The Donaldsonville chief. [volume] (Donaldsonville, La.) 1871-current, 1884-03-08
NUMBER 27.
SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.

Mr.. c. W. Heaton, an English chemist,
has analyzed aFsample of water from the
famous Hagar's we'll at Mecca-to which
thousands of Mohammedan pilgrims resort
annually-and reports that the water is a
most dangerous compound, containing an
extraordinarily large proportion of filth.
The total amount of solid matter found in
a gallon of it was more than twenty-five
times as great as that found in like
quantity of the water from the Thames
river.
| The pulse beats of criminal during exc
cution by hanging have been recorded.
After the rope was adjusted the pulse-rate
was 121; Immediately after the drop it fell
to IS, 80, 20 and to 0 in the fifth minute,
but the sixth minute it rose to 20, then to
70; eighth minute 0; ninth 81; after this no
pulse was perceptible in the arteries, but
the heart beat two.or three times between
| the ninth and nineteenth minutes, and
once in the nineteenth minnie. The death
was from strangulation, the neck not being
dislocated.
Physicists have lately been trying to de-
termine by experiment whether the elec-
tricity of thunder storms is generated
either by the evaporation of water or by
the condensation of vapor. Freeman and
Blake have each obtained results which in-
dicate that no electricity is produced by
the evaporation of pure water, and Mr.. 8.
Koli hoe einoo aao corna iuuoatiua
tons with delicate apparatus which have
failed to show that condensation of vapor
or the formation of hail is source of at
mospheric electricity.
The result of photographic survey made
in the Straits of Sunda since the volcanic
eruption of last August have been given by
M. e. Van Dorm. It appears that the
southern peak of Krakatoa yet remains un-
changed, and rises with an almost perpen-
dicular northern edge, to height of more
than 2JOO feet above the sea. The northern
part of the island, however, has entirely
disappeared, and soundings on the place
where it had stood reached depth of 1900
feet without touching bottom. The lost
ground of Krakatoa is evidently found a
few miles to the north, where the depth of
the water has been greatly diminished and
one old island has been much enlarged,
while several new ones have appeared above
the north of Krakatoa suggested the idea
that the surveying ship was above crater
which had been filed with water and
quenched by it.
Out of the 700 species Of solan,tm known
to botanists, according to paper read by
Mr.. j. G. Baker before recent meeting of
the Linnean Society of London, there are
only about SIX which produce tubers, and
only one of these, the common potato,
soldnum t,.berosun., has yet been cultivated.
The native home of the potato is in the dry
and elevated parts of Chill. In other Dor
tions of the same country is found another
species, s. Moglia, which should be much
better adapted to general cultivation, as it
grows in moist places. As. long agoas
1926 the cultivation of this species in En-
gland was attempted, with most promising
results, but was soon abandoned because
the plant was believed to be identical with
The common potato. Another species, s.
from the eastern part of South
America, is now being cultivated expert
mentally in France, and is likewise suita-
Die for damp soil; while a third wild spe-
lies, S. Jamesii, is being tried in the United
States. This last species is the one which
Mr. JIG. Lennon discovered in south
eastern Arizona in 1881.