Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/301

 however, entirely continuous, but it changed its place frequently and sometimes came out to drink. It lost between a ninth and a twelfth of its weight; molted late in May or early in June, sometimes also in July, but rarely twice a year. It is very tame and very curious. It was probably two years old when captured, and was consequently, at the beginning of 1897, about fifteen; and it shows signs of age in its diminishing agility, growth, and appetite.

the stations in the international series for cloud observations, Prof. Frank H. Bigelow said in the American Association that the United States has fourteen. The object of observations at all these points is to determine the actual circulation of the atmosphere at different cloud levels. Heretofore indications have been worked out from the surface of the ground, where the circulation is much distorted. The action of storms is usually strongest two or three miles above the surface. The author criticised the conclusions of German meteorologists, who have worked on theories by mathematical processes, as being ideal and not conforming to actual conditions found in Nature. He showed by maps how storms run around rather in the upper isotherms than on the ground. The form of these lines is largely determined by the relation of land and ocean. The result is that the upper currents, which would run smoothly otherwise, become distorted by their passage over the land. Storms are abnormal parts of the general circulation, and have the force of that circulation behind them.

his experiments in photography from kites at Enlaure, near Labruguière, France, M. Arthur Batut observed that when he flew his kite with a north wind, though it was a strong one, his kite kept its balance in the air without violent jerkings; while with wind from the south or southeast, unless it was extremely light, the kite dodged hither and thither and was extremely irregular in its movements, as if there were eddies in the air stratum. The north wind reached Enlaure after blowing over a plain country, with only gentle undulations; while the south and southeast winds came from over a broken country. Aëronauts who have suffered from caprices of the wind before reaching an area of calm in the atmosphere have sometimes ascribed their trouble to eddies in the lower air strata occasioned by irregularities in the surface of the ground. The irregularities in the flying of the kite may have had a like origin.

the physical and mental training gathered—laboriously and somewhat wastefully, it may be—at the joiner's bench, in the fitting and turning shops, and the forge during the old course of mechanical engineering apprenticeship, Mr. G. F. Deacon expresses himself convinced that the kind of knowledge which comes of thoughtful chipping and filing and turning and forging, though only applied to a few of the materials with which in after-life the engineer has to deal, are quite as important to his future sense of rightness in constructive design as tables of density and strength. The use of such work is not merely to teach one the parts and combinations of any particular machine; to a still higher degree it is the insensible mastery of a much more subtle knowledge or mental power—the application of the senses of sight and touch and force, it may be of other senses also, to the determination of the nature of things.

interesting memoir was recently presented to the Paris Academy of Medicine by Dubousquet Labordaire and Duchesne concerning a group of families at Saiut-Ouen, an industrial district on the outskirts of Paris, which appear to have been immune from tuberculosis for many generations. The families are at present ninety-eight in number, and consist of five hundred and eleven persons. No cases of tuberculosis have occurred among them, as far back as the memory of the oldest inhabitant reaches. They are a farming people of excellent sanitary habits, and rarely or never mix either socially or by marriage with immigrants from other sections.

since aluminum has been used in construction difficulties have arisen in soldering it. The following contribution to Nature by A. T. Stanton is of interest in this connection: If cadmium iodide be fused on an aluminum plate, decomposition of the salt occurs long before the melting point of the aluminum is reached. The result is generally the violent evolution of iodine vapor, and the formation of an alloy of cadmium and