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SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XV No. 363 



SCIENCE; 



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Vol. XV. 



NEW YORK, January 17, 1890. 



No. 363 



CONTENTS 



The Edison Electric Light Sta- 

 tion IN Brooklyn 36 



The Basin of the Kongo 36 



Notes and News 38 



The Waitomo Caves, New Zeal- 

 and 42 



The Wenstrom Dynamo 4z 



A New Use for the Phonograph 43 



Health Matters. 



Hallucinations in Alcoholism 43 



The Sense of Smell 44 



Neutralization of the Bacillus of 



Tetanus. . . 

 Boxing the Ea 



i and its Results 



Book-Reviews. 



First Lessons in Political Economy 45 



Among the Publishers 45 



Letters to the Editor. 



A New Telephone Invention R. 46 

 A Peculiar Pipe from the Susque- 

 hanna Harvey E. Bashore 47 

 Soils and Alkali 



H. E. Stockbridge 47 



Influenza E. IV. Greenough 48 



Notes. 

 A New Electric Motor. 



THE WAITOMO CAVES, NEW ZEALAND. 



In a report to the Surveyor-General of New Zealand, Mr. 

 Thomas Humphries gives an interesting description of a visit 

 which he and a small party made in June last to the Waitomo 

 caves, King Country, in the North Island of New Zealand. The 

 Waitomo River, a tributary of the Waipa, which passes through 

 these caves, lies about eighty-five miles south of Auckland in a 

 direct line, though it is about twenty miles further by rail and road. 

 The caves are about ten miles from Otorohanga railway station. 

 The country around is undulating. A quarter of a mile before the 

 caves are reached, the Waitomo, of about twenty feet in width, 

 is seen emerging from the side of a hill, under which it has mean- 

 dered through limestone caverns of various sizes for about twenty 

 chains. A light canoe can be taken along the river through the 

 caves to within a few chains of its egress, where further progress 

 is barred by the roof coming down to the water. 



At the entrance to the cavern the stream is eight feet deep. The 

 natives have never had the courage to enter. The entrance to the 

 cave, thirty feet wide and twenty feet high, is in the face of .a cliff. 

 It is beautifully arched, with numerous moss and lichen-covered 

 stalactites. In a canoe the visitor is taken in, ninety feet from the 

 entrance, and landed on a silt-covered beach. "By the aid of 

 candles, for all is now dark, he finds himself among ponderous 

 stalactites, three to six feet thick, reaching from the roof, twenty 

 feet high, to within a foot of the ground. Everywhere, all over the 

 extensive and intricate caverns, are seen stalactites and stalagmites 

 of immense size, in vast numbers, with marvellous beauty of form 



and color. At one place the dark vault was studded with thou- 

 sands of glow-worms, giving the vault the appearance of a starlit 

 sky. 



Passing down the left bank of the stream for one hundred and 

 forty feet, over a large deposit left by floods, the party crossed it 

 by means of a foot-bridge. From the entrance to the bridge the 

 cavern averages fifty feet broad, and from twenty to thirty feet 

 high. After crossing the bridge, a sharp turn to the right is made 

 up a steep incline for a distance of seventy feet, to the foot of a 

 ten-foot ladder, which leads to a narrow passage four feet wide. and 

 fifteen feet high, the entrance to the " Grand Cavern." Here is 

 the bottom of the "well," a narrow shaft running up to another 

 series of caves over the lower ones, where it is again met with in 

 the gallery above. The well is four feet across, perfectly true, as 

 if made by human hands, and its sides beautifully marked with 

 horizontal streaks, formed of laminated lime-stone. In the Grand 

 Cavern is an immense mound of material evidently fallen from the 

 roof. 



Beyond the Grand Cavern the roof rises and forms two domes, 

 one fifty feet high. High up, forty feet, is the entrance to another 

 cavern. Beyond the dome there is a sudden fall, the roof lowering 

 so much that the visitor has to stoop. The length of the Grand 

 Cavern, at the end of which the stream is again met with, is two 

 hundred and fifty feet. It varies in width from fifteen to forty feet, 

 and from twenty to fifty feet in height. Up to this point the color 

 is a dull brown and a light yellow; but in the upper galleries, thirty 

 feet above, there are alabaster and Parian-marble-like scenes of 

 unsurpassed loveliness. 



Twenty feet above the Grand Gallery is the " Organ Gallery," 

 so-called from the appearance of the great stalagmitic mass one 

 hundred'and fifty feet from its entrance, rising tier upon tier, like 

 the front of an organ with marble pipes. From the Grand Gallery 

 the Main Gallery above is reached by a twenty-five-foot ladder, 

 and sixty feet along it the " well " is reached. Here it is twelve 

 feet in diameter, with smooth sides of hard limestone, and the 

 sound of moving water below. This is forty-five feet above where 

 it was first seen. Fifty feet along from the upper well i's a " fairy 

 grotto," and through an archway thirty feet in length the " Ban- 

 quet Chamber " is reached, where the surveyor and his friends 

 .found a hot dinner had been provided by the natives who own the 

 caves. At the end of this chamber is the White Terrace, a stalag- 

 mitic mass rising in a series of terraces. From this the upper 

 entrance to the caves is reached, high in a wooded cliff, sixty feet 

 above and directly over the lower entrance. Mr. Humphries de- 

 scribes in glowing terms other galleries and caves, but this may 

 suffice to show, that, notwithstanding the destruction of the Roto- 

 mahana Teri"aces, New Zealand has still plenty of wonders. 



THE WENSTROM DYNAMO. 



Some months ago a description and illustrations of the Wens- 

 trom dynamo were given in these columns. A dynamo of this 

 make was recently sent to the electrical testing bureau of the Johns 

 Hopkins University, where it was submitted to a series of tests, 

 the results of which are given below, under the signatures of Drs. 

 G. A. Liebig, Louis Duncan, and W. F. Hasson. It may be men- 

 tioned here that the dynamo tested was designed to give an output 

 of 400 ampdres, at no volts, running at a speed of 500 revolutions 

 per minute; while the speed under which the tests were made was 

 only 330 revolutions per minute. 



" The dynamo electric machine sent to us for examination, a 

 report of which is contained in the following pages, was described 

 by the manufacturers as an 8oo- light dynamo, and was stated to 

 absorb energy, when doing full duty, at the rate of about sixty- 

 horse-power. 



" Having our source of motive power and testing apparatus 

 already in place for the purpose of conducting some experi- 

 ments on other dynamos, the following tests were made (through 

 the kindness of Mr. F. Hambleton, who consented to allow the 

 bureau the use of a part of the works under his charge), at the 

 plant of the Consolidated Gas Company of this city [Baltimore]. 



" Here we had set up an Armington & Sims engine of about 

 seventy-horse power capacity ; belted to which was a Tatham 



