SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 
(absurdly named), of which so much furniture and linings are now 
made. ~The twist is usually—not always—a right-hand screw, why, 
nobody knows, nor can any one explain why almost all climbing plants, 
though not all, form a right-hand screw, in common with almost all 
sea shells. 
Again, our timber getters are much interested as to what enables 
the hanging vines to pump, not sap, but water from the ground, in 
volume, up a perpendicular stem 200 feet and more, to be evaporated 
on the top of the forest. The sap you must not touch, and it is con- 
tained in the bark of the vines, astringent and acrid, but you may 
drink pure water out of a cut length of the wood of the vine. There 
is no answer to that problem, for capillary attraction does not apply. 
No more is known about that pumping system than is known of the 
cold light of the fungus and the firefly. 
Another problem of interest as being close to nature in handling 
‘and regretfully destroying her loveliest and grandest handiwork. Many 
Queensland walnut trees have been cut down and shipped, but a diffi- 
culty hitherto insuperable prevents the continuation of the use of the 
wood, which is eminently suited to cabinet work, only that implements 
fail. In a very short time saws and planing knives lose their sharpness, 
and the work must too frequently be stopped. In short, the beautiful 
wood is uncommercial, and no one will handle it. The sap is strongly 
acid, but easily neutralized, so that is not the cause. The trouble is 
in the form of growth of the fibres; one might as well try to cut a 
Manila rope endways. The same applies to Queensland oak (not the 
Grevillea). Knowledge has not solved the problem, and so these 
glorious trees, 4 and 5 feet in diameter, are burned away instead of 
being utilized in the arts. 
Some day in the fulness of time there will arise another Louis 
Pasteur who will study the pathology of plants, and perhaps rescue the 
beautiful and useful chestnut trees of France from destruction by a 
mysterious malady which now afilicts them. Pierre Loti, the romanti- 
cist, guesses it to be a deadly fungus which wreaks the mischief. It is 
quite possible, for it may spread through the sap or otherwise into the 
system of the trees. In that connexion may be adduced a curious fact 
which if followed up might throw some light upon the influence of 
poisonous mycocetes upon the human (or other) respiratory system. 
It is customary in London and elsewhere to keep sliced veneers in 
moist chambers, and marquetry inlays in closed boxes or cupboards. 
-The operatives well know that to open these receptacles without pre- 
cautions may mean a sudden attack of catarrh. It is instantaneous 
and resembles the oncoming of the so-called influenza, of which in the 
United States, Eastern and Western Canada, Australia, and elsewhere, 
T have had an unhappily wide opportunity of observation. It is only 
a guess, but the diffusion of spores wholly invisible to the present 
microscope could account for the astonishing spread of the malady -in 
remote and unvisited districts of Northern Canada and Alaska. 
Another disease of plants which causes loss and annoyance is the 
deposition of stone in the substance of the tree known as Bombay rose- 
wood. The lumber is very handsome, being of a rich purple, or dark 
blue with a reddish tinge, which colour is difficult to preserve under 
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