Morris tribune. [volume] (Morris, Minn.) 1880-2000, 1883-07-18
SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.

BOOKS are Oh course, uluCH Tcdu ny
the sick, aud this fact, the London
Lancet points, out, makes the danger
of distributing disease through the
medium of circulating libraries a
very considerable one. The invisible
particles which carry the infection or
contagion may harmlessly lie between
the pages of pound book for weeks,
months, or even years, to be disloged
at some unpropitiOus moment when
the volume changes to be handed by
a susceptible person. Among the
maladies most liable to be commune
Gated by this agency may be
mentioned measels, scarlet, fever,
diphtheria, ordinary sore throat,
whooping cough, and bronchitis and
other chest affections.
The worlds supply Of amber appears;
to be inexhaustible. The "blue EARTH
source of the supply-eXtends along
the Baltic for about go miles and
possesses a breadth of about IL miles
and an average thickness Of 10 feet.
Runge estimates that every Is cubic
feet of this earth contains pound of
amber. This givesa total of some g.
900, 900, 600 pounds, which, at the
present rate of quarring, is sufficient
to last for 80, 900 years. Amber is the
fossilized gum Of trees of past ages,
and, on the suggestions that these
trees had the same resin-producing
capacity as the Norway spruce, and
that the amber was produced on the
spot where it is now found, Geoppert
and Menge, in a new German work,
estimate that 800 forest-generations
of 100 years each must have grown on
the Samland blue earth to give it it's
present richness in this product. 1t
is much more probable, however, that
the amber came from large area and
has been collected in it's present
position by the action of water. 1t is
also probable that the trees were more
resinous than the Norway spruce.
Recent observations have proven
that much of the light from stars is
lost in passing through the earth's
lower atmosphere, as it is found that
the stars appear brighter when seen
from the SUBMITS of lofty mountains
than when surveyed from lower levels,
and ais consequence many more of
them are visible from the elevated
stations. In connection with project
for new French observatory on the
Pic du Midi, General de Nansouty re-
ports that from the proposed site of
the building fifteen or sixteen Pleiades
are visable to the naked eye, while
the stars shine so brilliantly that it is
easy to read by their light alone.
''It startles most people," observers
Mr.. r. A. Proctor, to be told they
never see the stars, and yet in an inn
portant sense this-is quite true. The
human eye, or telescope, forms an
optical image with the light rays re-
ceived from the stairs, but not a picture
The stairs are too far off from their
light to bring to us the smallest visible
representation of their surface, and
the discs which wel1-corrected tele-
scope shows are only optical images.
If, on clear, calm night, when the
air is steady, telescope is pointed at
planet, it formes real picture,
though the distance of the object pre-
vents details, even ofconsiderable size,
from being seen. IF after using an eye
piece that magnifies fifty times linear,
another of twice that power is en-
ployed, the planets disc will look
twice as broad. Try the same expert
ments with bright star, and, if the
air is clear, and quiet enough to pro-
duce no confusion, the star disc will
not be made bigger by the higher
power"
A chemical journal states that
jam, without raspberries, is
now made from some of the products
from coal-tar.
A committee of French Parliament
has recommended increasing the
pension granted Mons. Pasteur for his
scientific labors to $4,000, with re-
to the wife and children.
A novel open-air service was held
on a recent Sunday at Stocton, a village
of Warwickshire, England. The
had for its object the conse-
of a great granite bowlder,
which the villagers had caused to be
neately fenced and inscribed. Them
scription records that the stone was
brought from from Mount Sorrel, a
distance of sixty miles, by an iceberg
or q glacier in the great Ice Age,
and it has acquired great local fame
from the fact that the village rector
found it in the first link in a chain of
evidence which has established the
current of ice-sheet once swept
across the table-land of south War
from the Charnwood Forest
heights.
Displays at the London Fisheries
show that the Chinese
have some ingenious methods of cap
turing fishes. In Swatow, for in
stance, they employ boat drawing a
lew inches of water, with the rail |
nearly level with the surface. A |
narrow plank on one side is painted |
white, and in the moonlight the fish
mistake this for water and Jump over
t into the boat AtNigpo cormorants
no c,-rtorn q finallu trained To Gch