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SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



[Oct. 26, 1888. 



unless he derived his knowledge of the instrument from 

 Jansen. M. Govi considers that the true inventor was 

 Galileo. From 16 10, that is eleven years before the in- 

 vention of Drebbel, the Italian savant is supposed to have 

 used his telescope for viewing very small objects, which 

 he then saw highly magnified. In 1614, Dupont, Lord 

 of Tarbes, relates among the incidents of a journey in 

 Italy, that Galileo had thus given to flies the apparent 

 bulk of lambs, and ascertained the presence of innumer- 

 able hairs on their bodies and of pointed claws on their 

 feet. When the Dutch invention penetrated into Italy in 

 1624, Galileo attempted a reclamation of priority, but 

 soon finding that his attempts were overlooked abroad, he 

 preserved in future silence on this great question, despite 

 the distinctness of the facts established by M. GovL ]\L 

 Emile Blanchard persists in thinking that the true in- 

 ventor of the microscope is not easy to discover. 



Restoring the Colour of Faded Flowers. — In spite 

 of all care taken, it often happens that flowers lose their 

 odour during drying. We quote, therefore, the following 

 two processes, given by M. Capus, in Le Naturaliste, 

 which it is asserted will revive the colour to a certain 

 extent. Red flowers especially, which have turned blue 

 or violet, may be restored to their primitive colour in the 

 following way : — A slip of white blotting paper is steeped 

 in very dilute nitric acid (1 part acid to 10 or 12 of 

 water). The flower is laid on this slip, and the whole is 

 enclosed between several folds of dry paper and sub- 

 mitted to a moderate pressure for some seconds. At the 

 end of this time the original colour will generally be 

 found to have re-appeared. All flowers do not require 

 the same pressure nor the same strength of acid. If a 

 flower is too pale alter the operation, it is because the 

 acid is too weak or the pressure too strong. If the green 

 leaves of the plant come in contact with the acid they 

 lose their colour. Dried plants may also be divided into 

 small lots and placed in a box in which sulphur is burnt. 

 We look upon this latter process with considerable 

 suspicion, on account of the well-known bleaching action 

 of sulphurous acid. 



The Public Health. — The Registrar-General's return 

 for the week which ended on Saturday, October 13th, 

 states that the deaths registered in 28 great towns 

 of England and Wales corresponded to an annual rate of 

 2i - o per 1,000 of their aggregate population. The six 

 healthiest towns were Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, 

 Derby, London, and Wolverhampton. The highest 

 annual death-rate, measured by last week's mortality, 

 were: — From measles, it in Hudderslield ; from scarlet 

 fever, 3T in Blackburn; from whooping-cough, it in 

 Derby and in Manchester, 2 '4 in Cardiff, and 2 '9 in 

 Huddersfield ; from "fever," i"2 in Salford ; and from 

 diarrhoea, 2'8 in Norwich, 3^2 in Wolverhampton, 3'4 in 

 Portsmouth, and 3'5 in Preston. The 45 deaths from 

 diphtheria in the 28 towns included 26 in London, 5 in 

 Manchester, and 3 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The only 

 death from small-pox in the 28 towns occurred in Hull. 

 In London 2,588 births and 1,536 deaths were registered. 

 Allowing for increase of population, the births were 

 122 below, while the deaths exceeded by 13, the average 

 numbers in the corresponding weeks of the last ten 

 years. The annual death-rate per 1,000 from all causes, 

 which had been 15-8, 160, and i6'5 in the three pre- 

 ceding weeks, further rose last week to 187. In Greater 

 London 3,438 births and 1,896 deaths were registered, 



corresponding to annual rates of 32-4 and i7 - 9 per 

 1. 000 of the estimated population. In the Outer Ring 

 14 deaths from diarrhoea, 9 from measles, 8 from diph- 

 theria, and 6 from scarlet fever were registered. Of 

 the fatal cases of diphtheria, 3 occurred in Croydon, and 

 2 in Walthamstow sub-districts. The 6 deaths from 

 scarlet-fever included 3 in West Ham sub-district. 



Globe Lightning. — M. Reimann has recently pub- 

 lished some interesting observations on globe light- 

 nings witnessed at Hirschberg, in Silesia, during the 

 storms of the 19th and 29th of April, 1888. La Nature 

 gives an abstract of the phenomena from the Bulletin de 

 la Societe Meteorologique de France. Two such globes 

 were seen during the former storm. A woman and her 

 son were at two different windows in the third storey of 

 their house in the Wilhelmstrasse and the Inspector- 

 strasse. A yellow ball of fire, of the size of a skittle- 

 ball, appeared advancing slowly on the telegraph wires, 

 with a slight noise like that of a flag shaken by the wind. 

 It descended in the middle of a square covered with 

 grass ; it then rose up and moved forward, flying higher 

 and more rapidly than before, and passing over the 

 houses of the Inspectorstrasse in a S.S. W. direction. The 

 second ball was seen by another woman, about 4 p.m., 

 from a window looking to the east. The globe of yellow 

 fire advanced very rapidly from the Franzstrasse towards 

 the window, at a distance of 20 to 25 metres, moving from 

 south to north. It passed over the Bahnhofstrasse, and 

 rose upon the roof of a house provided with a lightning 

 conductor, leaving no traces. Its size was about that of 

 a child's head. It was followed by a series of smaller 

 globes like billiard-balls. No sound was heard. The 

 storm of April 29th was extremely violent, and several 

 remarkable flashes were observed. A woman saw a 

 large brilliant ball fall perpendicularly from a cloud over 

 Hirschberg, and break up into several fragments, which 

 disappeared in the air. Another globe-discharge in the 

 storm was very similar to that of the 19th. It was 

 observed by the gardener of the Gymnasium, who was in 

 an arbour of the garden, and by a girl from a window in 

 the Inspectorstrasse, at a distance of 50 to 60 metres from 

 the Gymnasium. The globe traversed a space of about 

 100 metres. Said the gardener : — " It was a globe of 

 reddish fire, which advanced suddenly from the roof of 

 the Gymnasium with a hissing noise, and burst over the 

 trees of the garden without an explosion. The frag- 

 ments descended to the left and the right, and disap- 

 peared in the air, leaving no traces " The girl saw sud- 

 denly, to her right hand, on the house opposite, a ball of 

 fire which advanced rapidly towards the corner of the 

 Gymnasium and rose to the angle of the roof, where it 

 burst without noise. It was about the size of a child's 

 head. The author relates another observation commu- 

 nicated by Herr Rudeck, of Wigandsthal, near Freiburg. 

 On May 14th, during a storm which lasted four hours, 

 about 5 p.m. fifteen persons saw a ball of fire of about 

 the size of a soup-plate, and of a dazzling whiteness, 

 which appeared over Rudeck's house, illuminating the 

 house and the court. It descended perpendicularly, and 

 rested on a tree in the court, at i| metres from the house. 

 Several observers saw lightning issuing from the branches 

 and moving towards the lightning conductor. At the 

 same moment two servant girls rushed into Herr Rudeck's 

 sitting-room screaming that there was a ball of fire in the 

 kitchen. It left behind no traces. The phenomenon was 

 accompanied by a peal of thunder. 



