Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, to be devoted to the consideration
of subjects bearing upon the mechanic arts and the engineering
problems connected therewith. The growth of the various departments of
this institution--which has been fitly termed a "democratic learned
society," from the close affiliation in it of the men of the
professions and the men of the workshops--by natural accretion, and
the steadily growing demands for the extension of its educational work
during the past decade, have increased the costs for maintenance and
administration and have been the cause of a deficit in nearly every
year. A movement is now on foot, approved by the board of managers,
and directed by a special committee, to secure for it an endowment,
toward which a number of subscriptions ranging from two hundred and
fifty to twenty-five hundred dollars have already been received.
The earthquake which took place in Assam, June 12, 1897, was described
by Mr. R. D. Oldham in the British Association as having been the most
violent of which there is any record. The shock was sensible over an
area of 1,750,000 square miles, and if it had occurred in England, not
a house would have been left standing between Manchester and London.
Landslips on an unprecedented scale were produced, a number of lakes
were formed, and mountain peaks were moved vertically and
horizontally. Monuments of solid stone and forest trees were broken
across. Bridges were overthrown, displaced, and in some places thrust
bodily up to a height of about twenty feet, and the rails on the
railroads were twisted and bent. Earth fissures were formed over an
area larger than the United Kingdom, and sand rents, from which sand
and water were forced in solid streams to a height of three or four
feet above the ground, were opened "in incalculable numbers." The loss
of life was comparatively small, as the earthquake occurred about five
o'clock in the afternoon, and the damage done was reduced by the fact
that there were no large cities within the area of greatest violence;
but in extent and capacity of destruction, as distinguished from
destruction actually accomplished, this earthquake surpassed any of
which there was historical mention, not even excepting the great
earthquake of Lisbon in 1755.
The first section of the electric railway up the Jungfrau, which is
intended to reach the top of the mountain, was opened about the first
of October, 1898. The line starts from the Little Scheidegg station of
the existing Wengern Alp Railway, 6,770 feet above the sea, and
ascends the mountain masses from the north side, passing the Eiger
Glacier, Eiger Wand, Eismeer, and Jungfraujoch stations, to Lift,
13,430 feet, whence the ascent is completed by elevator to the summit,
13,670 feet. The road starts on a gradient of ten per cent, which is
increased to twenty per cent about halfway to the Eiger Glacier
station, and to twenty-five per cent, the steepest, after passing that
station. There are about 85 yards in tunnel on the section now opened,
but beyond the Eiger Glacier the road will not touch the surface
except at the stations. About 250 yards of the long tunnel have been
excavated so far. The stations beyond Eiger Wand will be built within
the rock, and will be furnished with restaurants and beds. At the
Eiger Wand and Eismeer stations passengers will contemplate the view
through windows or balconies from the inside; but at the Jungfraujoch
station tourists will be able to go out and take sledges for the great
Aletsch Glacier. The cars will accommodate forty passengers each, and
the company expects to complete the railroad by 1904.
Alexander A. Lawes, civil engineer, of Sydney, Australia, suggests a
plan of mechanical flight on beating wings as presenting advantages
that transcend all other schemes. He believes that the amount of power
required to operate wings and the difficulty in applying it are
exaggerated beyond all measure. The wings or sustainers of the bird in
flight, he urges, are held in the outstretched position without any
exertion on its part; and many birds, like the albatross, sustain
themselves for days at a stretch. "This constitutes its aërial
support, and is analogous to the support derived by other animals from
land and water." The sole work done by the bird is propulsion and
elevation by the beating action of the wings. Mr. Adams's machine,
which he does not say he has tried, is built in conformity to this
principle, and its sails are modeled as nearly as possible in form and
as to action with those of the bird. The aid of an air cylinder is
further called in, through which a pressure is exerted balancing the
wings. The wings are moved by treadles, and the author's picture of
the aëronaut looks like a man riding an aërial bicycle.
Carborundum, a substance highly extolled by its manufacturers
as an abrasive, is composed of carbon and silicon in atomic
proportions--thirty parts by weight of carbon and seventy of silicon.
It is represented as being next to the diamond in hardness and as
cutting emery and corundum with ease, but as not as tough as the
diamond. It is a little more than one and a fifth times the weight of
sand, is infusible at the highest attainable heat, but is decomposed
in the electric arc, and is insoluble in any of the ordinary solvents,
water, oils, and acids, even hydrofluoric acid having no effect upon
it. Pure carborundum is white. In the commercial manufacture the
crystals are produced in many colors and shades, partly as the result
of impurities and partly by surface oxidation. The prevailing colors
are green, black, and blue. The color has no effect upon the hardness.
Crude carborundum, as taken from the furnace, usually consists of
large masses or aggregations of crystals, which are frequently very
beautifully colored and of adamantine luster.
A peculiarity of Old English literary usage is pointed out by Prof.
Dr. L. Kellner, of Vienna, as illustrated in a sentence like "the mob
is ignorant, and they are often cruel." This is considered a bad
solecism in modern English, but in Old and Middle English
constructions of exactly the same kind are so often met with that it
is impossible to account for them as slips and mistakes. They may be
brought under several heads, as, Number (the same collective noun used
as a singular and a plural); Case (the same verb or adjective
governing the genitive and accusative, the genitive and dative, or the
dative and accusative); Pronoun ("thou" and "ye" used in addressing
the same person); Tense (past and perfect, or past and historical
present used in the same breath); Mood (indicative and subjunctive
used in the same clause). Finite verb and infinitive dependent on the
same verb; simple and prepositional infinitives dependent on the same
verb; infinitive and verbal noun used side by side; different
prepositions dependent on the same verb, like Caxton's "He was eaten
by bears and of lions"; direct and indirect speech alternating in the
same clause. These facts, which are met with as late as 1611 (Bible,
authorized version), point to the conclusion that what to us appears
as a grammatical inconsistency was once considered a welcome break in
the monotony of construction.
Mr. Fischer Sigwart is quoted in the _Revue Scientifique_ as having
studied the life of frogs for thirty years, and found that they are
night wanderers, keeping comparatively quiet during the day and
seeking their prey after dark. In the fall they leave their hunting
grounds in the fields and woods and take refuge near swamps and ponds,
passing the winter in the banks of rivers or the mud in the bottoms of
ponds, whence they come out in the spring, when the process of
reproduction begins. The frog is not sexually mature till it is four
or five years old. The coupling process lasts from three to thirty
days. Between its spring wakening and spawning the frog eats nothing
except, perhaps, its own skin, which it moults periodically. After
spawning, frogs leave the water and go to the fields and woods. They
can be fed, when kept captive, upon insects and earthworms.
NOTES.
A relation has been discovered by Professor Dolbear and Carl A. and
Edward A. Bessey between the chirping of crickets and the temperature,
the chirps increasing as frequently as the temperature rises. The
Besseys relate, in The American Naturalist, that when, one cool
evening, a cricket was caught and brought into a warm room, it began
in a few minutes to chirp nearly twice as rapidly as the out-of-door
crickets, and that its rate very nearly conformed to the observed rate
maintained other evenings out of doors under the same temperature
conditions.
C. Drieberg, of Colombo, Ceylon, records, in Nature, a rainfall at
Nedunkeni, in the northern province of Ceylon, December 15 and 16,
1897, of 31.76 inches in twenty-four hours. The highest previous
records, as cited by him, are at Joyeuse, France, 31.17 inches in
twenty-two hours; Genoa, 30 inches in twenty-six hours; on the hills
above Bombay, 24 inches in one night; and on the Khasia Hills, India,
30 inches in each of five successive days. The average annual rainfall
at Nedunkeni has been 64.70 inches, but in 1897 the total amount was
121.85 inches. The greatest annual rainfall is on the Khasia Hills,
India, with 600 inches. The wettest station in Ceylon is Padupola, in
the central province, with 230.85 inches as the mean of twenty-six
years, but in 1897 the amount was 243.07 inches.
The Korean postage stamps are printed in the United States. As
explained in the United States consular reports, they are of four
denominations, and all alike except in color and denomination. Of the
inscriptions, the characters on the top are ancient Chinese, and those
at the bottom, having the same meaning, are Korean; the characters on
the right are Korean and those on the left are Chinese, both giving
the denominations, with the English translation just below the center
of the stamp. The plum blossom in each corner is the royal flower of
the present Ye dynasty, which has been in existence more than five
hundred years, and the figures at the corners of the center piece
represent the four spirits that stand at the corners of the earth and
support it on their shoulders. The national emblem in the center is an
ancient Chinese phallic device.
A paragraph in _La Nature_ calls to mind that the year 1898 was the
"jubilee" of the sea serpent, the first mention of a sight of the
monster--whether fabulous or not is still undecided--having been made
by the captain and officers of the British ship Dædalus in 1848. They
said they saw it between the Cape of Good Hope and St. Helena, and
that it was about six hundred feet long. Since then views of sea
serpents have been reported nearly every year, but none has ever been
caught or seen so near or for so long a time as to be positively
identified. There are several creatures of the deep which, seen for an
instant, might be mistaken with the aid of an excited imagination for
a marine serpent; and it is not wholly impossible that some
descendants of the gigantic saurians of old may still be living in the
ocean undetected by science.
The results of a study of the winter food of the chickadee by Clarence
M. Weed, of the New Hampshire College Agricultural Experiment Station,
shows that more than half of it consists of insects, a very large
proportion of which are taken in the form of eggs. Vegetation of
various sorts made up a little less than a quarter of the food; but
two thirds of this consisted of buds and bud scales that were
accidentally introduced along with plant-lice eggs. These eggs made up
more than one fifth of the entire food, and formed the most remarkable
element of the bill of fare. The destruction of these eggs of plant
lice is probably the most important service which the chickadee
renders during its winter residence. Insect eggs of many other kinds
were found in the food, among them those of the tent caterpillar and
the fall cankerworm, and the larvæ of several kinds of moths,
including those of the common apple worm.
The Merchants' Association of San Francisco has been trying the
experiment of sprinkling a street with sea water, and finds that such
water binds the dirt together between the paving stones, so that when
it is dry no loose dust is formed to be raised by the wind; that sea
water does not dry so quickly as fresh water, so that it has been
claimed when salt water has been used that one load of it is equal to
three loads of fresh water. The salt water which is deposited on the
street absorbs moisture from the air during the night, whereby the
street is thoroughly moist during the early morning, and has the
appearance of having been freshly sprinkled.
The Tarahumare people, who live in the most inaccessible part of
northern Mexico, were described by Dr. Krauss in the British
Association as ignorant and primitive, and many still living in caves.
What villages they have are at altitudes of about eight thousand feet
above the sea level. They are a small and wiry people, with great
powers of endurance. Their only food is _pinoli_, or maize, parched
and ground. They have a peculiar drink, called _teshuin_, also
produced from maize and manufactured with considerable ceremony, which
tastes like a mixture of sour milk and turpentine. Their language is
limited to about three hundred words. Their imperfect knowledge of
numbers renders them unable to count beyond ten. Their religion seems
to be a distorted and imperfect conception of Christian traditions,
mixed with some of their own ideas and superstitions.
The directory of the School of Anthropology of Paris, which consists
chiefly of the professors in the institution, has chosen Dr. Capitan,
professor of pathological anthropology, to succeed M. Gabriel de
Mortillet, deceased, as professor of prehistoric anthropology. Dr.
Capitan's former chair is suppressed.
The highest cog-wheel railroad in Europe and probably in the world is
the one from Zermatt, Switzerland, to the summit of the Görner Grat,
upward of eleven thousand five hundred feet above the sea. It is
between five and six miles long, and rises nearly fifty-two hundred
feet, with a maximum grade of twenty per cent. There are two
intermediate stations, at the Riffel Alp and the Riffelberg, and the
ascent is made in ninety minutes. The height of this road will be
surpassed by that of the one now being erected up the Jungfrau.
Extraordinary advantages are claimed by Mrs. Theodore R. MacClure, of
the State Board of Health, for Michigan as a summer and health-resort
State. The State has more than sixteen hundred miles of lake line, the
greater part of which is or can be utilized for summer-resort
purposes; there are in its limits 5,173 inland lakes varying in size
and having a total area of 712,864 square acres of water. The many
rivers running through the State furnish on their banks delightful
places for camping and for recreation.
An action of bacteria on photographic plates was described by Prof. P.
P. Frankland at the last meeting of the British Association. Ordinary
bacterial cultures in gelatin and agar-agar are found to be capable of
affecting the photographic film even at a distance of half an inch,
while, when they are placed in contact with the film, definite
pictures of the bacterial growths can be obtained. The action does not
take place through glass, and therefore, as in the case of Dr. W. J.
Russell's observations with some other substances, it is considered
probably due to the evolution of volatile chemical materials which
react with the sensitive film. Many varieties of bacteria exert the
action, but to a different degree. Bacterial growths which are
luminous in the dark are much more active than the non-luminous
bacteria hitherto tried.
Telephonic communication, it is said, has been established between a
number of farms in Australia by means of wire fences. A correspondent
of the Australian Agriculturist from a station near Colmar represents
that it is easy to converse with a station eight miles distant by
means of instruments connected on the wire fences, and that the same
kind of communication has been established over a distance of eight
miles. Several stations are connected in this way.
We have to record the deaths of F. A. Obach, electrical engineer, at
Grätz, Austria, December 27th, aged forty-six years. He was author of
numerous papers on subjects of electrical science in English and
German publications, and of lectures on the chemistry of India rubber
and gutta percha; Dr. Reinhold Ehret, seismologist and author of books
on earthquakes and seismometers, who died from an Alpine accident in
the Susten Pass; Dr. Joseph Coats, professor of pathology at the
University of Glasgow, and author of a manual of pathology, a work on
tuberculosis, etc.; Thomas Hincks, F. R. S., author of books on marine
zoölogy, February 2d; Major J. Hotchkiss, president in 1895 of the
Geological Section of the American Association and author of papers on
economic geology and engineering; Wilbur Wilson Thoburn, professor of
biomechanics at Leland Stanford Junior University; Dr. Giuseppe
Gibelli, professor of botany in the University of Turin; Dr. G.
Wolffhüzel, professor of hygiene in the University of Göttingen; Dr.
Dareste de Chavannes, author of researches in animal teratology, and
formerly president of the French Society of Anthropology; Dr. Rupert
Böck, professor of mechanics in the Technical Institute of Vienna;
William Colenso, F. R. S., of New Zealand, naturalist and author of
investigations of Maori antiquities and myths; Dr. Lench, assistant in
the observatory at Zürich, Switzerland; Dr. Franz Lang, rector and
teacher of natural history in the cantonal schools of Soleure,
Switzerland, and one of the presidents of the Swiss Natural History
Society, aged seventy-eight years; Dr. William Rutherford, professor
of physiology in the University of Edinburgh, and author of several
books in that science, February 21st, in his sixtieth year; and Sir
Douglas Galton, president of the British Association in 1895 and an
authority and author on sanitation, March 10th, in his seventy seventh
year.
INDEX.
ARTICLES MARKED WITH AN ASTERISK ARE ILLUSTRATED.
Academy della Crusca, The. (Frag.), 572
Adulteration of Butter with Glucose. (Frag.), 570
Allen, Grant. The Season of the Year, 230
America, Middle. Was it Peopled from Asia? E. S. Morse, 1
Animals' Bites. (Frag.), 430
Anthropology. Decorated Skulls and the Power ascribed to them
(Frag.), 570
" Estrays from Civilization. (Frag.), 573
" Huichol Indians of Jalisco. (Frag.), 574
" Lessons of. (Table), 411
" Pre-Columbian Musical Instruments. E. S. Morse*, 712
" Superstitions, Aboriginal, about Bones. (Frag.), 572
" Superstition and Crime. E. P. Evans, 206
Archæology. Earliest Writing in France. G. de Mortillet, 546
" Lake Dwelling, A Neolithic, 856
" Stone Age in Egypt. J. de Morgan, 202
Architectural Forms in Nature. S. Dellenbaugh*, 63
Astronomical Photographs, A Library of. (Frag.), 717
Astronomy. Bombardment, The Great. C. F. Holder*, 506
Atkinson, E. Wheat-growing Capacity of the United States, 145
" " The Wheat Problem again, 759
Atlantic Slope, The. (Frag.), 858
Bactrian Camel for the Klondike. (Frag.), 136
Barr, M. W. Mental Defectives and the Social Welfare*, 746
Bede, Chair of the Venerable. (Frag.), 283
Bees, Burrowing, The Nests of. (Frag.), 860
Bering Sea Controversy and the Scientific Expert. G. A. Clark, 654
Biological Survey, The United States. (Frag.), 856
Blackford, Charles Minor, Jr. Soils and Fertilizers, 392
Blake, I. W. Our Florida Alligator*, 330
Bombardment, The Great. C. F. Holder*, 506