Science Notes.

Freethought Review, Volume I, Issue 7, 1 April 1884, Page 7

Science Notes.

An American Doctor recently made the experiment of administering chloroform to a sleeping child whilst he extracted a piece of broken glass from its hand. So successful was the experiment that it is likely to become popular in cases of small children, thus preventing undue excitement. Professor Flower, in one of his lectures at the Royal Institution, brought before the popular mind the conclusion at which the scientific has arrived, that the whale is but a water ungulate, or hoofed animal, gradually adapted to aquatic life. The hippopotamus seems to represent the intermediate form. — Dr. Aveling. Both Langley and Edison have devised heat measures so delicate, that a change of temperature quite unnoticed by the ordinary thermometer, or far more delicate thermo-pile, is readily recorded. It has been suggested to utilise the principle, by placing a proper apparatus at the ship’s head, so that any sudden reduction of temperature indicating the near approach of an iceberg, should give out an automatic sound warning,’ or in some other way announce danger. We are penetrating very deeply now-a-days into the heart of things. We are solving even such problems as the size of atoms, only a few years back called immeasurably small. Sir William Thomson has shown that the atoms of the air are at least as much as ibuo’oooo of a centimetre (about 000000 inch) in diameter, and that in any liquid, transparent solid, or seemingly opaque solid, the mean distance between the centres of contiguous molecules is less than the 5 uii o u u o’ and greater than the Tooo 60000 of a centimetre. — Dr. Aveling. The necessity of pure water for cattle has been much discussed of late years. A well-known microscopist after examining some farm yards reeking with filth, the liquid portion of which drained into some adjacent ponds, says : —“ I examined numerous specimens of the water of the farms, and also the milk of the cows, and almost invariably discovered in both the same species of bacteria.” He goes on to say, that the wife of a farm labourer, suffering from a low form of fever, was giving her child its natural nourishment, which under the microscope also shewed the same species of baCteria. A great many attempts have been made at different times, to utilise the sun’s rays for the production of heat. Professor E. S. Morse of Massachusetts has devised a means of warming and ventilating by means of the solar rays ; it consists of a surface of slates, painted black (so as to absorb as much heat as possible) fixed in a frame ; —this frame is placed vertically against the wall ; and in connection with it are flues to carry the heated air to the interior of the building operated upon. It is stated that a frame. 8 feet by 3 feet is found sufficient to warm a room 20 feet long, except on dull days ; and that under favourable circumstances it creates a rise of about 30 degrees during four or five hours of the most sunshining portion of the day. Everyone talks now-a-days of ether. But not everyone has a clear conception of its nature and functions. Dr. Oliver Lodge, in his leCture on ether given at the London Institute, did good work. He taught the many therein that which the philosophic few have for some time past held —viz., that the simplest conception of the material universe which has yet occurred to man is of one universal substance, perfectly homogeneous and continuous and simple in structure, extending to the furthest limits of space of which we have any knowledge, existing equally everywhere. The whirling portions constitute what we call matter ; their motion gives them rigidity, and of them our bodies and all other material bodies with which we are acquainted are built up. One continuous substance filling all space ; which can vibrate as light ; which can be sheared into positive and negative electricity ; which in whirls constitutes matter ; and which transmits by continuity, and not by impaCt, every aCtion and reaction of which matter is capable. This is the modern view of the ether and its functions. — Dr. Aveling in ‘ National Reformer.’