Dec. 30, 1881.] 



KNOWLEDGE 



189 



J\fpllf5 to ©UfllCS. 



103] — Histology. — Your correspondent may bo glad to know of 



.'following books on "Histology": — " 1. ffrey's, translated iyr 



■ irker (expensive) ; 2. Kutherford's " Outlines of Practical His- 



i itfT," is very good for students; 3. Klein's "Atlas" is a grand 



rk on this subject, but too erponsive. — B. Tom Tint. 



39] — Moon's Rotation. — I give a quotation from the lecture 



livered by Dr. Ball, at the Midland Institute, Birmingham, 



' t. 34, ISSl : — "For many centuries it had been an enigma to 



-ironomers why the moon should always turn the same face to the 



ii-tb. It could be shown that there were many million chances to 



' in favour of this being due to some physical cause. The ordi- 



11 V theory of gravitation failed to explain the cause. Everyone 



1.1 noticed this phenomenon, yet the explanation was never given 



U lately. It was HclmhoUz who sliowed that this was a conse- 



;.nce of ancient tides, and this simple and most satisfactory 



planation has been universally accepted." — A. T. C. 



[88] — Brain Teoubles. — The division of the brain into two parts 



will certainly not take in all the functions of the brain ; at least one 



more must be added. The division into a, involuntary motion, b, 



centres of reasoning, higher emotions, &c., cuts out entirely the 



function of voluntary motion presided over by the brain. Also the 



function of the cerebellum, that of co-ordination of muscular 



actions, or muscular sense, is left out, and is certainly important ; 



for a pigeon, having his cerebellum removed, cannot stand, but 



topples over, and although seeing a blow threatened, cannot avoid 



it. When lying down, it was not in a state of stupor. — P. H. 



^otfS on Sit anti .^nrnrt. 



At Gnosso, in Crete, Professor Stilman has excavated the 

 remains of what he believes to be the historical labyrinth famous 

 from the story of Theseus and the Minotaur. 



At Honolulu, a signal station in communication with the United 

 States Meteorological Bureau will be established on the volcano 

 Eilauea, and a series of observations will be taken. 



The Sunday Society. — The twenty-sixth Sunday Art Exhibition 

 of the society was opened on Sunday, Dec. IS, at the Hanover 

 Gallery, from half-past one tdl four o'clock, when there was an 

 attendance of 512, the admission being by ticket. 



Db. Schondorff has constructed a safety lamp which can only be 

 opened with the help of a strong magnet. A lever presses against 

 a toothed wheel, which allows or prevents the movement of the 

 screw fastening the glass door-holder to the socket. The lever 

 must be moved in order to open the lamp, and this is done by 

 means of a strong magnet. 



Bbcosch Pasha has succeeded in deciphering the Ethiopic inscrip- 

 tions of Meroe, the language of which resembles that of the 

 Ethiopic graffiti on the walls of Phila; and other Nubian temples. 

 He thmks that the language has some similarity to the pre-Semitic 

 Snmerian dialect of Southern Babylonia, and quotes in support of 

 this view words like sher, " King." 



A MOST remarkable discovery has been made in the Sweetwater 

 country, in Wyoming territory. It is a deposit of sulphuric acid in 

 its natural state. The odour, chemical action, and general appear- 

 ance of the stuff demonstrates it to be a pure quality of sulphuric 

 acid. The ground is impregnated over a large area — 100 acres or 

 more — and parties have filed claims upon it. 



A CONGRESS of experts has assembled at St. Petersburg to iiv- 

 quire into the evils caused by excessive drinking in Bussia. By an 

 overwhelming majority they hare advised a diminution in the num- 

 ber of public-houses ; while they also passed a resolution in favour 

 of vesting in the communal authorities the right of opening liquor- 

 shops under regulations to be determined by a sub-committee ap- 

 pointed for this purpose. — Frank Leslie's Magazine. 



The survey of Palestine east of the Jordan is proceeding 

 rapidly under the superintendence of Lieut. Condor. When he last 

 wrote, several hundreds of mUes had been measured with accai-acy, 

 atd a number of places having more or less modem names were 

 identified as those mentioned under different titles in ancient 

 luBtory. He discovered a great many cromlechs, or flat stones, sup- 

 ported like a table by others set on end. Not less than fifty of these 

 monuments were sketched in three days. Some of them had small 

 chambers near them from 3 ft. to 5 ft. long, and 3 ft. high, exca- 

 vated in detached cubes of rock 10 ft. to 15 ft. on each side. The 



interest in the work is increasing, and the result cannot fail to be 

 of great archajologioal importance. — Fraiik Leslie's ilagazine. 



A Simple Electrical Machine. — As a domestic electrical ex- 

 periment, few are simpler or more demonstrative than that of first 

 drying and warming a piece of paper, then smartly stroking it 

 with india-rubber and placing it against a wall, to which it electri- 

 cally adheres. Electric sparks may thus be obtained in the dark, 

 and a variety of other experiments performed. When the wind is 

 from the east, and dry, a small Leyden jar may be charged by 

 using a long strip of paper, equal in width to the outer coating, and 

 drawing this repeatedlj-, when excited, along the outside of the jar. 

 An improvement on this simple electrical material has recently 

 been made by Wiedemann. He takes Swedish filtering-paper (pro- 

 curable wherever chemical apparatus is sold), steeps it in a mixture 

 of equal volumes of nitric and sulphuric acid, then washes with 

 abundance of water, and dries it — the same process as mak in g gun- 

 cotton, into ^rhich the fibres of the paper are thus converted. It 

 is stated th.it with this gun-cotton paper, nearly all the stock ex- 

 periments of the static electrical machine may bo performed by 

 laying a sheet of it on waxed paper for insulation, and rubbing it 

 briskly. This was announced in the Comptes rendus of the French 

 Academy about the beginning of the year, but I have heard no more 

 of it since. As Christmas holidays are coming, I recommend it to 

 my juvenile readers, who may possibly be able to improve upon the 

 original suggestion by coating a fig-box, or other wooden cylinder, 

 with a non-conducting surface of gutta-percha varnish, or shellac, 

 or wax, then covering tliis with the prepared paper, and mounting 

 it like an ordinary old-fashioned electrical machine ; or by making 

 an electrophorns of this material. — W. Mattieu Williams, in Gentle- 

 mans Magazine. 



The Bpesting of Watee-pipes. — In a country like England 

 where the obstinate natives persist in the practice of burning their 

 fuel in a hole made in the wall, with a shaft rising perpendicularly 

 above it, in order that the greatest possible quantity of the heat of 

 combustion shall be devoted to warming the clouds, and the smallest 

 possible amount shall be radiated from only one side of the fire into 

 the apartment, anything like a severe frost becomes a national 

 calamity. Last winter, though far less severe than an average 

 winter in Germany or the United States, is made miserably memo- 

 rable by the domestic calamities connected with the bursting of 

 water-pipes, and is recorded in the household accounts of expendi- 

 ture for mending the same and repairing the damage done by the 

 general house-and-fumitnre-soaking. If English houses were 

 equally warmed throughout, as they are in other countries 

 where domestic civilisation has made some progress, the freezing 

 of any water-pipe inside would be impossible in any weather, 

 and all outside water-conveyance can be made underground. 

 But as the domestic fetish of the Englishman and English- 

 woman, the hole-in-the-wall " cheerful " fireplace, must be wor- 

 shipped ; as the fire-worshippers must continue to scorch their 

 noses while their backs are matriculating for lumbago ; as the 

 cheerfulness of the fetish must be maintained, and its devotees 

 must demonstrate that cheerfulness by staring vacantly at the 

 glowing coals which roast everything and everybody at one side of 

 the room, while the rest of the house is at the mercy of the ofttside 

 fluctuations of temperature ; as all this must go on for a generation 

 or so longer, in spite of Kyrle societies and smoke-abatement exhi- 

 bitions — some adaptation of water-pipes to our existing domestic 

 barbarism is very desirable. A very little geometry is required for 

 understanding that if a pipe of circular section be flattened in any 

 degree, its internal capacity must be proportionately lessened ; and 

 conversely, that a pipe thus flattened, or made of elliptical section, 

 may have its internal capacity enlarged by simply squeezing it out 

 towards the circular shape. Lead being flexible, a leaden pipe 

 made of elliptical section and filled with freezing water ^vill swell 

 out towards circular shape, and thus allow room for the expanded 

 ice without bursting. It is proposed that such pipes be 

 made and used, and I think the idea an excellent one 

 though plumbers are not likely to favour it, but their 

 disapproval should be a strong recommendation to the house- 

 holder who has to pay for mending ordinary pipes. I am told 

 that a patent has been secured, but do not know by whom, and as I 

 am going to suggest an infringement, he is entitled to any advertise- 

 ment this note may afford. I recommend all householders to save 

 their existing pipes by simply flattening them with a mallet, taking 

 care to place behind the part which is struck a flat piece of wood, 

 where the pipe rests upon rough brick-work. The freezing will 

 simply reverse the work of the mallet, and lead of good quality wiU 

 bear this double-bending. If freezing water were a rigid solid, the 

 transverse expansion of the cylinder of ice within the tube would be 

 proportionate to its diameter, and thus the elliptical form would be 

 maintained ; but freezing water is not a solid ; it exerts an equal 

 expansive pressure in all directions ; and the walls of the pipe being 

 equally pressed, give way in the direction of least resistance. — Ibid. 



