Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/737

Rh relates, in a German periodical, that during a thunderstorm at Ribnitz, in Mecklenburg, the lower pane of a window on the first floor of a house was broken by lightning, and a jet of water was thrown upward through the hole to the ceiling, with such force that a part of the ceiling was broken down, and other damage was done. The hole in the window was like a bullet-hole, with radial cracks. Some cigars on a table, that was broken by the fall of the ceiling and the water, were carbonized. The origin of the jet of water, is not satisfactorily explained.

of Leek, England, has been to India and examined the cultivation of the silk-worm and the means still in use for reeling the silk there, with a view to suggesting means for improving them. Although the reputation of Indian silk has greatly declined during the last twenty-five years, he is satisfied that its fiber is quite equal to that of Italian silk, and that improvement in methods is all that is required. The Italian threads are, however, four times as long as those of the Indian cocoons. The profitableness of the silk-growing business is shown by the fact that the zemindars derive their very highest rents from lands devoted to it.

ancient—probably prehistoric—British vessel has been found at Brigg, in Lincolnshire, England, in the course of making an excavation of the ground for a new gas-holder. It is cut out of a solid piece of wood, and measures forty-eight feet in length, fifty-two inches in width, and thirty-three inches in depth. It is in a remarkably good state of preservation, because, probably, it was imbedded in a clayey soil which excluded the air. An ancient wooden causeway was discovered in the same neighborhood a few years ago. It was made of squared balks of timber fifteen feet long and ten inches square, which had been fastened to the earth by pegs driven through holes in the ends. has communicated to the Anthropological Society the result of some tests which she has made of the powers of perception, inference, and imagination, of a class of girls of about thirteen years of age, by asking them to describe some particular object from memory. The most noteworthy result was that due to a faculty which the author calls emotionalism. The emotional girls, who, in their descriptions, used such adjectives as "beautiful," "lovely," "sweet," etc., showed deficiency in more valuable traits of character; and it seemed that in those cases emotion superseded thought. Such tests as these might prove valuable in education and the choice of a profession, and, perhaps, in civil-service examinations.

O. Sacre, and L. Schwab, have investigated the effects on fisheries and fish-culture of sewage and industrial waste waters, and find them very damaging. Chloride of lime, 0·04 to 0·005 per cent chlorine, exerted an immediately deadly action upon tench, while trout and salmon perished in the presence of 0·008 per cent of chlorine. One per cent of hydrochloric acid kills tench and trout. Iron and alum act as specific poisons upon fishes. Solution of caustic lime has an exceedingly violent effect upon them. Sodium sulphide, 0·1 per cent, was endured by tench for thirty minutes.

of Glasgow, Scotland, has invented a new method of photographic silver-printing by machinery. A ribbon of paper is caused to travel by clock-work beneath a negative, which is let in to the top of a light, tight box. Above the negative is a powerful gas-burner, which is turned up and down automatically, as the paper pauses in its passage every few seconds. The strip of paper, which, at the end of a few minutes, bears perhaps twenty latent images of the negative, beneath which it has been traveling, is then developed by a suitable chemical agent to make those images visible.

has reported to the French Academy of Sciences concerning the observations he has been making upon the "canals" of Mars with the great equatorial which has just been mounted at the Nice Observatory. These are a feature of the planet which was first observed by M. Schiaparelli, and consist of grooves about twenty-five kilometres in width, having perfectly parallel borders, which are stretched across the Martian continents, between the seas. Nothing like them exists on the earth or the moon, or any other planet, so far as has been observed. Consequently, it is impossible to conceive any satisfactory explanation of their existence. M. Perrotin's observations have been verified by MM. Trépied and Thallon.

the caves at Gomanton, in North Borneo, of which we lately gave an account in our Miscellany, the edible birds' nests are produced in caves in islands off the coast of the Malay Peninsula. The caves belong to the Siamese Government, and are farmed out to contractors. The harvest is during March and April. The nests are collected as soon as they are built, and before the swallows have begun to lay their eggs. The birds build second nests, and these are taken away; but the third nests are left. The caves are accessible only by means of rattan ladders, and the nests are collected from the rocks by means of rattan galleries and stagings. The