Little Falls transcript. [volume] (Little Falls, Morrison County, Minn.) 1876-1894, 1884-06-13
Scientific Miscellany.

Corrosive subIimate is said to be
gaining favor among surgeons rs al
efficient antiseptic.
Platinum has recently been draw
into wire SO fine as to be invisible to
!, the naked eye,
According to Archibald Geike, F. R.
s., large part of the east coast of En-
gland is being rapidly worn away. In
HolVerness stri p of land moro than q
mile broad has been carried away in
eight centuries, and in some places as
much as five yards is yearly given up
to the sea.
Animal life is.very abundant in some
parts of the world at great depths in
the sea. This is Illustrated by the fact
that during last summers explorations
by the French steamer Talisman one
haul OF It's net brought up, from q
depth OF 800 fathoms, 1000 fishes and
nearly 1000 crustaceans of different
kinds. This capture was made in the
Atlantic, near the Cape Verd Islands.
''Vaccination' for Rabies. Mons.
Pasteur has been continuing his re-
searches on rabies, or hydrophobia,
and believes that he has now succeed
ed in rendering d number Of dogs Sc
cure from future liability TO the dis
ease by the plan Of inoculatjng them
with Il modified virus 1t immunity
from rabies were in this way secured
in the whole species, the human race
would have nothing further to fear
from the disorder, since mankind is
NC ffno +.,{
ceeding direct1 y from mad dogs.
The Airs Plant Food. Besides nitro
gen and oxygen, the air contains in
smaller proportion carbonic acid, am
monia and certain nitrous compounds
substances which are very important
to vegetation. Late researches at the
French observatory on the Pic duMiii,
about $500 feet above sea level, shows
that the proportion OF carbonic acid in
the air does not vary perceptibly with
the altitude, as has hitherto been
thong ht, and that ammonia is as COM
pletely ditfused in the atmos phere as
carbonic acid. By discharging or alb
.sorbing these two gaseous substances,
the sea is believed to act as o great
regulator of the supply, keeping their
proportions in the air remarkably con-
slant and uniform throughout the
world although the quantities with
drawn and added on the land must be
necessarily changing. 1t has been
supposed that tho nitrous COM
pounds are produced by electric dis
charges which cause the chemical
union OF the airs oxygen and nitrogen,
and this view is confirmed by the fact
that no traces of these compounds
have been found on the PIC du Midi
above the heights reached by thunder
storms.
Sfmbiosis In the animal and veoe-
table kingdoms ere found two distinct
forms OF fellowship in which dissimilar
organism live constantly together. In
one fornl--that Of parasitism--one of
the associated organisms lives at the OK
pense OF the other, as, for instance, the
lnistletoe on the apple tree. In the
other form, the advantage of the CON-
partnership is mutual, as in the case Of
the well known kermit crab, one spe-
cies of which picks up an empty shell
for an abode and shares this and it's
food with q sea anemone, which ia re-
turn protects It's host by means OF nu-
merous long threads charged with
singing acid which it shoots out on the
slightest alarm. By experiment at
Naples it has been proven that the
compact between these two partners is
so close that one is indispensable to the
other. A still more remarkable Illus
tration is drawn from the candle-nut
tree of South America, which forms an
alliance with a species Of small black
. ant, to their mutual benefit To this
curious partnership, which appears to
exist among many animal and vegeta-
BILE species, but which naturalists are
only just beginning to study, the name
of symbiosis has been applied. AT the
last meeting of the German naturalists,
Prof. Hertwig pointed out that such
. inter-dependence OF organism may
have played an important part in the
development Of species. - ~