The Corvallis gazette. [volume] (Corvallis, Or.) 1862-1899, 1883-06-29
aoleekIp { oruallis Waset'e.
SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.

SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.
written EXPRESSLY for the GAZETTE by a celebrated
Eastern Scientist
DR.. II. Cook, F. R. G. s., considers the
dust storms Of northwestern India to be due
to an excess of atmospheric electricity. lie
believes the furnace-ike blast of the slmoon
which is accompanied by a sulphurous
odor-to be a very concentrated form Of
ozone, generated in the atmosphere by some
intensely marked electrical condition.
Mons. Parize has discovered that the
crumbling of imperfectly baked bricks IS
caused by the growth in them of microscopic
organisms, and not by exposure to the
weather.
The singular faculty possessed By some
animals-such as cats, dogs, and pigeons
of returning in direct course to point
from which they have been taken is puzzle
to naturalists. It has been referred to IN
stinot, to intelligence or reasoning power,
and 10 peculiar bodily functions. Wallace
supposed smell to enable an animal to re-
turn over course which it had traversed
in basket; Toussenel believes that birfls
have an idea of direction by recognizing the
north as the cold quarter, the south as the
warm, the east lin. France) as the dry, and
the west as the moist; and now Vignier
suggests that the faculty depends upon a
perception of magnetic currents.
Dr. Clouston, an Edinburgh physician,
says: "All acute mental disease, like most
nervous diseases, tS6d to tbinness of body,
and therefore all foods and all medicines
and all treatments that fatten are good.
To my assistants and nurses and patients
preach the gospel of fairness as the great
antidote to the exhausting tendencies of
the disease we have to treat, and it would
be well if all people of nervous constitution
would obey this gospel"
For several years Mr.. ]. E. Suitterlin
of New York has given attention to the
treatment of stammering and with simple
and philosophic method he has been very
successful in removing the trouble. His
system does not rely upon medical aids, but
comprises chiefly careful drill of the vocal
seem desirable, the principal object of the
latter being the diversion of the subjects
attention from himself Statistics collected
by Mr.. Suitterlin show that the habit of
stammering is very seldom contracted at
later period in life than the tenth year.
Speaking at Milan Of the great comet of
1882, Prof. Schiaparelli, the eminent Italian
astronomer. remarked that such body is
very small in the cold Of distant space-so
small as to be invisible, even in the most
powerful telescopes. As it approaches the
sun it gradually becomes heated, and it's
SOLID or fiuid matter is largely converted
into gaseous state, causing it to swell
enormously in size. It then develops tail
of very diffase substance, the immense tail
which stretched across the eastern sky DUR
ing the mornings of last autumn having been
estimated by one astronomer to contain only
few pounds of material. The cometary
body reaches its greatest expansion when
nearest the sun, and as it returns into dis
tant space it again contracts into insignifi-
canoe. No exact calculations have yet been
made of the orbit of the great comet of 1882.
but from observations in September, Octo-
ber and November it is assumed that its
period is included between 500 and 900
years, that its aphelion is lbs times as far
from the sun as the earth at its mean dis
tance, and that its velocity is $4,000 times
as great when nearest the sun as when far
thest away.
On the government ciRchona plantations
IN Jamaica. the highest meteorological OBJ
servatory in the British empire has just
been established. At tins spot, 600 feet
above sea-level-the mean annual rainfall
is l36 inches, and the mean annual tenn
perature is GO degrees Fahrenheit.
Under the illumination of an electric lamp
photographs have heen made of the human
vocal organs in the act of singing. The
pictures obtained are to be used by two
European writers-Herr Behnke and Mr..
Lennox Browne--for illustrating forth |
coming work on the mechanism of the hu-
man voice.
Prof. Pfiiger states that in some German
schools from 20 to 80 per cent of the |
scholars are suffering from defective vision,
while not single pupil at the Heidelburg |
gymnasium has perfect eyesight..
AT Salez, in the Swiss canton of St. Gal
len, some sixty bronze hatche5s have been
dug up from depth of about yard be-
Meath the surface of the ground. The i'm
piements are believed to be at least $500 !
years old.
At recent brilliant reception given Iy |
Hons. Louis Raw in Paris, each of the lady |
guests about to take part in dance was
presented with a boquet in the middle OF. |
which shone miniature electric lamp fed |
By batteries devised by Mons Trouve.
The President of the French Meteorolog.
ical Bureau, Mons. .Mangon, reports tha5
SO per cent of the weather forecasts made
by the Bureau have proven good. Of 2o7 |
tempest warnings sent to seaports, 100 have
been fulfilled entirely, 65 partly, and AZ not
;. all.
Fertile South
The South is, as the New York |
Times states, known to-day to be
almost incidentally fertile in the