Vol. XXII. No. 8.J 



POPULAR SCIENCE l^EWS. 



121 



€l^c popular .Science i^etoiEC* 



Thje date of Aug. 22, for the meeting of 

 the American Association for the Advancement 

 of Science at Cleveland, has been changed bj' 

 the local committee to the 15th, on account of 

 another great gathering to take place there 

 that week. The special office and reception- 

 rooms of the Association will be at No. 407 

 Superior Street, next door to the Hollenden, 

 where will be the hotel headquarters. The 

 meetings will be held at the Central High 

 School building, on Wilson Avenue, where will 

 be the offices of the local committee and of the 

 l)ermancnt secretary during the week of the 

 meeting. 



The use of electric motors as a substitute 

 for the steam-engine is rapidly increasing. 

 In cities which are provided with an electric- 

 lighting plant, the dynamos can be used dur- 

 ing the daj- to furnish a current for operating 

 motors in workshops and small factories at a 

 less expense than that of a steam-engine. In 

 an adjoining city a large printing-office has 

 recently dispensed with a seven-horse power 

 engine and boiler, and substituted a Thomson- 

 Houston motor, which gives perfect satis- 

 faction, and is found to be less expensive than 

 the coal, water, and engineer's wages which 

 the engine required. In mldition, it is alwa^'s 

 ready for work niglit and day, and can be 

 started up at an}* time to fill an urgent or un- 

 expected order. While the steam-engine 

 would be more economical for heavy work 

 or a large manufactory, the advantages of 

 electricity as a source of power for small 

 establisiiments is undeniable ; and it will un- 

 doubtedly come into general use. 



A CASE of "mind-healing" in a suburban 

 city has latelj- attracted much attention, inas- 

 much as it resulted in the death of a mother 

 and infant. A relative who had charge of 

 the patient refused to call in medical assist- 

 ance at the critical period, but relied upon the 

 power of the will, with the fatal result above 

 noted. At the inquest it was proved that 

 with ordinary care the life of both mother and 

 child might have been saved. The " mind- 

 healer " was arrested, tried for manslaughter 

 — and acquitted. We suppose that the mo- 

 tives of a jury are past all finding out ; but it 

 is evident that the criminally foolish woman 

 was tried by " a jury of her peers," or else 

 a proper punishment would have been awarded 

 for her neglect of the most ordinary precau- 

 tions at a time when the best of care and 

 medical skill are pre-eminently necessary. 



The scientific knowledge of Congress was 

 recently illustrated in a bill which it passed, 

 appropriating a hundred and fifty thousand 

 dollars for the building of an air-ship. This 



"air-ship" was to be an immense chamber 

 or balloon of steel, from which the air was 

 to be exhausted, so that it should be buoyed 

 up by a force equal to the weight of the 

 air removed. Theoretically the scheme was 

 correct ; but the evident impossibility of 

 making such a steel vessel of a sufficient 

 strength to sustain the pressure of the atmos- 

 phere, — fifteen pounds to the square inch, — 

 and sufficiently light to float in the air, did 

 not occur to the lawgivers of the nation. 

 Fortunatel}' the bill did not pass to its final 

 stage, and will probably never be heard of 

 again, as a patent was refused the inventor, 

 for the reasons above mentioned. 



The story of the substitution of a rabbit's 

 eye in place of a diseased human optic has 

 been going the rounds of the papers once 

 more, and deserves correction. The facts 

 were simply, that a piece of the cornea, or 

 transparent portion, of a rabbit's eye was 

 grafted upon the cornea of a human eye, and 

 actually continued to live, and form a part of 

 it. The operation was a remarkable one, and 

 did not need the absurd and sensational ad- 

 ditions with which the newspaper reporters 

 embellished their accounts of it. 



A LAW has recently been enacted bj^ the 

 State of New York providing for the inflic- 

 tion of the death penalty by electricitj-. This 

 is a most commendable reform, which we hope 

 to see adopted by other States. The method 

 of execution by hanging is clumsy, barbarous, 

 and uncertain ; and the only possible excuse 

 for its continuance — the effect upon the 

 criminally-minded — is, we think, a mistaken 

 idea. The quiet and mysterious action of the 

 electric current would make even more impres- 

 sion upon the ignorant than the familiar rope 

 and scaffold. 



Professor C. E. Monkoe of the United 

 States Naval Academy finds (American Jour- 

 nal of Science) that when a disk of gun-cotton 

 is exploded upon an iron beam, the markings 

 produced bj- the explosion indicate the devel- 

 opment of successive waves of energy during 

 the continuance of the explosion. The obser- 

 vation is a most interesting one, and is to be 

 more thoroughly investigated. 



THE FUTURE OF CHEMISTRY. 

 In reviewing the progress of chemistry 

 during the last hundred years, the advance is 

 perhaps more evident than in any other branch 

 of science. Founded as chemistry is upon 

 the qualities and relations of matter, and deal- 

 ing with the phenomena of the reactions of its 

 different forms, — phenomena which are com- 

 plicated and mjsterious to the highest degree, 

 — it requires, for their proper observation and 

 interpretation, elaborate and costly apparatus, 

 as well as an observer with exceptional mental 

 ability. We may smile at the crude ideas 

 of phlogiston, "fixed" or "vital air," etc., 

 of the last century, but they were an honest 



attempt on the part of the earlier chemists to 

 formulate the facts observed by them into a 

 definite theory ; and, with the crude and clumsy 

 appliances at their command, it is greatly to 

 their credit that their errors were so few in 

 number. What modern chemist would be 

 willing to undertake an investigation of the 

 nature and properties of an unknown gas, for 

 instance, unprovided with a chemical balance 

 or the modern forms of glass and platinum ap- 

 paratus ? Most modern kitchens would supply 

 a better assortment of utensils for such work 

 than could be found in the laboratories of 

 Priestley, Cavendish, Scheele, or Lavoisier: 

 but the phenomena were observed and recorded 

 by them with remarkable accuracy ; and al- 

 though their theories of their cause were defec- 

 tive, the}- were none the less the foundation 

 on which the present science is based. 



The modern chemical philosophy is based 

 upon a mass of observations and investigations 

 by chemists in all parts of the world, requir- 

 ing an amount of labor and perseverance of 

 which few persons have any conception. Two 

 discoveries stand out prominently above the 

 rest, — that of the nature of combustion by 

 Lavoisier, and the idea of atomic weights 

 or combining numbers, first determined by 

 Dalton. But these would have been of but 

 little importance without the additional and 

 confirmatory work accomplished by the host 

 of patient workers whose names have remained 

 comparatively unknown. 



What has bee/i accomplished by chemistry 

 in the past is well known, aiid it is a record 

 of which all chemists may well be proud. A 

 rational and comprehensive theory of matter 

 and its laws has been evolved, and the prac- 

 tical applications of the science have affected 

 every branch of industry. Nor do we see any 

 reason why the coming century should not 

 show still greater progress. On the side of 

 theory there is the promise of a rich field for 

 discovery hitherto unworked in investigating 

 the true nature of the so-called elements, and 

 the remarkable connection between their 

 atomic v; eights and their chemical and physical 

 properties. The more this subject is studied, 

 the more probable it seems, that, if all forms 

 of matter are not different varieties of one 

 primitive substance, at least the elementary 

 bodies are much more closely connected with 

 each other than has hitherto been considered 

 possible. No One can examine those wonder- 

 ful diagrams showing the gradual changes in 

 the properties of the elementary bodies with 

 the increasing atomic weight, without feeling 

 that one of the sublimest mysteries of the 

 universe is on the point of being revealed. 

 The fortunate student who first finds the key 

 to the mystery, and solves this modern riddle 

 of the Sphinx, will do for chemistry what 

 Darwin has done for biolog}', and show that 

 the great law of evolution applies to inorganic 

 as well as organized living matter. 



Innumerable other problems are still wait- 

 ing solution, — the actual cause of isomerism, 

 allotropism, and dimorphism ; the forces 

 which produce crystallization ; and the con- 



