Science Siftings

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 23, 11 June 1908, Page 35

Science Siftings

By VOLT

Cold" Ten Miles Up.

A balloon was * sent up from Berlin in 1895 equipped with self-registering thermometers- and barometers. It came down in Bosnia, with the instruments in good condition. The barometer registered an elevation of 53,872 feet and the thermometer a temperature of 52 degrees below zero F. ■ The Great Salt Lake Bridge. The longest bridge in the world stretches across Great Salt Lake. It was constructed at an enormous cost to save time and money. , Before the bridge was built the railroad skirted the north end of the lake. Now it cuts oft forty-three miles of road and runs directly from Ogden to Lucin. The cost of this markable bridge was £1,000,000. The piles jfrere brought from the Oregon and Texas forests. By placing all the piles together they would measure' nearly # 600,000 feet. There are more than eleven miles of permanent trestling, nearly the entire length being under water, which is from thirty to thirty-four feet deep. Fireproof Wood. Though there are a number of different kinds of wood, ebony, ironwood, etc., of such close, hard fibre that even the fiercest fire has difficulty in ' getting hold ' of it, there is .only one sort, so far as now known, that is practically fireproof. This is a' small, scraggy tree, a native of South Africa, called the shopala, with thick, tough, stringy bark full of a sort of fire-resisting sap. This curious shrub grows largely on the great, grassy savannas, which are swept by fire almost every year during the heat of the summer. There it thrives splendidly, for the annual scourge only kills off its bigger and hardier competitors and leaves the ground free for the growth of this vegetable asbestos. Snakes. • Prof. H. A. Surface, State zoologist of -Pennsylvania, is showing that the hatred and prejudice still almost universally exhibited against the snake family is unjust both to the serpents and to ourselves. After collecting, watching, dissecting, and photographing many hundreds of snakes of all kinds, Prof. Surface disposes of a number of popular fallacies as to their habits and appearance. Snakes do not and can not draw milk from cows. They do not strike from a regular coil, but keep the forepart of the body free and the after part only coiled. No snake strikes from a straight position and none springs from the ground clear. None is able to spit poison. The story of the hoop snake with its tail in its mouth rolling downhill is a myth. Snakes are not ' slimy,' as commonly supposed, their bodies being covered with dry scales. Belief in the medicinal qualities of parts of snakes is mere superstition, and it is nonsense to say that a second bite of a snake in the same place will effect a cure. Book Plates. It was within half a century from the invention of printing that book plates were introduced as identifying marks to indicate the ownership of the volume. Germany, the fatherland of printing from movable type and wood-cutting for making impressions in ink on paper, is likewise the. homeland of the book plate. The earliest dated wood cut of accepted authenticity is the well-known ' St. Christopher of 1423,' which was discovered in the Carthusian Monastery of Buxheim in Suabia. It was to secure, the right oj ownership in a book that the owner had it marked with the coat-of-arms of the family or some other heraldic device. Libraries were kept intact and passed from generation to generation, bearing the emblem of- the family. The first book plate in France is dated 1574 ; in Sweden, 1575 ; Switzerland-; 1607, and Italy, 1623. JThe earliest English book plate is found in a folio volume, once the property "of Cardinal Wolsey and afterwards belonging to his royal master. The earliest mention of the book plate in English literature is by Pepys, July 16, 1688.