Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1884-12-21
BITS OF SCIENCE.

The fly AnthOmyZa spinaci3, which
was supposed to contine its destructive
attentions mainly to spinach, has allied
itself III Sweden, at least. to the enemies
Of the beet-root plantations.
There is a sort of vine which grows in
Cochin China from a tuberOus root Its
stem dies down annually in November
and shoots out again in March. From its
fruit kind of WINE is produced, which
NJ. Sambuc has examined and has found
its acidity to be high.
DIR. +. SvenOnius, who has been engaged
in studying and measuring the glaciers
in NOrrland for the last two years, reports
that there are about hundred glaciers in
Sweden, but that they are very small,
covering in all an area not above nine
Swedish square miles.
Experiments made for the purpose of
TESTING the influence of pulps and other
artiticially prepared food on cows milk
by =. AndOuard and V. Dezaunay dur
ing the years 1888 and 1884, tended to show
that the prepared foods acted iniuriOusly
on the milk, but had the effect of incleas-
ing the quantity of the butter, without
any appreciate bad result on its quality.
NJ. L. ThollOn concludes from a COM
parative study of the different accounts
OF the solar corOnas recently observed in
Switzerland, at Nice and at other places
that these phenomena are not merely
halOs, but true cOrOnas-that is to say, an
effect of diffractiOn produced either by
fine dust or by light particles of moisture
existing in the elevated strata of the at
mOSpheTe.
Nj. SimOnin has completed the difficult
task Of compiling for the Paris Soclete de
Statistique paper showing the compare
tive deaths arising from accidentsin mines
in some of the countries of Europe. Sax
ony, with 1868 men in the metalliferOus
and coal mines, has $3.50 per 1000 killed
annually; Belgium, with 1851, has 2.3S;
Great Britain, with 55S, S17, has 2.1S; Aus
| tria, with 41,133, has 2.10, and France,
with 1851 has 200. The tables in full
are very instructive.
The remarkable fact has been demon
strated that railways may be the means
of enriching the fora of places through
which they pass. The extension in 1878
of an important road into the province of
Helsingland, Sweden, has been followed
by the immigration along the line of no
less than seven species of plants which
were before unknown in districts where
they now appear. One species seems to
have been spread 20 miles along the rail-
ways course in 1882. and about one degree
during the last four years.
Two grand engineering schemes. fraught
with far reaching social and political In
fluences of much greater consequence
than those which appear on the surface,
are attracting attention in Europe at pre-
sent. The one is the proposed railway
tunnel through the PYrenees, the conYen-
ton for which has been signed by the
Franco Spanish International Railway
Commission. The other is for the forma-
ton of company to construct an inter-
national railway connecting Europe with
Persia, India, Burmah and China.
In a glassworks near Paris air stored
under pressure supersedes blowing by the
mouth, except in few cases. Some such
recourse has been desideratum. Glass
blowers are very susceptible to various
diseases or the lips and cheeks, besides
being predispOsed TO tumOrs and rupture.
Boys employed at an age when their
growth is still rapid and the general sys-
tenn weak, are frequently permanently
injured by their efforts in glass blowing.
But it has been found far from easy to
make mechanical take the place of natu-
raj means in this art.
NJ. Dieulefait ascribes the origin CT the
phOsphates of lime in the southwest of
France to the action of saline waters dur
ing the tertiary epoch, analogous to, if not
identical with, those of the lagoOns of the
present time. The saline and concentrated
waters of these lagoons, which certainly
existed In tertiary times, performed a
twOfold function in the production of the
natural phosphate of lime. In the first
place, they attacked the limestone rocks
far more actively than ordinary water
could have done, and then they contribu-
ted directly phosphoric acid, which is still
being deposited in the shallow lagoons of
the RhOne delta