458 



SCIENTIFIC NEV/S. 



[May iS, iS 



perience to bring out the defects of the system, and to 

 stimulate inventors to devise improvements. 



Beyond a few evanescent schemes in connection with 

 primary batteries, the days of juggling with shares in 

 Electric Light Companies may happily be said to be over, 

 and the rival firms have settled down in earnest and are 

 now fairly competing on the merits of their work. By 

 some the progress may be considered slow, but if we re. 

 fleet that it is only during the last ten years that electric 

 lighting has been sufficiently developed to be of use com- 

 mercially there need be no surprise. On the contrary, we 

 think that the improvements have been great and impor- 

 tant, not only in dynamos and accumulators, but in the 

 many engineering and electrical details on which success 

 so much depends. So far we have confined our remarks 

 chiefly to central station lighting, but in our next number 

 we hope to give an account of a successful private 

 installation on a small scale. 



SCIENTIFIC TABLE TALK. 



By W. Mattieu Williams, F.R.A.S., F.C.S. 

 M. Fleischer has recently studied the very practical 

 subject of the relative merits of straw and peat litter for 

 cattle and horses. As regards the comfort of the animals 

 there appears to be but little difference, provided the 

 peat is properly dried. The question of the farmer 

 whose land is largely manured by his stock is. Which of 

 these litters is the best when it reaches its final destina- 

 tion ? From Fleischer's researches, it appears that straw 

 contains more potash, lime, and phosphoric acid than 

 peat, while the peat-moss litter contains more nitrogen 

 than straw, and that when mixed with manure it absorbs 

 the soluble ammoniacal compounds and gives them out 

 as required. This is shown by comparative field experi- 

 ments, as well as by analyses. The after effects of the 

 peat litter is greater on light lands than when straw is 

 employed. The experiments have not yet been extended 

 to heavy lands. 



These facts have special value to British farmers who 

 are gradually diminishing the proportion of their wheat- 

 crops, and consequently are, in many cases, suffering from 

 something like a straw famine, straw being as dear as 

 hay in some parts. Wherever peat is available its sub- 

 stitution should be tried. In dried form it can be carried 

 at moderate cost — at very little cost where canals are 

 available. 



There is another kind of litter largely used for pigs by 

 cottagers in Wales, who gather the bracken fern in the 

 autumn from the hill sides, where it grows in wild 

 luxuriance. I have v\'alked through large areas (on the 

 Hope Mountain, Flintshire, for example) where it has 

 risen well above my head, and it grows so thickly as 

 completely to conceal a pedestrian. 



There is an element of value in straw litter which M, 

 Fleischer does not appear to have considered, viz., the 

 siliceous cuticle, consisting of excessively thin plates, 

 which, on account of their extended surfaces, dissolve 

 more readily than sand grains, and thus supply one of 

 the demands of grasses, especially of wheat. This is not 

 required by root crops. 



On page 377 of this Magazine is a review of Dr. 

 Crombie Brown's work on Forestry Schools in Germany. 

 That similar schools are desirable in this country nobody 

 can doubt, but the magnitude of the desideratum is very 

 imperfectly appreciated even by intelligent Englishmen. 



We are so much absorbed in coal-grubbing and factory- 

 grinding that the healthier and better work of obtaining 

 wealth from the soil is shamefully neglected. There are 

 millions of acres of moorland and mountain slopes in the 

 United Kingdom now lying bare and desolate that might 

 produce immense wealth — quite sufficient to pay off the 

 National Debt forty years hence — if planted with trees 

 and forests in accordance with the scientific principles at 

 present understood. The carrying out of this would, in 

 the meantime, provide productive employment to all the 

 able and willing workers among the " unemployed." 



If the mountains of Wales were covered with pine 

 forests from their feet to their summits, as similar moun- 

 tains are in the far less favourable climate of Norway, the 

 produce would be a thousandfold greater than is likely 

 to be obtained by Welsh gold-mining and quartz-crushing 

 syndicates. 



I spent the best part of four summers in travelling 

 through Ireland and studying the many physical and social 

 problems which this perplexing country presents. Iformed 

 a very low estimate of its mineral resources. If all the 

 workable coal in Leinster,Connaught, Ulster, and Munster 

 — i.e., all in Ireland — were brought to the surface at once, 

 it would only supply the quantity demanded for ordi- 

 nary British consumption during sixteen months. The 

 hematite of Red Bay, etc., is nearly pushed out of the 

 market by that of Bilbao, and the other metalliferous 

 ores scarcely pay for working. The high expectations 

 concerning the marble of Connemara and other building 

 stones have been sadly disappointed. The vast stores 

 of peat may yet be turned to profitable account, but the 

 greatest of all the special natural resources of Ireland is 

 just that which has been the most specially and shame- 

 fully neglected, and even wantonly destroyed, viz., its 

 timber-yielding capabilities. 



The mild, humid climate of Ireland is especially favour- 

 able to the rapid growth of the conifera and other useful 

 timber trees. This is proved wherever a landlord has 

 chosen to reside among his tenants, and has ornamented 

 the surroundings of his residence with plantations. An 

 enumeration and very concise description of such of 

 these that I have visited would carry me far beyond my 

 present limits. But they are all mere oases in a vast and 

 disgraceful desert. The area of land now Ij'ing waste in 

 Ireland is 44 millions of acres. Fully half of this, or 

 more than 2| millions of acres, is admirably adapted for 

 timber-growing and for the exportation of the timber 

 after felling. 



Roughly speaking, Ireland may be described as a flat or 

 wavy-bottomed basin of mountain limestone, surrounded 

 by a rim of mountains indented with fjords or estuaries 

 running up to valleys forming river courses. Timber 

 grown on the slopes of these hills could be shot 

 down wooden slides, like those in the Tyrol, in Norway, 

 and other timber-growing regions, and thus launched 

 at once by gravitation into rivers or estuaries, from which 

 they would be collected and shipped at trivial cost. 



It would be very poor forestry indeed that could not 

 — after the first ten years— obtain an average gross 

 return progressing from _;^i to ^^ per acre, or, say, an 

 ultimate continuous return of J^^ per acre. This would 

 amount to a gross revenue of ii|- millions per annum. 

 Of course a large proportion of this would be expended 

 in wages for labour and other outlay, but a substantial 

 margin would still remain for profit if the work were well 

 managed. The whole ii:| millions would be so much 

 newly-created wealth, the bulk of it most desirably 



