Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1881-06-10
Scientific Miscellany.


j In new electric battery, one O
The elements is composed 0 shee
! iron less than the ten-thousandth O.
i,n inch in thickness.
In the South Kensington Museum
IS Edison's original lamp with tn,
carbon loop. 1t is accompanied by
a certificate from Mr.. Edison STATING
that it burned $3.50 hours.
It is stated that Mrs. Schliemann
the wife of the great oriental explor
er, helps her husband il. all his sci
entliic labors, experimenting exca
yations under bis direction, regard
less of exposure to sun and dust.
Near Armstee, on the line of the
st. Gothard railway, excavations TO,
the road have laid bare so-called
glacier garden, containing a series o.
giants kettles" or large holes
made in the rock by hydraulic OF
glacier action. One half of the gar.
den lay across the railway track and
had to be blasted away, but the
other half has been enclosed by g
wall and Will be carefully preserved
The sources of petroleum are
found in almost every part of the
globe, and the use of the article
would seem will nigh coeval with
civilization. There is n spring in
one of the Ionian islands which has
yielded petroleum more than two
thousand years. The city of Genoa
was formerly lighted by oil from the
wells of Armenia, on the banks of
the Faro. In Persia, also, near the
Caspian Sea at Baku, numerous
springs of petroleum have been
known from the earliest time; and
those of Rangoon, on the Irawaddy,
are said to have yielded, before the
general introduction of petroleum,
some 4OO,O 900 hogsheads of oil a
year.
Sir Wyville Thompson, in whose
charge the Challenger deep-sea ex.
ploring expedition was made, con.
slders the most important and re-
markable biological results of the
work of the Challenger to be the
final establishment of the fact that
contrary to the established belief.
the distribution of living beings IN
the sea has no depth-limit, but that
animals of all the marine invertebrates
classes, and probably fishes also,
exist over the whole mammoth floor
of the ocean. He is unwilling to
speak positively as to the exact ma
ture of the life existing at the great
est depths, but from a depth OF
some two thousand fathoms speci-
mems were secured proving the ex-
istence of n vast and varied assem-
blase of living inha;,itants more
than two and q Quartz miles be-
meath the surface.
Professor Jenkins, an eminent
English astronomer, has endeavored
to show very remarkable effect OF
the planet Venus upon the earth.
The present astronomer-royal of
England proved, many years ago,
that the disturbing effect of this
planet was really SO great that the
earth was materially pulled from its
orbit. According to Professor Jen.
klns, it is to this action that an ex-
PLANTATION must he looked for, in ac-
counting Tor tho cold waves which
have occurred, on an average, every
eight years during the last half GEN.
fury, and in this connection the pre-
diction is vYntured by Prof. J. that
for the next forty years the tempera-
ture will be below the average. He
also states, as others have before
him, that a heat wave has been
observed to pass over the earth every
twelve years, nearly contemporary
with the arrival of the planet Jupiter
at its perihelion.