FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



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ties." The experiments should therefore be 

 continued. 



" The Venerable Bede's " Chair.— In an 



article in a recent issue of Architecture and 

 Building, on Ancient and Modern Furniture, 

 by F. T. Hodgson, the following interesting 

 account of the chair of " the Venerable 

 Bede " occurs : " Perhaps the best-known 

 relic, so far as furniture is concerned of this 

 early period, is the chair of ' the Venerable 

 Bede,' which is still preserved in the vestry 

 of Jassova Church, Northumberland, Eng- 

 land. This chair is distinctively an eccle- 

 siastical one — a throne, in fact, of some dig- 

 nity. It is made of oak and is four feet ten 

 inches high. There are many engravings of 

 it, but I reproduce from one of the best. 

 The chair is now well on to twelve hundred 

 years old, and if cared for as it ought to be 

 is good for several hundred years more. 

 There is a popular tradition concerning this 

 chair that is worthy of notice It is said 

 that to this ancient relic all the brides repair 

 as soon as the marriage service is over, in 

 order that they may seat themselves in it. 

 This, according to the popular belief, will 

 make them joyful mothers of children ; and 

 to omit this custom the expectant mothers 

 would not consider the marriage ceremony 

 complete, and in default thereof of being en- 

 throned in ' the Venerable Bede's chair ' 

 barrenness and misery would surely follow. 

 Like all other relics of the sort, it is subject 

 to attacks of the sacrilegious penknives, to- 

 gether with the wanton depredations of relic 

 hunters, and has been so shorn of its fair 

 proportions that very soon there will be lit- 

 tle of it left but its attenuated form if stricter 

 watch is not kept over it." 



The Physics of Smell.— The principal 

 subject of Prof. W. E. Ayrton's vice-presi- 

 dential address on physics at the British 

 Association was the physics of smell, which 

 was presented as a subject that had been 

 but little studied. In testing the generally 

 accepted idea that metals have smell, based 

 on the fact that a smell is perceived with 

 most of the commercial metals when han- 

 dled, the author had observed that when 

 these metals were cleaned or made outward- 

 ly pure the smell disappeared. Yet it is 

 shown that these metals acquire smells when 



they are handled or abraded by friction, 

 which are characteristic and serve to dis- 

 tinguish them. This may be ascribed to 

 chemical action, but not all chemical action 

 in which metals may take part produces 

 smell ; for when they are rubbed with soda 

 or with sugar no smell but that of soda or of 

 sugar is perceived ; nor is the metallic smell 

 observed when dilute nitric acid is rubbed 

 on certain metals, though the chemical 

 action is very marked with some. But 

 mere breathing on certain metals, even 

 when they have been rendered practically 

 odorless by cleaning, produces a very distinct 

 smell, as also does touching them with the 

 tongue. These smells have hitherto been 

 attributed to the metals themselves, but 

 Professor Ayrton looks for their source in 

 the evolution of hydrogen, which carries 

 with it impurities, hydrocarbons, especially 

 paraffin, and " it is probable that no metallic 

 particles, even in the form of vapor, reach 

 the nose or even leave the metal. While 

 smells usually appear to be diffused with 

 great velocity, experiments prove that when 

 the space through which they have to pass 

 is free from draughts their progress is very 

 slow, and it would therefore appear that the 

 passage of a smell is far more due to the 

 actual motion of the air containing it than 

 to the diffusion of the odoriferous sub- 

 stance through the air." The power of a 

 smell to cling to a substance does not appear 

 to depend on its intensity or on the ease 

 with which it travels through a closed 

 space. Experiments to determine whether 

 smells could pass through glass by transpi- 

 ration either revealed flaws in the glass or 

 ended in the breaking of the very thin bulbs 

 and gave no answer. 



The Cordillera Region of Canada. — A 



length of nearly thirteen hundred miles of 

 the great mountainous or Cordillera region of 

 the Pacific coast is included in the western 

 part of Canada. Most of this, Mr. George 

 M. Dawson says, in a paper on the Physical 

 Geography and Geology of Canada, is em- 

 braced in the province of British Columbia, 

 where it is about four hundred miles wide 

 between the Great Plains and the Pacific 

 Ocean. To the north it is included in the 

 Yukon district of the Northwest Territory 

 till it reaches, in a less elevated and more 



