20 



POPULAE SCIENCE l^EWS. 



[February, 1888. 



Nature undoubtedly designed the normally erect 

 attitude to be attained by every perfect human 

 being; i.e., from a physical stand-point. Bad 

 positions in nursing children, and, during child- 

 hood, the permitting of crooked, unhealthy, and 

 ungraceful positions, on imperfect benches or 

 forms, and at different kinds of labor, settles the 

 question for them in after-life of an ungraceful, 

 consumptive figure, and heads bowed down in sor- 

 row. Let them early be taught the necessity of 

 proper positions at all kinds of work and under all 

 circumstances, and fewer crooked, ungainly forms 

 will be seen. I remember very well two men in 

 one of my former dwelling-places who were sin- 

 gularly marked by their respective avocations. 

 Both had a drooping right shoulder, caused by 

 their respective pursuits. One was a tinner; work- 

 ing his shears on a low bench caused his shoulder 

 to droop: while the other was a saloon keeper; 

 bending his form, with the right arm under the 

 counter, rinsing glasses, and reaching for bottles, 

 marked him in the same way. Both, when walk- 

 ing the streets, exhibited a similar droop of the 

 right shoulder, but from very different causes. 

 Another man had smoked cigars till quite a 

 respectable hole was left in the right-hand side of 

 his lips, from the pressure of the cigars while 

 smoking. That sign he will carry to his grave, 

 for the lips have been permanently moulded to the 

 figure. Injudicious and ambitious parents have 

 caused many a case of bow-legs by permitting baby 

 to stand up and bear his weight on his pretty little 

 cartilaginous bones before they were strong enough 

 to bear the load without bending. A great many 

 partially lop-sided heads are produced by too often 

 or too long nursing on a single arm, or by letting 

 baby sleep on the left or right arm almost wholly, 

 to the exclusion of the other. Very young chil- 

 dren, too, have been distorted for life by being per- 

 mitted or forced to bear burdens beyond their 

 ability to carry, or compelled to bend over in an 

 unhealthy position, at writing, wood-sawing, etc., 

 till irreparably deformed. 



But to return to the Tower of Pisa. A less 

 settled condition of the soil or an inadvertent 

 building of the foundation, with a slightly lower 

 incline on the defective side, was, perhaps, the 

 cause of the after-defective position ; nor have we 

 forgotten that some writers contend that it was 

 purposely inclined to its present angle while in 

 process of erection, but common sense never would 

 permit us to believe this part of its history. In the 

 plapt kingdom are many towers of Pisa, and we 

 will give an example of this law of erectitude aa 

 applied to plants. 



Here on the side-hill, river-bank, or on the 

 plateau, where existed a merely slight depression, 

 grows a tree whose radicle and plumule, in order 

 to preserve the line of erectitude, o)-, more properly, 

 to grow with its axis in the direct line of gravity, 

 has had to yield to the influence of a slightly dis- 

 ■ turbing cause on one side of its growth. The 

 primary effort at putting forth was unchecked ; but 

 as it reached the light and air, and had started at 

 an angle from the resting-place of the seed, there 

 must needs be some compensative force to over- 

 come this lack of early erectitude. Now look again 

 at the maturing plant or tree. From this lower 

 side it bends toward the opposite or rising side of 

 earth ; and to accommodate the tree or plant to its 

 first position, it becomes convex on the lower sideof 

 its trunk for some distance above the collet, — per- 

 haps two to four feet, or even more. In some cases 

 several compensating truncal curves succeed each 

 other in opposite directions, till the bulk of the top 

 is directly placed over the line of gravity or erec- 

 titude. Probably a large and extended limb has 

 been thrown above, to compensate for the antago- 



nistic curve in the base of the trunk. Now apply 

 what has been gained by a few observations of this 

 kind to a large scope of timber, and note your 

 surprise in not finding a perfectly straight tree, — 

 without any variation from its initial point of 

 growth. It is true of men as of trees, — more 

 are crooked than straight. To find a perfectly erect 

 man or tree is oftener an exception than a rule. 

 In the case of .some elms, sycamores, etc., it is often 

 a matter of astonishment how nature will throw 

 out on one side an immense pilaster or buttress 

 of root and trunk, to compensate for a defective 

 leaning or want of growth on the opposite side. 

 Often an instructive lesson can be gleaned by ob- 

 serving that nature sometimes so arranges the bulk 

 of a dissolving or soluble axis as to perfectly 

 accommodate the basal curvature and early lack of 

 erectitude. _ 



A BIT OF COAL. 

 In the course of a lecture given at Toynbee Hall, 

 a charitable institution founded for the benefit of 

 the poor inhabitants of the " East End" of London, 

 Professor Boyd Dawkins, speaking of "a bit of 

 coal," said that, besides the element of carbon, coal 

 had another important constituent in the form of 

 a resinous substance visible in shining patches on 

 any cross-section. To this element, which was 

 composed of the spores of plants allied in nature 

 to the club-mosses of the present day, were due 

 all the blazing properties of the coal; and the extra 

 quantity of gas existing in cannel coal was due to 

 the fact that it possessed a greater proportion of 

 the resinous component. From an examination 

 of a piece of coal it was possible to picture the 

 vegetation of the carboniferous period; and the 

 forests from which the coal-fields were accumu- 

 lated must be imagined as consisting largely of 

 trees closely akin to club-mosses, but immensely 

 greater in growth, of other kinds of coniferous 

 trees, and of enormous ferns. Every seam of coal 

 was found to rest upon a bed of some other sub- 

 stance, generally shale, traversed in all directions 

 by the roots of plants. This substratum was 

 clearly, therefore, the soil on which the coal-plants 

 grew, for all these roots could be identified with 

 the stems of the plants found in the overlying 

 strata. Upon a seam of coal there, generally was 

 found to rest a bed of shale or sandstone, which 

 was nothing more than a petrified mud-bank or 

 sand-bank, and in either case must have been 

 accumulated by the action of water. The coal- 

 seams were, therefore, at one time covered with 

 water, the inundation being accounted for by the 

 dropping from time to time of the surface of 

 growth. Of the time requii-ed for the accumula- 

 tion of any one coal-seam, the geologist could say 

 absolutely nothing. It was a noticeable fact that 

 the coal-fields of this country existed as a series of 

 isolated basins. How was this to be accounted 

 for? Taking a section of the strata from Man- 

 chester to Derby, it was found that at the Pennine 

 range the stretch of coal-measure rocks was inter- 

 rupted by the intrusion of the lower strata, but 

 resumed on the other side of the mountain chain. 

 As for every seam of coal occurring on one side of 

 the hills there was found an equivalent on the 

 other side, it was to be concluded that the coal- 

 seams had been at one time continuous. Convul- 

 sions had taken place in clearly defined lines, and 

 one of them could be traced through the south of 

 Ireland and Wales towards the south-east of Eng- 

 land. From this fact Professor Dawkins said that 

 he had no doubt that basins of coal-producing rocks 

 were to be found in the last-mentioned area; and, 

 in fact, an experimental search for one of them 

 was at that time proceeding at Dover. — English 

 Mechanic. 



SCIENTIFIC BREVITIES. 

 A Steel Bird's-Nest. — Near the town of So- 

 leure, in Switzerland, a bird's-nest was recently 

 found which was constructed entirely of the imper- 

 fect watch-springs thrown out from the workshops. 

 It has been deposited in the local museum. 



The Nearest Star. — The distances of the 

 stars are ascertained in the same manner as those 

 of the sun and planets; that is, by parallax. In- 

 stead, however, of taking two stations at different 

 parts of the earth's surface, and laying down a 

 base line between them, we take the diameter of 

 the earth's orbit, or 183,000,000 miles, as the base; 

 the observations being taken at intervals of six 

 months. Even with this immen,se line, however, 

 the parallax is so small that it can only be detected 

 by the most careful observations and accurate in- 

 struments. The parallax of about a dozen stars 

 has now been asceitained, and is found to vary 

 between 0.919 sec. and 0.046 sec. The .star o Cen- 

 tauri is the nearest to the earth, and its distance is 

 estimated at 20,496,000,000 miles; while the aver- 

 age distance of stars of the first magnitude is prob- 

 ably three or four times as great as this. 



A North-Carolina DrAMOND. — >Ir. G. F. 

 Kunz states that a diamond weighing 4^ carats or 

 873 milligrams was found on the Alfred Bright 

 farm in Dysartville, McDowell County, N.C., in 

 the summer of 1886. It is quite perfect, but not 

 pure white, having a faint grayish-green tint. In 

 form it is a distorted hexoctahedron, with partial 

 twinning. Its specific gravity is 3.549, and it 

 measures ten millimeters in length and seven mil- 

 limeters in width. None of the minerals ordina- 

 rily associated with the diamond were found at 

 the locality, and the opinion is expressed that the 

 diamond must therefore have been transported from 

 distant higher ground in the vicinity during a 

 heavy freshet. 



Varieties of Coke. — The difference of result 

 obtained by heating organic structures from ordi- 

 nary to high temperature, rapidly or slowly, to 

 expel volatilizable parts, is well shown in the dif- 

 ference in the structure of cokes produced from 

 ordinary bituminous coals in gas retorts, and that 

 from the same coal in coke ovens. Gas coke, which 

 is made by rapidly heating the coal, is in the form 

 of a spongy, porous mass, weak in structure, in- 

 sonorous, easily ignited, and having the appear- 

 ance of a mass from which bubbles of gaseous 

 matters have escaped. Oven coke, which is made 

 by heating comparatively large bodies of coal gradu- 

 ally and continuously for a long period, is of a 

 close-grained structure, capable of sustaining great 

 pressure or weight, and so compact and dense that 

 it is sonorous. This coke is far more difficult to 

 ignite than the gas coke. 



On the Behavior of Phosphorus, Arsenic, 

 AND Antimony at a White Heat. — Mensching 

 and Victor Meyer have obtained evidence that 

 phosphorus and arsenic suffer a marked loss of vapoi' 

 density at a red heat, and that at a white heat they 

 approximate the values Pj and ASj, although the 

 densities corresponding to these molecules have not 

 yet been observed. With regard to antimony, the 

 authors have succeeded in determining its hitherto 

 unknown vapor density, using a porcelain vessel. 

 This element behaves in an entirely different way 

 from phosphorus and arsenic, no molecular weight 

 corresponding to the formula Sb^ existing. On 

 passing into the state of vapor, which it does with 

 difficulty, it assumes at once a molecular condition 

 represented by a formula smaller than Sb^, and also 

 than Sbg; so that its actual molecular .size is either 

 Sb.2 or Sbj, but which of these has not yet been 

 determined, owing to the difficulties of obtaining a 

 normal antimony vapor having an invariable ex- 

 pansion-coefficient at this high temperature. 



