Vol. XXIV. No. i.] 
POPULAR SCIENCE NEWS. 
9 
Slje Popular Science I^ews. 
BOSTON, JANUARY i, 1890. 
AUSTIN p. NICHOLS, S3 EilUor. 
WILLIAM J. ROLFE, Litt.D., . Atsodate Editor. 
The Popular Science News has watched 
with great interest the development of that 
achtiirable society of youth known as the 
Agassiz Association. Founded in iSy^ by 
Hahlan H. Ballard, it has grown, under his 
devoted care, to national proportions, and 
has successfully accomplished one of Louis 
Agassi/.'s favorite dreams, — the general estab- 
lishment of local clubs devoted to the personal 
study of their close environment. During 
the past fourteen years, no less than fifteen 
hundred such clubs have been organized, 
and hundreds of them have remained active, 
and are growing in strenth and vigor. Even 
those which have been most transient have 
wrought a good work in engaging the atten- 
tion of their members, and attaching their 
interest to objects of essential usefulness. 
It gives us pleasure to announce that we have 
secured the services of Mr. Ballard to conduct 
in the Popular Science News a depart- 
ment, whicli is to be called "The Out-Door 
World." In it will be presented, from 
month to month, short articles of a popularly 
scientific nature, largely embodying the 
results of the personal observations of the 
members of the Agassiz Association and its 
friends, among whom are many of the leading 
scientists of America. There will also be 
a few selected extracts from the reports of 
the local clubs, — particularly those which 
constitute the maturer portion of the society, 
— and there will be frequent hints and sug- 
gestions designed to assist teachers of natural 
science in our public schools. We are glad 
to know that our journal has always been 
popular with the members of the Agassiz 
Association ; and, while the new department 
must greatly increase their interest in us, we 
feel sure that, on the other hand, the reports 
of the work of this arm}- of students, from 
whose ranks are to come our future teachers 
and men of science, will be read with 
approving and sympathetic interest by all. 
The space formerly occupied by the depart- 
ment of "Home, Farm, and Garden" will 
be devoted to the interests of the Association, 
and the articles formerly appearing under 
that heading will be transferred to other 
pages of the paper. 
air and hermetically sealed. When one of these 
tubes was spectroscopically examined in 1S80, 
no less than 148 lines of the iodine spectrum 
were visible, and only three very faint hydro- 
gen lines. In the present year, when Mr. 
Smyth again examined the spectrum given 
by the same tube, not a single iodine line was 
left, but hydrogen lines were present in great 
abundance. The granules of iodine sealed 
into the tube in 1878 had also entirel}- dis- 
appeared. There was no possibility of an 
accidental crack or leak in the tube to account 
for this apparent transmutation of an element, 
which was certainly a most remarkable piie- 
nomenon, and, as Mr. Smyth observes, leads 
us to speculate whether this change is not an 
infinitesimally small part of the progress of 
everything to turn into hydrogen, and for 
assisting thereby the whole solar system to 
explode some day into a so-called hydrogen 
star. 
turies which still bears the name of New 
England, in honor of the native land of the 
adventurous navigators who for the second 
time brought it to the knowledge of the old 
world. 
Professor S. P. Langlev has been mak- 
ing some investigations upon the temperature 
of the moon's surface, — a work requiring the 
utmost care and skill, and the use of instru- 
ments of the greatest delicacy. Contrary to 
the usually received opinion, that the sur- 
face of the moon exposed to the rays of the 
sun through the long lunar day becomes 
heated to a very high temperacure. Professor 
Langley comes to the conclusion that the 
mean temperature of the sunlit lunar soil is 
much lower than has been supposed, and is 
most probably not greatly above 32° Fahr. 
A genuine case of hydrophobia recently 
occurred in Haverhill, Mass. The patient — 
a strong, healthy man — was bitten by a dog 
about six weeks previous to the attack. The 
characteristic symptoms of spasm of the 
throat and periodic general convulsions, 
were so well developed as to leave no doubt 
as to the nature of the disease. Death 
occurred very suddenly, after several days of 
! severe suffering. The keeping of dogs is a 
custom handed down to us direct from our 
savage ancestors, and is a practice unworthy 
of civilized beings. But as long as mankind 
insists upon the companionship of these use- 
less and dangerous beasts, the risk of such 
lamentable accidents as the above will be 
always present, and fatalities from the dread- 
ful disease will continue to be reported. 
A CURIOUS observation was recently made 
by Mr. C. Piazzi Smyth, while examining 
the spectrum of the light emitted by some 
vacuum tubes through which a current of 
electricity was passed. Eleven years ago a 
quantity of iodine was placed in the tubes in 
question, which were then nearly exhausted of 
Great interest was excited last November 
among archaeologists, by the announcement 
by Professor IIorsforu, formerly of Harvard 
College, of his discovery of the site of the 
ancient and traditional city of Norumbega, 
which he claims was founded by the North- 
men, about 1000 A. D., or nearly five 
hundred years before the voyage of Colum- 
bus. The site claimed for the ancient city is 
near Watertown, Mass., a few miles west of 
Boston, in the valley of the Charles River. 
Professor Horsford claims that there are mon- 
imients of the presence of the Northmen on 
every square mile of the basin of the Charles. 
As evidences of this, he points to a canal, 
walled on one side for a thousand feet along 
the west side of Stony Brook, and to the dry 
canal near Newtonville. He has also found 
remains of canals, ditches, deltas, boom 
dams, ponds, fish-traps, dwellings, walls, 
and amphitheaters scattered all throughout 
the basin of the Charles. The evidence tend- 
ing to prove the discovery and occupation of 
the region around Massachusetts Bay long 
before the date usually assigned to the dis- 
covery of this continent, is constantly grow- 
ing stronger, and there seems to be little 
reason to doubt that the " Vinland" so well 
known to the old Norse adventurers, was a 
part of the country re-discovered in later cen- 
In a paper read before the Danish Acad- 
emy, M. Paulsen gave the results of numer- 
ous determinations of the height of the 
aurora. These results were very variable, 
some auroras being observed as low as 1,000 
feet, while others were apparently at a height 
of 43 miles, and one aurora was estimated to 
be over 500 miles above the earth. These 
observations, therefore, lead to the conclusion 
that auroras are by no means confined to the 
highest parts of our atmosphere, but that 
they occur almost indifferently at all altitudes. 
M. Paulsen inclines to believe that in the 
temperate zone, auroras only appear in the 
higher layers of the atmosphere ; whereas, in 
the auroral zone, properly speaking, the phe- 
nomenon is generally produced in the lower 
layers. 
Mr. H. W. WiLEv has been making some 
investigations upon the boiling-point of the 
solutions of certain salts, and finds that it is 
closely related to their molecular weights, so 
that it is quite possible to obtain the approxi- 
mate molecular weight of many chemical 
compounds by careful observations of the 
boiling-point of their solutions. This rela- 
tion, apparently, only exists in the case of a 
limited number of salts, and his observations 
also lead him to believe that substances con- 
taining water of crystallization exist in solu- 
tion in a modified form, and the influence of 
this modification on the boiling-point of the 
solution must be determined by largely ex- 
tended observations. 
FLUORESCENCE. 
A beautiful mineral occurs in various 
localities known as fluorite, or fluor-spar, the 
name being given from its use as a flux in 
metallurgical operations. When pure, it is 
