appearance it resembles a star which is not exactly in the focus of the telescope. Herschel had observed it in September, 1782, and recorded it as an admirable planetary nebula, very brilliant, small, and elliptical. Lord Rosse and Lassell perceived that it was surrounded by a ring, which gives it somewhat the appearance of Saturn. The spedlroscopic observations of Huggins indicate that it is a gaseous mass, in which nitrogen and hydrogen predominate. Most of the other planetary and annular nebulae give similar results. In 1871 and 1872 Brunnow, the Irish Astronomer-Royal, measured its parallax and concluded that its distance is more than 404,000 times as great as that of the sun, and its diameter is probably greater than that of the entire solar system. This would make its volume more than 338,896,800,000,000,000 times as great as that of the earth. We have thus before our eyes a new system, which is probably undergoing the process of condensation through which our sun and its attendant planets passed hundreds of millions of years ago.