Various
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1899
Forest Planting on the Plains.– Mr. Charles A. Keffer, in a report to the Forestry Division on Experimental Tree Planting in the Plains, defines the forestless region of America as including all the States between the Mississippi River north of the Ozark Mountains and eastern Texas and the Rocky Mountains, together with the plateau west of the Rocky Mountains. The possibilities of forest growth in this vast area are yet to be proved. Roughly speaking, any species that thrive in the adjacent wooded region can be grown in Iowa, the Red River Valley of Minnesota and North Dakota, the Sioux Valley of South Dakota and the eastern counties of Nebraska, and in the more southern States. We know that difficulties of cultivation increase as one goes westward, but we can not say where the western limit of successful tree culture is. We can not even define the limits of successful agriculture in the plains, for with increased facilities for irrigation splendid crops are now produced where only a few years ago it was thought desert conditions would forever prevail. It is admitted that forest planting, as a financial investment, will probably be profitable on the plains only in a limited degree. Favorable sites may enable the profitable raising of fence posts and other specialized tree crops, but the growing of timber on a commercial scale can hardly be expected.
A Siamese Geological Theory.– The east coast of Siam as far south as Champawn is characterized by wide bays, with detached masses of limestone set on steep-sided islands or high-peaked promontories with serrated ridges, the most conspicuous of which is Sam Roi Yawt, or the three hundred peaks. The relations of these various rock masses to one another, Mr. H. Warington Smyth observed, in an address to the Royal Geographical Society, have been long ago lucidly set forth by Siamese geologists, who are unanimously agreed on the subject. "It appears that one Mong Lai and his wife once inhabited the neighborhood (they were giants), and each promised their daughter in marriage, unknown to the other, to a different suitor. At last the day of the nuptials arrived, and Chao Lai and the Lord of Mieang Chin (China) both arrived to claim the bride. When the horrified father found how matters stood – having a regard for the value of a promise, which is not too common in the East – he cut his daughter in half, so that neither suitor should be disappointed. Chao Lai, in the meantime, on finding that he had a rival, committed suicide, and the peak of Chaolai is the remains of his body. The unfortunate bride is to be found in the islands off Sam Roi Yawt, the peaks of which are the remains of the gifts which were to be made to the holy man who was to solemnize the wedding; while Kaw Chang and Kaw King, on the east side of the gulf, are the elephant and buffalo cart in which the presents were brought."
"The Hell of War."– The Cost of a National Crime and The Hell of War and its Penalties are the appropriate names which Edward Atkinson has given to two essays bearing upon the craze for expansion in which the nation has been abruptly plunged. In them an evil which has not yet received due attention, if any, is presented as sure to be inflicted upon us if the policy of militarism is persisted in. "How much increase of taxation," Mr. Atkinson asks, "are you willing to bear, and how many of your neighbors' sons are you ready to sacrifice by fever, malaria, and venereal disease, in order to extend the sovereignty of the United States over the West Indies and the Philippine Islands?" Another question is put to the missionary enthusiasts: "It may be well to ask all who are imbued with this missionary sympathy, How many young men of your own brotherhood are you willing to sacrifice for each convert? How many of your own sons will you expose to sure infection and degeneration in the conduct of your philanthropic purpose? Or will you satisfy your own conscience by consenting to the necessary conscription of other people's sons when it presently becomes impossible to maintain our armed forces in those islands without a draft?" Mr. Atkinson says that his attention has been called to this phase of the evil attendant upon military occupation in the course of his social studies. "The greatest and most unavoidable danger," he writes to the commander in chief of our armies, "to which these forces will be exposed will be neither fevers nor malaria; it will be venereal diseases in their worst and most malignant form."
MINOR PARAGRAPHS
A new and very ingenious method of space telegraphy is discussed at length in an article by Karl Zickler in the Elektrotechnische Zeitschrift. It depends on a phenomenon discovered by Hertz in 1887, viz., the influence of certain short wave-length light rays upon electrical discharges. The ultra-violet waves, which are obstructed by glass but transmitted by quartz, are the most effective. The source of light is an arc lamp. The light is passed through a lens of rock crystal to the receiver. The receiver is a glass vessel partially exhausted of air, one end of which consists of a truly parallel plate of rock crystal. In front of the receiver there is a condensing lens of rock crystal, and within the exhausted chamber are the two electrodes, one of which is an inclined disk and the other a small ball. The electrodes are connected with the secondary portion of an induction coil, and when the ultra-violet rays fall upon the inclined disk and are reflected to the ball, a discharge will be produced which may be read either with a telephone or a coherer. The signals are sent by alternately interposing a plate of glass in front of the rays issuing from the transmitter and removing it therefrom. Herr Zickler has made many experiments to verify his conclusions and appears to have demonstrated the feasibility of his idea in practice.
Mr. Dawson Williams has announced in Nature the discovery in many susceptible persons of a periodicity in the effects that follow a sting. The immediate result, he says, is a small flattened wheal, pale and surrounded by a zone of pink injection. This is attended by itching, but both wheal and itching are gone in less than an hour. About twenty-four hours later the part begins to itch again, and in a few minutes a hard, rounded, deep-red papule appears, and is quickly surrounded by an area of œdematous skin. The formication is intense, and in the affected area, while the ordinary sensations of touch are dulled, those of temperature and painful feelings are exaggerated. In two or three hours the itching diminishes and the œdema disappears, leaving a small, red papule, which itches but little. The phenomena recur, with diminished intensity, in the course of another twenty-four hours, and may return in this way, growing fainter all the time, in four or five daily repetitions. After these returns have ceased, a small, indolent papule may persist for weeks or months. This periodicity is not observed in all subjects, but most generally in those who suffer most.
Among the advantages of Linde's liquid-air process, Prof. J. A. Ewing, speaking at the English Society of Arts, claimed its giving a means of separating more or less completely the oxygen of the atmosphere from its associated nitrogen. After describing a process by which a liquid consisting largely of oxygen may be produced, the author said that the most interesting application of the liquid which had hitherto been tried on a commercial scale was to make an explosive by mixing it with carbon. When liquid air, enriched by the evaporation of a large part of the nitrogen, was mixed with powdered charcoal, it formed an explosive comparable in power to dynamite, and which, like dynamite, could be made to go off violently by using a detonator. The chief advantage of the explosive was its cheapness, the cost being only that of liquefying the air. Even the fact that after a short time the mixture ceased to be capable of exploding might be urged as a recommendation, for if a detonator hung fire, there was no danger of the charge going off accidentally some time after the explosion was due, nor was there any risk of its being purloined or used for criminal purposes.
NOTES
According to the Tribune de Genève, twenty new hotels were opened in Switzerland in 1897, and twenty-five were enlarged, adding two thousand beds and making the whole number of beds about ninety thousand. The number of nights' lodgings furnished during the season is estimated at ten million. Supposing each guest to spend twelve francs a day, the total revenue from tourists would amount to one hundred and twenty million francs, or twenty four million dollars. Classifying the guests according to nationality, it is estimated that the Swiss constitute eighteen per cent of the whole, Germans thirty-four per cent, English sixteen per cent, French twelve per cent, Americans eight per cent, and those of other nations twelve per cent.
A list of women astronomers, compiled by Herman S. Davis from Ribiere's Les Femmes dans la Science, contains as contemporary workers in the science the names of seventeen American women who have taken part in astronomical computations or are teachers of astronomy, and twelve who are working in the application of photography to astronomy. Of the women in the later list, Miss Ida C. Martin, Miss Dr. Dorothea Klumpke (now in the Paris Observatory), and Mrs. M. P. Fleming have attained distinction for successful original researches.
The object of the Pure Food and Drug Congress, which met in Washington in March, 1898, with Joseph E. Blackburn, of Columbus, Ohio, as president, is declared in its resolutions to be to secure suitable national legislation to prevent the adulteration of food, drink, and drugs, to secure the enforcement of laws, and secure and promote uniformity of State legislation looking to that end; to create and maintain a high public sentiment on these subjects, to sustain public officers enforcing the laws respecting them; and to promote a more general intelligence concerning the injury to health and business interests resulting from food adulteration. In this work all are invited to join. The congress was in session four days, and several important papers were read to it.
The large Atlantic coastal plain beginning with southern New Jersey, Mr. John Gifford affirms, in The Forester, would soon be capable, if protected from reckless devastation, of producing almost limitless quantities of the valuable smooth-bark or short leaf pine. In Northampton and Accomac Counties, Virginia, lying in this plain, the forests are already properly cared for and propagated without the aid of forest laws. This is done by insuring their freedom from fire, which is attended to purely as a matter of present economy. The value of the woods in holding the loose sandy soil and as windbreaks is recognized, and the litter of the pine trees is a precious dressing for the sweet potato fields. This litter, of pine "chats," "needles," or "browse," is carefully raked off every year and spread on the fields, and there is nothing left in which fire can start.
The Lalande prize of the French Academy of Sciences has been conferred upon Prof. S. C. Chandler, of Cambridge, Mass., in recognition of "the splendor, the importance, and the variety" of his astronomical work; the Damoiseau prize upon Dr. George William Hill, of Washington, for his researches in mathematics and astronomy; and the Henry Wilde prize on Dr. Charles A. Schott, of Washington, for his researches in terrestrial magnetism.
Prof. J. Mark Baldwin, of Princeton, author of the books The Development of the Child and the Race, Handbook of Psychology, and The Story of the Mind, has been elected a member of the French Institute of Sociology.
Among the recent deaths of men associated with scientific pursuits we notice those of Charles Michel Brisse, professor at the Lycée Condorcet for twenty-five years, and professor at other French schools, author of papers on the displacement of figures and on the general theory of surfaces, and of other works in mathematics and mathematical physics, and a co-worker on the Journal de Physique, in his fifty-sixth year; Prof. H. Alleyn Nicholson, of the University of Aberdeen, author of books on zoölogy and geology; M. F. Gay, of the University of Montpellier, a student of the green algæ, aged forty years; Dr. Dumontpallier, of Paris, author of contributions to the pathology of the nervous system, aged seventy-four years; Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Pringle, of the British Army, author of papers on the hygiene and diseases of India; Pastor Christian Kaurin, of Norway, a student of Scandinavian mosses, aged sixty-six years; T. Carnel, professor of botany and director of the Botanic Garden, Florence; the Rev. Bartholomew Price, author of several elaborate works in mathematics, and secretary of the Oxford University Press, in his eighty-first year; Dr. Constantine Vousakis, professor of physiology in the University of Athens; William Dames, professor of geology and paleontology in the University of Berlin, and subeditor of the Paläontologische Abhandlungen, in his fifty-second year; and Dr. Gottlieb Gluge, emeritus professor of physiology and anatomy in the University of Berlin and author of an atlas of pathological anatomy, aged eighty-six years.