354 



NA TURE 



[August 13, 1891 



\o be the severest winter known by the settlers, Salem Harbour 

 being frozen over as early a? October ; of i774-75i a wonderfully 

 mild winter ; of 1779-80, when for forty days, including March, 

 ■there was no perceptible thaw, and the snow was so hard and 

 deep that loaded teams passed over the fences in any direction, 

 arches being dug under the snow so that men on horseback 

 could ride under them, and which was long remembered as the 

 hard winter ; of 1784-85, when, as late as April 15, snow was 

 2 feet deep, and frozen hard enough to bear cattle ; of 1785-86, 

 when in the remarkable storm of November 25, the snow blew 

 into balls, one of which had rolled 76 feet, measuring 17^ by 22 

 inches ; of 1794-95, when the Betsey was launched in Salem on 

 Christmas Day, the thermometer indicating 8j° above zero at 

 noon, and men and boys went in swimming ; of 1801-2, when 

 tha Ulysses, Brutus, and Volutia, three Salem vessels, which 

 sailed out of th6 harbour on a summer-like morning in February, 

 were all cast away at night on Cape Cod, in a terrible snow- 

 storm, which continued a week. He also referred to more re- 

 cent seasons, and of the cold winter of 1856-57, when in one 

 week in January was the coldest day by the thermometer ever 

 recorded of late years, mercury in Salem 20° below zero ; travel 

 on the railroad between Boston and Salem entirely suspended 

 from Tuesday morning to Thursday afternoon. The recent mild • 

 winters were also alluded to." 



In the volume of Bavarian meteorological observations for 

 1890, Dr. C. Lang (the Director of the Service) contributes an 

 article on the " Secalar Variations of Damage by Lightning and 

 Hail." He points out that in almost all recent investigations 

 the conclusions come to are that during the last 50 years damage 

 by lightning has much increased, but this is not borne out by 

 his inquiry, but is probably owing to more attention having 

 been paid to the subject recently. The numerous impurities 

 introduced into the air of towns from fire-places, &c., would 

 make it probable that they would be more liable to damage 

 than country places, but exactly the opposite is the case, the 

 ratio of damage to buildings in towns to that in the country 

 being i : 2, This result is possibly to some extent due to the 

 more numerous lightning-conductors, and to railway lines in the 

 towns. He finds that the damage from hail shows a very 

 probable connection with the period of sun-spot frequency, but 

 the secular range of the former points more particularly to the 

 influence of temperature, so that the .curve of hail-frequency 

 shows, not only a minimum occurring with the ii-year sun-spot 

 maximum, but also a period of about 35 years. The damage 

 from lightning, on the other hand, does not show any connec- 

 tion with a secular range of temperature, but the minimum 

 occurs with the maximum of sun-spot frequency. In other words, 

 damage from hail seems to be more decidedly connected with 

 terrestrial, and damage from lightning more with cosmical 

 influence. 



The application of science in the direction of domestic comfort 

 seems to be advancing with great strides in the United States. 

 The Nation, in refa-ence to the announcements that the inhabit- 

 ants of Kansas City are about to be supplied with cool air in 

 summer and warm air in winter through a system of pipes laid 

 in the streets ; and that the people of Framingham, Mass., are 

 to be furnished with gas for heating purposes at the price of 50 

 cents a thousand feet, thus writes :— " Thus the ends of the land 

 are advancing in the art of living while the metropolis remains 

 tationary, and is kept from falling behind only by incessant 

 grumbling. And yet the possibilities of comfort, of health, and 

 even of cheapness revealed in these schemes are wonderfully 

 alluring, and their realization would be prevented by no physical 

 obstacles. If we consider that wonderful work of human hands, 

 the kitchen range, under the management of the regular cook, 

 who knows how to put on all the draught at once and keep it on, 

 NO. T T37, VOL. 44] 



what a devourer of fuel it is ! We need a cup of tea or a chop 

 in summer, and a fire is kindled that would generate steam 

 enough to drive an ocean racer a mile upon her course, the 

 kitchen is turned into a Tophet, the miserable servants swelter 

 in the apartments which their own stupidity and that of man- 

 kind have rendered uninhabitable, and their employers are 

 rendered uncomfortable above. The extravagance of the 

 Chinese, who, as related by Charles Lamb, at first thought it 

 nece?siry to burn down a house whenever they wanted to roast 

 a pig, is nothing to ours." Has anybody ever calculated the 

 annual waste caused by the above described "use" of the 

 ordinary "kitchen range"? 



An interesting paper upon the slow combustion of explosive 

 gas mixtures is contributed to the current number of Liebigs 

 Annakn by Dr. Krause and Prof. Victor Meyer. The experi- 

 ments described were made with electrolytic mixtures of hydrogen 

 and oxygen, and detonating mixtures of carbon monoxide and 

 otygen. The first experiment consisted in heating in a bath of 

 vapour of diphenylamine (305") a detonating mixture of hydrogen 

 and oxygen contained in a U-shaped tube closed by mercury. 

 The heating was continued without intermission for a fortnight, 

 at the end of which time very little gas remained, almost the 

 whole having slowly combined to form water. The experiment 

 was then repeated in an apparatus constructed entirely of glass, 

 and in which the use of mercury was avoided, except in a small 

 manometer used to indicate the pressure. It was then found 

 that no trace of water was formed at the temperature of di- 

 phenylamine vapour (305° C); at the temperature of boiling 

 sulphur (448°) the amount of combination was exceedingly small ; 

 while at 518°, the boiling-point of phosphorus pentasulphide, i 

 considerable amount of combination occurred, but no quanti- 

 tative rule could be deduced. In all these experiments 

 the gases employed were moist, and no particular care 

 had been taken to remove the last traces of admixed air. 

 Now Bunsen and Roscoe, in their celebrated work on detonat- 

 ing mixtures of hydrogen and chlorine, showed that regular 

 results were only obtained when the film of air condensed upon 

 the surfaces of the glass vessels employed was removed by allow- 

 ing the gas to stream through the apparatus for several days 

 previous to the experiment. A fresh series of experiments were 

 therefore made, in which these precautions were most rigidly 

 observed ; most complicated pieces of apparatus were constructed 

 of glass throughout, which admitted of the drying of the gases 

 prepared (in case of hydrogen and oxygen) by the electrolysis 

 of hot water, so as to exclude ozone and hydrogen peroxide; and 

 the pure gases thus obtained were allowed to stream through the 

 series of bulbs united by capillary tubes for a fortnight, night 

 and day, before the bulbs were sealed off at the capillaries. It 

 was found that, with pure dry gases, scarcely a trace of com- 

 bination occurred by the fusion of the very fine capillaries. As 

 regards the temperature of ignition of electrolytic hydrogen and 

 oxygen, or detonating carbon monoxide and oxygen, it was 

 found that bulbs containing them do not explode when placed 

 in boiling pentasulphide of phosphorus (518°), but do explode in 

 vapour of stannous chloride (606°). The temperature of ignition 

 lies, therefore, between 518° and 606° C. The mode of explosion 

 differs considerably under different circumstances. In case of 

 explosion in vapour of stannous chloride, the bulb was never 

 shattered, but a sudden appearance of flame within the bulb 

 occurred, accompanied by a slight detonation, and in some cases 

 the point of the capillary was blown off. It is also astonishing 

 how long one requires to hold such a bulb in a Bunsen flame 

 before explosion occurs ; it never occurs until the flame becomes 

 coloured yellow, and the glass begins to soften, and frequently 

 only causes a swelling out of the glass at the heated spot. Thin- 

 walled bulbs, however, are sometimes shattered. In two cases 

 it was noticed that the glass at the softened part was violently 



