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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



would yield a light. Thus we shall be able 

 to fill our rooms with the potentiality of 

 light, and then, by the simple introduction 

 of vacuum-tubes, to obtain any quantity of 

 it. Those who want a daylight without heat 

 will be able to run a vacuum-tube round the 

 whole length of the cornice, and so obtain a 

 diffused illumination of almost any brilliancy. 

 The fact is noticed, in connection with the 

 experiments, that the lecturer stood in an 

 " electrostatic field " capable of illuminating 

 a lamp without wires, and felt nothing. 

 More, he held a vacuum-tube in one hand and 

 touched a " terminal " with the other, a pro- 

 cess which made him " the channel for a 

 current of something like fifty thousand 

 volts," and yet did not receive any injury. 



Venerable Trees. A very interesting 

 work is in course of publication by M. Ga- 

 deau de Kerville, on the ancient trees of Nor- 

 mandy. The most remarkable trees so far 

 described are the two yews of La Haye de 

 Koutot, in the department of the Eure. They 

 are respectively 9^ and 8y metres in circum- 

 ference at the base of the trunk, and 17 

 and 14 metres high. Their ages are esti- 

 mated by the author to be not less than 

 fifteen hundred years. A chapel has been 

 constructed in the hollow trunk of one of 

 these yews, three metres high and two me- 

 tres deep. Before it was transformed into 

 a chapel the hollow would hold forty per- 

 sons, and eight musicians have played in it 

 in concert. The beech of Montigny, esti- 

 mated by the author to be between six hun- 

 dred and nine hundred years old, is 18 me- 

 tres high and 8 - 20 metres in circumference 

 at the base. There are oaks from two hun- 

 dred to nine hundred years old, one of which 

 is nearly forty metres high. 



Curions Effects of an Earthqnake. 



Some striking features are described by 

 Prof. John Milne as marking the recent de- 

 structive earthquake in Japan, by which 

 nearly 8,000 persons were killed and at 

 least 41,000 houses were leveled. The move- 

 ments of the wave were horizontal, and a 

 defect of the seismograph was noticed in its 

 failure to record anything of them except 

 the " dip." In many places so-called " for- 

 eign" buildings of brick and stone fell in 

 heaps of ruin ^between Japanese buildings 



yet standing. " Cotton-mills have fallen in, 

 while their tall brick chimneys have been 

 whipped off at about half their height. 

 Huge cast-iron columns, which, unlike chim- 

 neys, are uniform in section, acting as piers 

 for railway bridges, have been cut in two 

 near their base. In some instances these 

 have been snapped into pieces much as we 

 might snap a carrot, and the fragments 

 thrown down upon the shingle beaches of 

 the rivers. The greatest efforts appear to 

 have been exerted where masonry piers 

 carrying two - hundred - foot girders over 

 lengths of eighteen hundred feet have been 

 cut in two, and then danced and twisted over 

 their solid foundations to a considerable dis- 

 tance from their true positions. These piers 

 have a sectional area of twenty-six by ten 

 feet, and are from thirty to fifty feet in 

 height. Embankments have been spread 

 outward or shot away, brick arches have 

 fallen between their abutments, while the 

 railway line itself has been bent into a 

 series of snakelike folds and hummocked 

 into waves. . . . Here and there a temple 

 has escaped destruction, partly perhaps on 

 account of the quality of materials employed 

 in its construction, but also in consequence 

 of the multiplicity of joints which come be- 

 tween the roof and the supporting columns. 

 At these joints there has been a basket-like 

 yielding, and the interstice of the roof has 

 not, therefore, acted with its whole force in 

 tending to rupture its supports." 



Meteorology Five Centuries ago. "What is 

 probably the oldest journal of the weather in 

 existence has recently been recovered, printed 

 in photographic transcript, and translated. 

 It was kept by the Rev. William Merle, rec- 

 tor of Driby, Lincolnshire, England, from 

 1337 to 1344, or during seven years of the 

 earlier part of the reign of Edward III. 

 The author was evidently a keen observer, 

 and recorded his facts succinctly and intel- 

 ligently, so as to give a graphic, even pict- 

 uresque description of the weather by the 

 week or month ; and a reference in one of 

 his notes to a feature of the season of 1331 

 shows that he had been watching the changes 

 of the seasons for a longer time than was 

 covered by his journal. Some of the entries 

 are suggestive of the conditions and ways 

 of thinking of the times. The frequent men- 



