September, 1906.] 



KNOWLEDGE & SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



533 



The Renowned Horn of Ulphus. 



In the vestry of Vork Minster is preserved the horn ol 

 Ulphus, which is of ivory, curiously carved, and was 

 formerly ornamented with gold mounting-. It is a 

 valuable relic of ancient art, and dates back to a period 

 before the Conquest. An inscription in Latin, on the 

 horn, states that Prince Ulphus g-ave it to the Church 

 of St. Peter with all his lands and revenues. 



Ulph was the son of Thorald and lord of the greater 

 part of Eastern Yorkshire. Tradition says that this 

 Saxon Prince piously presented all his lands to God 

 to hinder his two sons from quarrelling about their pos- 

 sessions. The gift was accompanied with the cere- 

 mony of kneeling at the altar rails and drinking the 



Photn l,ij Duiu-.m <f- Lt'iriii, iliiisterdatea. 

 The Horn of Prince Ulphus in York Min.ster. 



wine with wliich he had filled the horn. lie then laid 

 and left it on the altar, by tenure of which his lands 

 were held by the Abbey. 



Encircling the wide end of the horn is a belt of 

 carving representing griffins, a unicorn, a lion devour- 

 ing- a doe, and dogs wearing collars. The griffins 

 stand on either side of a tree, recalling the sacred tree 

 of Assyrian sculpture. 



During the Civil Wars, the horn disappeared, but 

 was afterwards found by Lord Fairfax, whose son re- 

 stored it to tiie Minster. The golden ornaments had 

 been stolen, but a silver-gilt chain and bands were 

 attached to it by the Chapter in 1675. 



Electrical Nitrates and Fertilisers. 



At present the world's wheat supply depends chiefly on 

 the continued productiveness of a strip of territory in 

 Chili, which produces the Chili saltpetre that serves as 

 a fertiliser. It is the aim of commercial chemistry to 

 produce an artificial fertiliser which can compete with 

 this substance, and for 15 years at least chemists have 

 been trying to find some way of cheaply " fixing " the 

 inexhaustible nitrogen of the air, so as to combine it 

 into a substance that will be an " artificial nitrate." 

 IvxperinKiils wero first made at Niagara, because elec- 



tricity was cheap there and the method of making 

 artificial nitrates which first suggested itself to chemists 

 was that which has an analogy to the lightning flash. 

 The lightning as it passes through the air burns the 

 nitrogen and oxygen together so as to leave behind it a 

 streak of nitrous acid, or by burning up the water 

 vapour, a streak of ammonia. Could not the electric arc 

 or spark do the same? .So the chemists, Bradley and 

 Lovejoy at Niagara, Birkeland and Hyde in Norway, 

 Rossi in Italy, and Ehrlwein on behalf of the restless 

 experimenting firm of Siemens and Halske, have tried 

 by using electricity, sometimes to form a great number 

 of sparks in a chamber filled with nitrogen, sometimes 

 by using one very large arc, to burn or concentrate this 

 nitrogen into a nitrate, and then (generally), while in 

 this form, to unite it with some basic substance. They 

 have had a greater or smaller measure of success, 

 limited by the cost of their productions; and their 

 methods are described in a valuable summary by Pro- 

 fessor Kennedy Duncan. But the goal of commercial 

 success can only be reached through cheapness; and 

 the electrical energy costs too much for the amount of 

 electro-chemical manure produced. Is there any other 

 way? Professor Adolph Frank says there is. He pro- 

 ceeds by the calcium method, which is to force the 

 nitrogen to unite with this metal, one of the few sub- 

 stances in nature with an affinity for nitrogen. By 

 heating red-hot calcium carbide he found it could be got 

 to unite with the nitrog-en of the air to form a substance 

 called calcium cyanamide; and calcium cyanamide — to 

 examine its properties no further — can be used as a 

 fertiliser, and is a good one. The fertiliser of the 

 future, then, may be calcium cyanamide, the price of 

 which depends on calcium carbide. The price of both 

 depends, again, on the cost of the electrical energv' u.scd 

 in their manufacture; but this method produces by- 

 products in such numbers and variety that the cheap- 

 ness of production may be said to grow daily. 



Photography. 



Pure and Applied. 



By Chapman Jones, F.I.C, F.C.S., &c. 



Self-Recording Instruments. — An apparently very ad- 

 vantageous method of using sensitive paper in self-re- 

 cording instruments is described by R. Nimfiihr. 

 Printing-out paper is used, and first smoked by the 

 flame of a paratlin lamp, so that the needle point in 

 movingf against it traces a line in the soot and lays bare 

 the surface of the paper. The record is then exposed 

 to light to darken the exposed parts, washed to remove 

 the soot, and fixed. The method is stated to work 

 excellently, giving- the finest lines. The smoking should 

 present no difficulty if the paper is kept meanwhile in 

 close contact with a metallic surface. The use of a 

 printing--out instead of a development paper very much 

 reduces the precautions necessary in its manipulation 

 with regard to light, and the protecting layer of soot 

 renders the arrangement practically independent of 

 light and unaffected by it. 



Snapshots Indoors. — The absurdity of trying to get 

 negatives with rapid shutter-exposures inside ordinary 

 buiUlings has often been commented on, yet it may be 



