SCIENCE SIFTINGS

New Zealand Tablet, 5 June 1919, Page 46

SCIENCE SIFTINGS

By “Volt.”

Are You a Barometer? Undoubtedly there is a great relation between the elements and certain complaints, in the same way that some seasons of the year render certain people liable to illness more than others. The lower we investigate in ’the animal world the more prone are its subjects to be affected , by the weather. A cat for as much as three days beforehand feels a coming storm; a horse's fine nostrils can sniff approaching rain in an uncanny manner. The birds of the air have but to be watched to see the way in which they seek their nests at a hint of danger in the air. The very trees and plants tremble in a peculiar manner before a severe storm. Many human- beings are just as sensitive to the march of the elements, but do not always realise the significance of their sensitiveness. People who suffer from gout, rheumatism, or neuralgia know at once when bad weather is approaching. Old wounds make themselves felt at certain times, and the stumps of members long since amputated give pain. b Medical men have never satisfactorily explained these strange phenomena, neither can they tell why some people instinctively become restless and excited, or moody and sullen, before a thunderstorm. King Platinum. Nobody with metallurgical knowledge has any doubt about it. Platinum is the King of Metals, and likely to remain so. Had they been acquainted with oro bianco—white gold—as the natives of Colombia originally called it, the old-time alchemists, who wasted valuable years and tons of charcoal in vain endeavors to transmute base metals into gold, must promptly have devoted their crucibles, their alembics, and their alembroth to its service. Not that the last, a concoction M mercury and ammonia, or any oflier tools of their mysterious craft, would have greatly affected platinum, lor it is pretty certain that if the ancient transmitters had been familiar with the metal, which is not very likely, it would not have been amenable to any heat in their power to generate. Its transmutation into gold, or the present equivalent, however, is the simplest thin» in the world. Old arithmetic books call the process exchange and barter. Five times the value of gold, or thereabouts, is the present market price, and “first catch your platinum” the only essential preliminary to a swift and satisfactory exchange transaction. A writer, advocating the disuse of gold for currency, recently suggested that platinum might take its place, dethrone the yellow metal, and usurp the most important of its functions. But as the maximum annual production of the world during the last decade has not exceeded 300,000 troy ounces, the supply would only suffice for a yearly distribution in metal coinage of oner quarter of an ounce of platinum amongst every 1000 people in Europe, all the rest of the world having to do without. In Russia, the chief source of supply, platinum has already been used for currency purposes, but was' discontinued for various reasons, one being that it was easy to counterfeit, and another that it became too costly.