imU 

 .'oiiiiiu 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



756 



rent, and reach the higher, the direction of 

 the body's motion would give us that of 

 the wind above. Human strength cannot 

 perform this experiment, but it has never- 

 theless been made. Ashes have been shot 

 through the lower current by volcanoes, and, 

 from the places where they have subsequent- 

 ly fallen, the direction of the wind which 

 carried them has been inferred. Professor 

 Dove, who has so enriched the knowledge 

 of the age by his researches in meteorology, 

 cites the following instance : " On the night 

 of April 30 explosions like those of heavy 

 artillery were heard at Barbadoes, so that 

 the garrison at Fort St. Anne remained all 

 night under arms. On May 1, at daybreak, 

 the eastern portion of the horizon appeared 

 clear, while the rest of the firmament was 

 covered by a black cloud, which soon extend- 

 ed to the east, quenched the light there, and 

 at length produced a darkness so intense 

 that the windows in the rooms could not be 

 discerned. A shower of ashes descended. 

 Whence came these ashes? From the direc- 

 tion of the wind we should infer that they 

 came from the Azores; they came, however, 

 from the volcano Morne Garou in St. Vin- 

 cent, which lies about 100 miles west of 

 Barbadoes. The ashes had been cast into 

 the current of the upper trade." TYNDALL 

 Heat a Mode of Motion, lect. 8, p. 209. (A., 

 1900.) 



3744. WINE, ADULTERATION OF 



Connoisseur Demands Impossible Trans- 

 parency Use and Effect of Mineral Acids 

 An Imperial Martyr. The wine-merchants 

 are . . . the victims of their customers, who 

 demand an amount of transparency that is 

 simply impossible as a permanent condition 

 of unsophisticated grape wine. To anybody 

 who has any knowledge of the chemistry of 

 wine nothing can be more ludicrous than 

 the antics of the pretending connoisseur of 

 wine who holds his glass up to the light, 

 shuts one eye (even at the stage before 

 double vision commences), and admires the 

 brilliancy of the liquid, this very brilliancy 

 being, in nineteen samples out of twenty, 

 the evidence of adulteration, cookery, or so- 

 phistication of some kind. Genuine wine 

 made from pure grape- juice without chem- 

 ical manipulation is a liquid that is never 

 reliably clear. . . . Partial precipita- 

 tion, sufficient to produce opalescence, is 

 continually taking place, and therefore the 

 unnatural brilliancy demanded is obtained 

 by substituting the natural and whole- 

 some tartrate by salts of mineral acids, 

 and even by the free mineral acid itself. At 

 one time I deemed- this latter adulteration 

 impossible, but have been convinced by direct 

 examination of samples of high-priced (mark 

 this, not cheap) dry sherries that they con- 

 tained free sulfuric and sulfurous acid. . . . 

 But what is the effect of such free mineral 

 acid on the drinker of the wine? If he is 

 in any degree predisposed to gout, rheuma- 

 tism, stone, or any of the lithic-acid dis- 



eases, his life is sacrificed, with preceding 

 tortures of the most horrible kind. It has 

 been stated, and probably with truth, that 

 the late Emperor Napoleon III. drank dry 

 sherry, and was a martyr of this kind. 

 WILLIAMS Chemistry of Cookery, ch. 16, p. 

 274. (A., 1900.) 



3745. 



Sulfuric Replaces 



Tartaric Acid A Clergyman's Costly Error. 

 The brilliancy thus obtained [by fining 

 with sulfate of lime] is not lost by age or 

 variations of temperature, and the dry sher- 

 ries thus cooked are preferred by English 

 wine-drinkers. 



The sulfate of potash which, by the action 

 of sulfate of lime, is made to replace bitar- 

 trate, is so readily soluble that neither 

 changes of temperature nor increase of al- 

 cohol, due to further fermentation, will 

 throw it down; and thus the wine-maker 

 and wine-merchant, without any guilty in- 

 tent, and ignorant of what he is really do ing, 

 sophisticates the wine, alters its essential 

 composition, and adds an impurity in doing 

 what he supposes to be a mere clarification 

 or removal of impurities. . . . 



So far, the wine-merchant ; but how about 

 the consumer? Simply that the substitu- 

 tion of a mineral acid the sulfuric for a 

 vegetable acid (the tartaric) supplies him 

 with a precipitant of lithic acid in his own 

 body; that is, provides him with the source 

 of gout, rheumatism, gravel, stone, etc., with 

 which English wine-drinkers are proverbial- 

 ly tortured. 



I am the more urgent in propounding this 

 view of the subject because I see plainly 

 that not only the patients, but too common- 

 ly their medical advisers, do not understand 

 it. W T hen I was in the midst of these ex- 

 periments I called upon a clerical neighbor, 

 and found him in his study with his foot on 

 a pillow, and groaning with gout. A decan- 

 ter of pale, choice, very dry sherry was on 

 the table. He poured out a glass for me 

 and another for himself. I tasted it, and 

 then perpetrated the unheard-of rudeness of 

 denouncing the wine for which my host had 

 paid so high a price. He knew a little 

 chemistry, and I accordingly went home 

 forthwith, brought back some chlorid of 

 barium, added it to his choice sherry, and 

 showed him a precipitate which made him 

 shudder. He drank no more dry sherry, and 

 has had no serious relapse of gout. WILL- 

 IAMS Chemistry of Cookery, ch. 16, p. 278. 

 (A., 1900.) 



3746. WINGS OF FLYING-FISH 

 REALLY FINS Different Organs ivith Simi- 

 lar Function. When we speak of the flight 

 of birds, of insects, of fishes, of bats, etc., 

 and designate their locomotive organs indis- 

 criminately as wings, it is evident that the 

 character of the motion, and not the special 

 structure of the organs, has determined our 

 nomenclature. We are influenced by the 

 same consideration when we give the name 

 of " fins " to the organs of all animals which 



