MISCELLANY. 



125 



vated this science with more success than 

 others, and among these the Assyrians, 

 Babylonians, or Chaldeans, are preeminent. 

 The records of their observations were 

 adopted by the Greeks, and through the 

 latter were transmitted to the Romans. 

 Thus our modern astronomy is really trace- 

 able back to the plains of Babylonia. The 

 question arises, Of what race were the 

 founders of Chaldean astronomy ? This 

 subject is considered by A. H. Sayce, who, 

 in a communication to Nocture, says that 

 they were not Semites, but a people who 

 are now generally termed Aecadians, and 

 who spoke an agglutinative language. 

 " They had come from the mountains of 

 Elam or Susiana, on the east, bringing with 

 them the rudiments of writing and civiliza- 

 tion. They found a cognate race already 

 settled in Chaldea, and in conjunction with 

 the latter they built the great cities of 

 Babylonia, whose ruins still attest their 

 power and antiquity. Somewhere between 

 3000 and 4000 b. c, the Semites entered 

 the country from the east, and gradually 

 contrived to conquer the whole of it. It is 

 probable the conquest was completed about 

 2000 b. c. At all events Accadian became 

 a dead language some two or three centu- 

 ries later, but, as the Semitic invaders owed 

 almost all the civilization they possessed to 

 their more polished predecessors, it re- 

 mained the language of literature, like Latin 

 in the middle ages, down to the last days 

 of the Assyrian Empire." 



Sounds produced by blowing into a 



Flame. Some noteworthy observations 

 have been made by Decharme on the pro- 

 duction of sounds by blowing into a flame 

 through a tube. He is of opinion that the 

 air acts rather chemically than mechani- 

 cally. The sounds, according to him, result 

 from small explosions by the combination 

 of the oxygen of the air with the hydrogen 

 or carbon of the flame, in imperfect com- 

 bustion. For the sound to occur, the pres- 

 ence of air, or of an inert gas mixed with 

 oxygen, seems necessary. In one of M. 

 Decharrae's experiments the white flame 

 from a Bunsen burner, with the lateral 

 apertures closed, gave a very strong sound 

 when blown into with a tube ; whereas the 

 blue flame, produced when the apertures 



are open, gave a very weak one, or none at 

 all. Carbonic acid alone, or nitrogen, or 

 oxygen, or chlorine, blown into a flame of 

 illuminating gas, gave little or no sound ; 

 protoxide of nitrogen gave a sound that 

 was weak, but more acute than that ob- 

 tained from air. 



Exploration of Victoria Cave. Dr. Tidde- 

 man read a report on the exploration of 

 the Victoria Cave, Settle, during the year 

 1874 "75. The report assigns to the pre- 

 glacial or the glacial age the lower deposits 

 of this cave, which contain early Pleisto- 

 cene animal remains associated with a hu- 

 man fibula. The animal bones were nearly 

 all mere fragments, though one was perfect; 

 they represent bears, oxen, deer, goats or 

 sheep, elephants, swans, etc. Attention was 

 called in the report to the great distance of 

 time which separated that age from our own. 

 In the cave Roman times were separated 

 from our own day by deposits sometimes 

 less than a foot thick, but nowhere by more 

 than two feet of talus, the chips which time 

 detached from the cliffs above. The Neo- 

 lithic age, which antiquaries know was a 

 considerable time before the Roman occu- 

 pation, is represented in some places at a 

 depth of four or five feet beneath the Ro- 

 man layer, but at others it runs into it. Then 

 come nine feet of talus without a record of 

 any living thing. Judging by the shallow- 

 ness of the Roman layer, this must repre- 

 sent an enormous interval of time. Next 

 come the bowlders, the inscribed records 

 of the Glacial period. They must repre- 

 sent a long series of climatic changes dur- 

 ing which the ice was waxing and waning, 

 advancing and moving back over the mouth 

 of the cave. Then there is a break in the 

 continuity of the deposits, the bowlders ly,- 

 ing on the edges of the older beds, which 

 shows that time was given for changes to 

 take place to allow the district to cool down 

 from a warmth suitable to the hippopota- 

 mus and become a fitting pasture for the 

 reindeer. It was in that warm period that 

 the man lived and died whose fibula occurs 

 among the bones in the cave. 



Methods of preserving Fresh Heat. So 



numerous are the processes devised in mod- 

 ern times for the preservation of food, that 



