HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



275 



GOSSIP ON CURRENT TOPICS. 

 By W. Mattieu Williams, F.R.A.S., F.C.S. 



GEOLOGY AND INDUSTRY.— In the Bulletin 

 of the Geographical Society of Belgium is a 

 suggestive paper by M. Louis Navez, on the influence 

 of the various geological formations of the country 

 upon the people. As the variations of altitude, 

 latitude and climate are but small in Belgium, the 

 purely geological influences operate with but little 

 disturbance. M. Navez concludes that the geology 

 of a country is one of the physical agents that limit 

 the free will of man, and determine the location and 

 occupations of communities. An example of this is 

 afforded by the abundance of lime in the soil of the 

 Geer valley, which gives to the straw of the cereals 

 there grown, a special suppleness, strength and white- 

 ness, which has originated the chief industry of the 

 district, viz. that of straw plaiting, an industry 

 yielding a return of four to five millions of francs 

 annually. On the other hand, the absence of cal- 

 careous rocks in the main valley of the Lys, and 

 those of its tributaries, renders the water of that river 

 specially suitable for the cleansing of flax, and has 

 thus located an industry and supported the fame of 

 the cloths of Flanders. 



Most of my readers must have heard of the efforts 

 that have been made to introduce the cultivation of 

 flax in Ireland, and of its indifferent success. In the 

 course of my journeying through that country I have 

 seen little patches here and there, but no approach to 

 any vigorous industry, and until reading the above 

 concerning the water of the Lys it never occurred to 

 me that the Irish difficulty is fundamentally geological, 

 and therefore practically insuperable. Ireland is 

 essentially calcareous, the mountain limestone is 

 more dormant than the Saxon. 



A curious parallel to the Belgian straw plaiting 

 may be added. In travelling from London towards 

 the Midland counties, any passenger may see that the 

 railway cuts into the outcrop of the chalk just in the 

 neighbourhood of Luton and Dunstable, the centres 

 of a venerable straw plaiting and straw bonnet 

 industry. Why this northern outcrop rather than 

 the South Downs should have been selected I do not 

 attempt to explain. 



Inheritance of Modes of Thought. — A work 

 of considerable magnitude and importance is now in 

 course of publication in Belgium: "Bibliographic 

 Generate de l'Astronome " by M. M. J. C. Houzeau 

 and A. Lancaster. It promises to be the most 

 complete history of Astronomy yet attempted. In 

 reference to the resistance formerly offered to the 

 views of the solar system and of gravitation, which 

 are now so freely accepted as a matter of course, the 

 authors ask the following question : " Has the fact 

 that our ancestors had thought in a certain manner 



during a great number of successive generations left 

 transmissible traces in their brains ?" M. M. Houzeau 

 and Lancaster appear, with some reserve, inclined to 

 an affirmative answer. They add that communities 

 seem to perpetuate rmong themselves certain tra- 

 ditional opinions that appear to become an integral 

 part of their intellectual chattels {lair bagage in- 

 tellect tic I). 



This is interesting to evolutionists who attribute 

 the skill of the bee and the beaver, the migration of 

 the swallow, the social virtues of the ant, and other 

 so-called "animal instincts" to inherited habits 

 gradually acquired by the urgency of surroundings 

 and the survival of the cleverest. 



Conflagrations and Meteorites. — M. Lenger, 

 of Prague, has communicated to the Academy of 

 Sciences of Paris a memoir on "The frequency of 

 conflagrations in relation to the number of shooting- 

 stars." In this, he attributes mysterious outbreaks of 

 forest fires, of hay and wheat stacks, and of isolated 

 houses to the fall of meteorites. He collects the 

 records of these to show that their maxima 

 correspond with the epochs of greatest meteoric 

 showers. He has obtained from the Austrian govern- 

 ment the appointment of a commission to collect 

 complete statistics of fires from "unknown causes" 

 that have occurred in Austro-Hungarian territory, and 

 has asked the French Academy to obtain the same 

 for France, but the Academy does not appear to have 

 accepted the invitation. 



The Singing of the Kettle. — A correspondent 

 has sent me the following extract from the "Popular 

 Science News" — date not given — "When water is 

 first heated nothing occurs ; but, as its temperature 

 rises, minute bubbles are given off, accompanied by a 

 simmering noise. These bubbles are not steam, but 

 air that has been dissolved by water. All ordinary 

 water contains more or less of this dissolved air, which 

 escapes when the temperature is raised. The familiar 

 ' singing ' of the tea kettle is due to this escape of 

 heated air from the water." 



This I suppose is sent to me on account of the 

 difference between the theory of kettle-singing, there 

 expounded, and my theory which was published some 

 years ago in "A Simple Treatise on Heat." The 

 italics in the above extracts are my own, and indicate 

 the points of difference. My observations, which are 

 simple enough, and may easily be repeated by anybody, 

 prove, in the first place, that the mere escape of the 

 dissolved air from the water takes place silently, is 

 not accompanied by a simmering noise ; secondly, 

 that the singing of the kettle occurs when the bubbles 

 of steam are forming at the bottom of the kettle, and 

 then suddenly condensing as the cooler water above 

 descends in convection currents, and strikes the 

 bubbles as they start to rise, or even while they are 

 still in contact with the bottom of the kettle. This 



