Vol. XXIII. No. S.] 



POPULAR SCIENCE NEWS. 



121 



8tje, Popular Science I^ews. 



BOSTON, AUGUST i, 18S9. 



AUSTIN p. NICHOLS, S.B., . 

 WILLIAM J. ROLFE, Litt.D., 



.... Editor. 

 Associate Editor. 



The thirty-eighth meeting of the American 



Association for the Advancement of Science 

 will be held at Toronto, Ont., beginning on 

 Tuesday, August 27, 1889. On August 28, 

 the first general session of the meeting will 

 begin at 10 o'clock in the forenoon. After 

 the adjournment of the general session, the 

 several sections will organize. In the after- 

 noon, the vice-presidents will give their 

 addresses before their respective sections ; 

 and in the evening there will be a general 

 session, when the retiring president. Major 

 J. W. Powell, will deliver his address. The 

 sessions will continue until the Tuesday even- 

 ing following, and on Wednesday morning, 

 September 4, a meeting of the council will 

 be held. Saturday, August 31, will be given 

 to exclusions. The meeting will close with 

 excursions extending to September 7. 



4V» 



An mnisual amount of nonsense under the 

 guise of scientific discovery has been inflicted 

 upon the public during the past month. To 

 begin with, the old familiar absurdity of 

 burning water has been resurrected, and a 

 leading technical journal gives considerable 

 space to the description of an invention by 

 which water is to be dissociated into its ele- 

 mentary gases, and these gases to be burned, 

 thus producing an oxyhydrogen flame at a 

 small cost. This ancient idea has been 

 reluted so many times that it would seem 

 almost imnecessarj' to say that the process is 

 a mathematical impossibility, and that exactly 

 as much heat will be absorbed in dissociating 

 the atoms of hydrogen and oxygen in the 

 water, as will be produced by their subse- 

 quent combustion. The onlv remarkable 

 thing about the alleged discovery is that it 

 should be endorsed by a usually reliable 



teclmical journal. 



1»» 



An attempt at accomplishing another im- 

 possibility in the shape of a navigable bal- 

 loon, or ail-ship, was also made about the 

 middle of the month. The inventor of the 

 air-ship, after a trial in calm weather, in 

 which he succeeded in partially directing its 

 course,^a feat often accomplished before, — 

 started ofl' on a longer trip, and, up to the 

 time of writing, has not been heard from, 

 altliough a balloon supposed to be the same 

 one has been seen floating in the ocean. 

 The immense size of a balloon, and the 

 resistance it otters to the weakest air-current, 

 precludes the possibility of directing its 

 course by any form of power which we can 

 produce. As a writer on the subject has 

 aptly said, "we might as well try to fire a 

 soap-bubble out of a cannon." 



The inventor ot anotlier "air-ship," having 

 failed to obtain a government appropriation 

 for the purpose of constructing it, although 

 the bill actually did pass the House of Repre- 

 sentatives, has issued an appeal for a grand 

 public subscription of $250,000 in shares of 

 one dollar each. This air-ship is to be an 

 immense hollow vessel constructed of thin 

 steel plates, from the interior of which the air 

 is to be exhausted, the idea being that the dif- 

 ference between the weight of the air-ship 

 and the air that it displaces will cause it to 

 rise with a heavy load. This is scientifically 

 correct, but the practical difficulties in the 

 construction of such a steel balldon are, we 

 think, insurmountable, and, in any case, the 

 same difficulties would be met with, in pro- 

 pelling it against a current of air, as with an 

 ordinary balloon. We can recommend the 

 stock as an investment to those persons who 

 are tired of waiting for Mr. Keelev's motor to 

 start on its c.ireer of glory, but do not advise 

 them to expect any immediate declaration of 

 dividends. 



Still another alleged discovery, only 

 worthy of notice from the previously high 

 scientific reputation of its author, is that of 

 Dr. Bhown-Se<^.uakd, who is said to have 

 claimed in a paper read before the Paris 

 Societ}- of Biology, that, by injecting into 

 the veins of an aged or infirm person, a secre- 

 tion obtained from certain glands of recently 

 killed animals, strength and vitality can be 

 restored and youth renewed, thus realizing 

 the ancient fable of the magic fountain. The 

 results of an experiment upon himself were, 

 he said, most successful. We are in doubt 

 whether to take the report seriously, or as 

 one of the numerous newspaper hoaxes which 

 are so frequently perpetrated upon the public. 

 If, however. Dr. BKowN-SEcy.iARD really did 

 make any such ridiculous statements, it would 

 only show that the eflect of his injection was 

 to produce, not a renewal of youth, but a 

 state of second childhood. Life has been 

 called "a highly contagious and invariably 

 fatal disease," and we do not believe that 

 BnowN-SEquARD or anybody else will ever 

 discover any satisfactory "treatment" for it. 



y\N article in the June number, in which it 

 was held that the regulation of sanitarv mat- 

 ters was not a proper function of government, 

 seems to have been considered by several of 

 our readers as an attack upon the entire sys- 

 tem of modern sanitary science. Nothing 

 could have been farther from the intention of 

 the writer of the article. The decrease in the 

 death-rate and the in.creased average length of 

 life is sufficient proof of the value of the 

 modern investigations and improvements in 

 that branch of knowledge, but the best means 

 of applying and using the knowledge is a 

 point upon which there may well be a difler- 

 ence of opinion. 



The latest developnient in the "nickel and 

 slot" machines is shown at the Paris Exhibi- 

 tion, where the passer-bj- drops in his coin, 

 takes a seat in a chair for a few minutes, and 

 shortly leceives a photographic picture of 

 himself, completely finished. The duration 

 of the exposure is indicated to him by a 

 revolving index, and a conspicuous placard 

 admonishes him to- "look pleasant." The 

 machine performs all the operations automat- 

 ically, and is said to be a marvel of ingenuity. 



The recent discovery of a new element 

 occurring with the metals nickel and cobalt, 

 by Kuuss and Schmidt, is disputed by 

 Fleitmann, who has analyzed specimens of 

 the above metals and found nothing but a 

 small amount of accidental impinity. The 

 question thus remains unsettled, but we think 

 the. weight of the evidence is still in favor of 

 the truth of the original discovery. 



One of the greatest literary works of mod- 

 ern times is the new dictionary of the English 

 language now in course of publication by the 

 Century Company of New York. It will be 

 much more comprehensive and complete 

 than any dictionary hitherto published, and is 

 intended to include every word that can in 

 any sense be regarded as belonging to the 

 English language. It is edited under the 

 supervision of Professor Whitney, of Yale 

 University, with the aid of a large number of 

 associates, all prominent specialists in litera- 

 ture, science, and the arts. The first part has 

 recently been issued, and bears evidence of the 

 immense amount of care and thought which 

 has been expended upon it. The complete 

 work will be indispensable to everyone desir- 

 ing a thorough acquaintance with our mother- 

 tongue. 



THE HEAT. 



In the New England states, and, in fact, in 

 the greater part of the country, there is a 

 period of about three month.s — from the 1 5th 

 of June to the 15th of September — when 

 excessively warm weather may be expected, 

 and "hot spells," when the' temperature rises 

 to between 90° and 100°, are of common 

 occurrence ; fortunately, however, interspersed 

 with cooler periods, and, in localities near 

 the sea-coast, tempered almost daily b\' a 

 current of cooler air from the ocean — the 

 much maligned east-wind of winter and early 

 spring. 



The original source of the summer's heat is 

 the sun, but many local causes tend to modify 

 and vary the action. The earth is really 

 farther from the sun in summer than in win- 

 ter, so that the warm weather does 'not 

 depend upon the greater proximity of the 

 source of heat. It is due to tiie fact that in 

 summer the northern hemisphere is turned 

 more directly towards the sun, so that it 

 receives its rays in a more vertical direction, 



