184 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[Aug. 29, 1884. 



iHigfrllanca* 



The Lawrence American of July 9 says ; — For more than ten 

 days past the entire power for running not only the large Hoe 

 press upon which tliis paper is printed, but for the cylinder and 

 job presses of tho entire printing establishment, has been from 

 electricity coming over a single wire from the dynamos, four blocks 

 away. 



The National Health Society have issued another of their 

 admirable, timely little pamphlets, entitled " How to Prevent and 

 Oppose the Cholera." Charitable people might make infinitely 

 worse use of their money than by circulating this tract widely in 

 poor and crowded neighbourhoods, which could be done at a very 

 small cost. 



Professoe Hall, of tho United States Naval Observatory at 

 Washington, calls attention (in No. 2,602 of the Astrortomische 

 Nachrichten) to the necessity for a uniform catalogue of clock stars 

 for general use. He suggests that it should be sufficiently elaborate 

 to enable the apparent position of a star to be interpolated with 

 ease and certainty for any given time. Its cost ought not to be 

 great. 



The following telegram from St. Petersburg appeared in Tuesday's 

 Statidard : — " The list of modern books which, according to the 

 Decree of the 5th of January, are not to be allowed in the reading- 

 rooms and public libraries of Russia, includes translations of works 

 by Agassiz, Bagehot, Huxlej', Zola, Lassalle, Lubbock, Lecky, Louis 

 Blane, Lewes, Lyall, Marx, Mill, Beclus, Adam Smith's ' Wealth of 

 Nations,' and ' Theory of Moral Sentiments,' and Herbert Spencer's 

 ■works." 



The Smoke Nuisance :n Glasgow. — At a meeting of the Town 

 Council of Glasgow, held recently, the chief constable stated 

 that the number of observations of chimney-stacks made by 

 the police in Glasgow during the year 1883 was 1,312 ; that in 132 

 cases reports were made to the Procurator-Fiscal ; that in 70 of 

 those cases no proceedings were taken ; and that in 25 cases the 

 parties were tried and acquitted, while in 37 cases the parties were 

 convicted. 



The total cost of the Greely relief expedition is estimated by the 

 officials of the Navy Department at about £140,000. The original 

 estimate was £100,000. Of the amount expended, £50,000 was for 

 supplies and £02,000 was for the purchase and repair of the 

 steamships Bear and Thetis. The repairs made to the Alert, lent 

 by the British Government, involved a cost of £3,033. Instru- 

 ments for making observations cost £5,000, and the coaling charges 

 came to £3,000. 



The Paxama Canal. — Considerable deliveries of plant have still 

 to be made in connection with the Panama Canal works. Among 

 this plant may be mentioned 1,500 trucks, 28 locomotives, 23 

 dredgers, 3 hopper barges, 25 portable steam-engines, 20 steam 

 navvies, &c. Altogether plant has been ordered to the aggregate 

 value of £1,400,000. The aggregate quantity of earth which has 

 to be removed to render the canal available for navigation is 

 120,000,000 cubic metres. Two-thurds of the earth thus to be 

 excavated will be removed in a dry state, and the balance of one- 

 third will be dredged. 



We regret to announce that Mr. Henry George Bohn, the pub- 

 lisher, died at his residence, North-end House, Twickenham, on 

 Friday, at the advanced age of eighty-eight. The son of a London 

 bookseller, he was bom in January, 170G, and, after completing his 

 education, entered his father's business, where he soon acquired a 

 knowledge of books which made him one of the best bibliographers 

 of the age. In 1831 he commenced business on his own account, 

 and it is impossible to estimate too highly the services he rendered 

 to the more intelligent portion of the community by republishing, 

 at a cheap rate, a vast number of the most valuable works in 

 literature, science, philosophy', history, biography, topography, 

 archa;oIogy, theology, natural history, poetry, art, and fiction. He 

 retired from business some years since, when the whole of his stock 

 passed into the hands of Messrs. George Bell & Sons. 



A great stir is being made about tho recent application at Berlin 

 of a dynamo machine to operate about forty telegraph circuits. It 

 appears to be regarded as a new and important departure. Pre- 

 sumably, sight is lost of the fact that thirteen years ago a gramme 

 dynamo was in use in Telegraph-street supplying the current 

 necessary for forty, and sometimes upwards of sixty, circuits, and 

 was only allowed to pass out of use because a workman ran his 

 file over the insulation, and so spoiled the machine. But what 

 purpose can be served by such an experiment .'' It seems something 

 like using a steam-hammer to crack a filbert. Thirty to forty 

 London wires have been worked for months together from fifteen 

 quart bichromate cells. The objection to vporking a great number 

 of circuits from one source is that should that source fail, if only 

 for two minutes, the whole of those circuits are stopped for a 



similar time, and the stoppage of a circuit for even two minntes is 

 often a serious matter. 



At this season alarm is expressed at the diminution of the water- 

 supply of Paris, and the municipal bodies are in a hurry to deal 

 with the question forthwith every year. But it is forgotten as soon 

 as the drought is at an end. The volume of water in the reservoirs 

 is again reported very low, and the waterworks are unable to yield 

 at the present moment more than 378,000 cubic metres per day, 

 which is scarcely half the quantity considered necessary for the 

 supply of Paris. In many quarters of Paris there is not a dwell- 

 ing supplied with water. Water-closets, properly so called, are 

 only to be found in the newest houses ; and, as everybody knows, 

 the system of sewage is behind the age, every Paris house being 

 still supplied with a cesspool, which is emptied about once a year, 

 and from which, from year's end to year's end, noxious gases 

 ascend into the apartments, rendering, a Times correspondent says, 

 the French metropolis a hotbed of typhoid fever. 



Subsidence in Cheshike. — The demand for salt is now so great 

 that the subsidences usually to be observed in the great Cheshire 

 salt-fields are more apparent than ever, particularly at Korthwich. 

 These culminated recently in the settUng down of a vast body of 

 earth, upon which a boy in charge of a horse was standing. Both 

 boy and horse were engulfed, and would have been killed but for 

 the assistance speedily rendered by onlookers. In order to form 

 some sort of an estimate of the quantity of brine extracted at 

 Northwich and AVinsford, it may be stated that the returns made 

 up for last month show that the exports of salt were 127,998 tons, 

 against 103,878 tons for July last year. Of this large quantity the 

 East Indies took no less than 46,431 tons, and the United States 

 17,552 tons. The exports for July were, with one exception, the 

 heaviest for any corresponding month for the past seven years. 



CuuscH-BELLS AND TarNDEKSTORMs. — On July 5 last a violent 

 thunderstorm, lasting three hours, occurred near Saiutes, in the 

 south-west of France. A poplar about sixty feet high and twenty 

 inches in diameter at the foot was cut off quite clean and level, six 

 feet above the ground. The rest of the tree was splintered into 

 thousands of fragments, which resembled a wood-cutter's "waste," 

 the largest weighing about thirty pounds, and the smallest mere chips. 

 These lay evenly all round in a circle to a distance of 100 yards from 

 the trunk. In that district the funny old superstition of ringing the 

 church-bells during a thunderstorm as a lightning protector survives, 

 and the dutiful old sacristan was ringing away as hard as he could 

 at three o'clock in the morning, when, the steeple being about 300 

 yards from the poplar-tree, he was knocked down by the shock. 

 Heeiring the bells stop, the village population thought he was 

 killed, and turned out in a body to find him more frightened than 

 hurt. — La Constitution (of Cognac), July 11, 1884. 



The Patent Office Repoet. — The first report of the Comp- 

 troller General of Patents, &c., under the new law has been 

 issued. The most striking fact of the report is the record of the 

 sudden pressure thrown upon the Patent Office during the first 

 month of the year-, when cheap patents became available. The 

 applications during January numbered 2,499 ; whereas the previous 

 average for the month was about 500. Not only was the number 

 of applications increased fivefold, but the work on them was much 

 heavier ; for the provisional specifications were not merely pigeon- 

 holed, as formerly, but were all examined, and in many instances 

 amendments were introduced at the suggestion or by the requii-e- 

 ment of the examiners. Dm-ing the four months covered by the 

 report the total number of applications made was 7,060. The 

 expectations of those who imagined that the new law would 

 dispense vrith agents are not justified by the facts j for 72 per 

 cent, of the applications still pass through the hands of patent 

 agents. 



Solar Heat and Weather Change. — Mr. Slack writes on 

 Saturday, Aug. 23 : — " A black bulb vacuum thermometer, placed 

 on the ground in a shallow box fiUed with cotton-wool, and black 

 cotton-velvet under the bulb, registered 125° F. at lOh. 27m. a.m. 

 A sensitive spiral thermometer, hung against a post of dark purple 

 colour, rose a few minutes earlier to 104". At llh. 9m., B.B. 140° ; 

 llh. 42m., S.T. 112°, and at llh. 45m., 114°; 12h. 28m., B.B. 149°; 

 12h. 31m., S.T. 117°; Ih. 2m., B.B. 150^- During this time a cool 

 easterly wind was blowing. B.B. was in a sheltered place ; S.T. 

 more exposed. The two thermometers were then placed together 

 on the cotton-wool and velvet, and at Ih. 40m. B.B. was at 152j°, 

 and ST. 126°. On Sunday, the 24th, at 12h. 35m., B.B. 143°, 

 S.T. 116°. At 1 o'clock, B.B. 145°, S.T. 118°; Ih. 40m., B.B. 152° 

 S.T. 123° ; a cool wind was blowing. On the 23rd, at Ih. 54m., the 

 temperature in shade was 75° with dry bulb of hygrometer, and 

 60° wet one. At Ih. 40m., on 24th, the two bulbs stood at 75° and 

 65°. On the 25th the weather changed, and at Ih. 15m. the two 

 bulbs showed 62° and 60°. Ashdown Cottage, where the observa- 

 tions were made, is on the north slope of the Ashdown Forest 

 range, and 406 feet above sea-level." 



