PHYSICS, PROGRESS OF, IN 1894. 



Col 



Trujillo on Aug. 19. Before the end of August 

 the Government had 0,000 men under arms. 

 The steamer " Coya " was bought from Grace 

 Brothers for 40,000, and was fitted out as an 

 armed cruiser called the " Constitutional." All 

 agricultural work, trade, and commerce was in- 

 terrupted by the civil conflict. The Mon- 

 taneros, as the rebels were called, seized the 

 Oroya railroad, and when the Government sent a 

 force of 2,000 men with Galling guns to attack 

 them three fourths of the troops deserted to the 

 enemy. The rebels boarded a transport and 

 liberated a large number of prisoners. They 

 attempted to seize the " Constitutional " by 

 strategy, but were detected and taken prisoners. 

 The Montaneros were armed with Winchester 

 rifles, and they were well fed, while the Govern- 

 ment troops received scant rations and no pay. 

 Robberies were committed by both sides. In 

 the south Pierolist bands assembled, but they 

 were not strong enough to contend with the 

 Government forces. The Chilian Government, 

 after appealing first to the Peruvian authorities 

 to disarm the insurgents, occupied Tacna. On 

 Oct. 9 Gen. Osma succeeded Gen. Torrico as 

 M inister of War. The Government made greater 

 efforts to exterminate the insurgents. Gen. 

 Borgono led a large force into the north against 

 Gen. Seminario, who evacuated Cajarnarca and 

 took to the mountains. Gen. Pierola landed near 

 Pisco with the intention of placing himself at 

 the head of a revolutionary army at Chincha. 

 The Government was informed of his move- 

 ments, and a large body of regulars put the 

 revolutionists to flight. The Government en- 

 deavored to increase its revenues by decreeing 

 that the sole should be reckoned at BOd. in levy- 

 ing customs duties, which were thereby aug- 

 mented 30 per cent. In the beginning of No- 

 vember all articles previously exempt were made 

 subject to an import duty of 8 per cent, ad 

 valorem. There was a Cabinet crisis, which ter- 

 minated on Nov. 17 in -a reconstruction of the 

 Cabinet as follows: Premier and Minister of 

 Foreign Affairs, Dr. Manuel Yrigoyen ; Minister 

 of the Interior, Leonardo Cavero ; Minister of 

 Justice, Manuel V. Morote : Minister of Finance, 

 Nicanor Carmona ; Minister of War, Gen. Osma. 



PHYSICS, PROGRESS OF, IN 1894. 

 Constitution of Matter. The Ether. 3. Lar- 

 mor (London Royal Society, Dec. 7, 1893) pro- 

 poses to reconcile the elasticity of the ether with 

 its yieldingness by assuming that outside the 

 vortices constituting matter it has a peculiar 

 kind of elasticity called into play only by rota- 

 tion. The atomic whirls would then meet with 

 no resistance to their motion, while the ether 

 would still be highly elastic to vibrations, pro- 

 vided these are rotary. Franklin and Nichols 

 (' Physical Review," May-June) have endeavored 

 to find whether the sudden stoppage of a rap- 

 idly rotating coil causes an electro-motive force, 

 and find that if any part of the coil's energy 

 depends on motion in the ether produced by its 

 rotation this must be less than 10 17 of its entire 

 energy. 



Gravitation. A. S. Mackenzie (" Johns Hop- 

 kins University Circular ") has measured the 

 gravitational attraction of a crystal for a particle 

 along various axes to see whether it would vary as 

 do the velocity of light, conductivity, and other 



physical quantities. His results show no such 

 variation. 



Fluidity of Sofo'ds. Dewar (London Chemical 

 Society, June 7) finds that some other substances 

 besides metals have the property of flowing un- 

 der pressure, while still others do not possess it 

 at all. Crystalline sodium sulphate, sal ammo- 

 niac, graphite, and urea flow easily at 30 to 40 

 tons to the square inch, while starch and salt re- 

 fuse to flow even at 60 tons* W. Spring (Bel- 

 gian Royal Academy) concludes that at a certain 

 temperature, where a metal still appears to be a 

 perfect solid, some of its molecules attain a state 

 of vibration corresponding to the liquid state, 

 and thus, by softening the body, make it capa- 

 ble of being welded and of forming alloys. He 

 has welded metals kept for three to twelve hours 

 at a temperature of 200 to 400 C., the best joints 

 being produced with gold, lead, and tin, and the 

 worst with bismuth and antimony. The more 

 crystalline the bodies are, the less do they show 

 this phenomenon. The occurrence of this in- 

 cipient liquefaction was proved by submitting 

 copper, on which a delicate spiral had been cut, 

 to a temperature of 400 C. for eight hours ; at 

 the expiration of this time the spiral had disap- 

 peared and the surface looked as if just fused by 

 the blowpipe. Alloys also were formed at' the 

 same temperatures. 



Mechanics. Elasticity. J. 0. Thompson 

 (" Physical Review," March-April) finds that a 

 fatigue exists in the elasticity of stretching anal- 

 ogous to that shown by Lord Kelvin in the elas- 

 ticity of torsion. In a more extended research 

 (ibid., May-June) he finds that it follows the 

 same laws. The fatigues in copper, silver, and 

 brass are nearly as 7 : 3 : 2 for the torsion and as 

 4:3:2 for tension. The temperatuie coefficient 

 for both in all 3 metals is about ^g-. Mary Noyes 

 (American Association, 1894) finds that in the 

 case of a piano wire Young's modulus is lessened 

 by heat and also by the passage of an electric cur- 

 rent. Magnetism has no effect. 



Attraction exerted by a Vibrating Disk. 

 Berson and Juppont (Paris Academy of Science, 

 Nov. 27, 1893) have measured the attraction be- 

 tween a steel disk vibrated electro-magnetically 

 and a mica disk near it. The attraction is due 

 to the motion of the surrounding air, as has been 

 previously established. It varied from 602'3 

 dynes at a distance of 1 mm. to 2'55 dynes at 10 

 mm. To produce the same force electrostatically 

 a potential difference of 600 volts would be re- 

 quired. 



Liquids. Solution. II. C. Jones (" Physical 

 Review," September-October) has investigated 

 the solution tension of metals that is. the pres- 

 sure which, according to Van't Hoff 's theory, their 

 molecules must exert in a solvent to bring about 

 solution. The chief point brought out is that 

 the solution tension of silver is not a constant 

 for all solvents of its salts, but depends on the 

 nature of the solvent. The same will probably 

 be found true for other metals. Le Chatelier 

 (Paris Academy of Science, March 19) deduces 

 mathematically the fact that if latent heat of so- 

 lution were independent of temperature and con- 

 centration, the normal curve of solubility of any 

 given substance would be the same in all solv- 

 ents. 



Crystallization. Pictet (Paris Academy of 



