Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/879

Rh F. Frederick W. True; Section G, W. A. Hellerman; Section H, George A. Dorsey; Section I, Calvin M. Woodward.

New Elements.—Prof. Charles F. Brush, in a preliminary paper read to the American Association, described a new atmospheric gas which he discovered while examining glass for occluded hydrogen, and has found absorbed in many substances. It has been partially separated from air by diffusion. The chief characteristic of this gas thus far experimentally determined is enormous heat conductivity at low pressure. Even when mixed with a large excess of other gases, its heat conductivity is about a hundred times that of hydrogen, and this will probably be increased many times when it is obtained pure. Taking the heat conductivity at this figure—a very moderate estimate—the mean molecular velocity of the new gas is calculated to be more than a hundred miles a second, and its density only a thousandth part that of hydrogen, while the specific heat is found to be six thousand times greater than that of hydrogen. A gas having attributes anything like these could not possibly be confined to the earth's atmosphere; hence the new gas probably extends indefinitely into space, and constitutes an interstellar atmosphere. In recognition of this probability. Professor Brush has named it etherion. Professor Nasini, of Padua, and two associates report that in studying the gases emanating from the earth in various parts of Italy, with the object of detecting the presence of argon, helium, etc., they have discovered in the spectrum of the gases of the Solfatara di Pozzuoli, along with other lines deserving investigation, a fairly bright line corresponding with that of (solar) corona 1474 K, attributed to coronium, an element not previously discovered on the earth, and which should be lighter than hydrogen.

A Paradise for Wild inimals.—During the last four years, the London Spectator tells us, the Duke of Bedford has carried out a scheme of animal acclimatization in the park at Woburn Abbey never before attempted in England. "Birds as well as quadrupeds are the subjects of this experiment. . . . But the greater number of the animals are various kinds of deer, of which no fewer than thirty-one species are in the open park or paddocks, bisons, zebras, antelopes, wild sheep and goats, and yaks. The novelty and freshness of this experiment consist not only in the accumulation of such a number of species, interesting as this is to the naturalist, but in their way of life, free and unmolested in an English park. That is the lot of the greater number of the animals at Woburn, some being entirely free and roaming at large, like the native red deer and fallow deer, while the others, though for the present in separate inclosures, are kept in 'reserves' so spacious and so lightly though effectively separated that they have the appearance of enjoying the same degree of liberty." The general effect on the view of this gathering of animals from all quarters of the earth on the green pastures and under the elms and oaks round the home of a great English family is described as being magnificent. "During the journey back by train through Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, the valleys and meadows stocked with our ordinary domestic animals seem solitary and deserted after the eye has rested for hours on the varied and impressive forms that crowd the slopes, groves, and glades of this glorious park. This effect is due in part to the largeness of the scale on which the stocking of Woburn with wild animals has been carried out. In the phrase of the farmer, the park 'carries a larger head' of animals than is commonly seen on a similar area, even in the richest pastures. The scene recalls the descriptions of the early travelers in southern Africa, when the large fauna roamed there in unbroken numbers and with little fear of man. . . . From one position, looking up a long green slope toward the abbey, there could be seen at the time of the writer's last visit between two and three hundred animals, both birds and beasts, feeding or sleeping within sight of the immediate front of the spectators. These varied in species from cranes, storks, and almost every known species of swan, to wapiti stags, antelopes, and zebras, walking, sitting, galloping, feeding, or sleeping. For quite half a mile up the slope the white swan and other wild fowl were dotted among the deer and other ruminants, presenting a strange and most attractive example of the real 'paradise' which animals will make for