Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/590

574 ties of pines of the Landes, twelve years; prepared with sulphate of copper, from eight to twelve years. While, as between wood and the substitution of metal for it, M. Mathieu favors sticking to wood, he admits that the substitution of steel for iron is an important matter, and that one of the principal inconveniences of the metallic ties—want of solidity in the joints—may be obviated by careful attention during the first two years, which will make the rails and the sleepers solid. Metallic ties should be made heavier than they are, if they are to succeed. They had been laid, at the beginning of 1884, on 5,708 kilometres of lines in Germany, Austria, Holland, Belgium, and Switzerland.

Some Ancient Philosophy.—A book called "Speculum Mundi, or a Glass representing the Face of the World," published in 1670, gives a curious picture of what passed for science before the great modern discoveries were made. It consists of a chapter on each of the six days of creation. It says that the world was at first an unfashioned lump. Having disposed of the question of the firmament as best it could, it says of the air that the highest region is said to be "exceeding hot," because of the stars. Meteors and comets, it informs us, are "composed of Vapours or Fumes—a kinde of Smoak." Some of these vapors "transcend" very high, "even to the Starry Heaven itself; which is witnessed by our best Modern Astronomers, who have observed many Comets above the Moon." Great events are connected with comets, because those bodies consist of "many hot and dry Exhalations" and "distemper the Air," which "the Bellows of the Body suck in and receive; insomuch that there cannot but be Sickness, Plague, and much mortality." Moreover, these "poysonous breathings" are "very apt so to disorder and dry up the Blood in Humane Bodies, that thereby great store of red and a dust choler may be purchased; and this stirreth up to anger with the thought of many furious and violent actions, and so by consequence to war." Thunder is caused "by reason of Hot and Dry Exhalations shut within the cloud, which, seeking to get out, with great Violence do knock and rend the cloud." The hot and dry exhalation in escaping is set on fire by the violence, and becomes lightning, when it often continues burning until it falls to the ground. "And oftentimes a great stone is blown out of the cloud with it; whose cause is also natural." For, when the exhalation is drawn up from the earth, it sometimes takes earthy matter "like unto the finest sand" with it, and this, "through the moisture which it getteth in the Air," "clottereth together," and, "by the excessive heat which it findeth in the general matter of the exhalation," becomes hard like a brick. Sometimes the exhalations carry up also frogs, fishes, and grain, or the vehement heat of the sun draws milk, and we are treated to curious showers of corresponding nature. We are also informed that the long, streaming threads seen floating in the air, and vulgarly supposed to be spiders' webs, are nothing of the kind, but meteors, which "may rightly be supposed to proceed out of a through boyled or digested vapour, being mixed with earthy and slimy Exhalations."

Tourist and Alpine Clubs.—A manual of the Tourist Unions of the world under which designation are included Mountain and Alpine clubs and the like published by Herr R. Koehler at Eisenach, shows that these associations, which are really of recent origin, have thriven greatly. The census of them gives a total of 78 clubs or unions, with 775 sections and 79,955 members. Of these, 73 clubs, with 770 sections and 79,365 members, are in Europe; four clubs, with 590 members, in America; and one club in Asia. The largest of them all is the German and Austrian Alpine Union, which has 109 sections and 12,274 members. Their special organizations and objects vary according to the characteristics of the nation in which they severally exist, but the common object of them all is the study, exploration, and enjoyment of natural scenery, with a prominent place given to mountain-climbing.

Artificial Rubles.—Mr. George F. Kunz recently read a paper before the New York Academy of Sciences on some artificial rubies that have been offered in the market of Paris as genuine rubies from a new locality.