St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1884-08-03
SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.

AN apparatus has been employed at Har-
ward college for recording every change in
the electricity of the air, and the degree of
change. The observations are expected to
furnish valuable indications of weather
changes.
ACCORDING to DR.. Spencer Cobbold, many
'scares" have been originated by writers
unfamiliar with parasites, who have de-
scribed as trichinae some of the vast number
of comparatively harmless little worms
which live in BIRDS beasts and fishes.
The importance of the analyses made at
the Paris Municipal Laboratory is now so well
appreciated that forty persons are required
for testing samples of foods, liquors, ETC., for
adulteretions or impurities, while similar in
situations have been established in other
French cities, with central administration
in Paris.
AFTER careful weighing of all available
evidence, Prof, Attfeld, F. R. S., concludes
that there is not the faintest cause for alarm
concerning the occurrence of tin, lead, or
any other metal in canned food. When in
jury has resulted from the eating of such
food, it has probably been due to unsound-
ness of the food and not to poison derived
from the can.
CAUSE OF BLINDNEss.-A resolution
adopted by the archaeological Society of
England, recommends the circulation of
card warning all who have charge of young
infants that if a childs eyelds become red
and swollen physician should be consulted
at once. The society finds that young chill
dren are very liable to form of ophthalmia
1yhi oh ic El-alv m ~,
manent blindness. An inquiry among
many institutions shows that the percentage
of cases of blindness which are traceable to
this infantile disease is very large, being
nowhere less than 80 per cent.
GEYsERs: DR.. A. G. Pcale states that the
geyser region of Iceland covers an area of
about 5000 square miles; that of New Zea-
land, 1850 square miles; and OF the Yellow
stone National park, 3,47S square miles.
Besides these great geyser regions of the
world, there are number of places where
few individual geysers are known, as in
Thibet, the Azores, Mexico, Japan and Java.
In the number of springs and noted geysers
the Yellowstone National park and New Zea-
land far exceed Iceland, in which the great
geGser and stokhr are the only two prominent
spouters. The number of springs in New
Zealand appears to be large, but is not
known. Over 1000 springs in the Yellow
stone park have been enumerated and map
| ped, and among them are seventv-one gey-
sers, of which about twenty are known to
spout to height of not less than fifty feet.
There is probably but little difference be-
| tween the three regions in the heights to
which the column of water is thrown, although
fla a111 al
number which crupt regularly to height
of one hundred feet or more. The maxi
mum recorded heights are 300 feet for the
Excelsior, of the National park, 212 feet for
the great geyser of Iceland, and 200 feet for
one of the New Zealand geysers.
POPULAR ScIENCE.-''The True Philoso-
pher," says Mr.. Mattieu Williams in re-
ferring TO the scientific lectures at the Lon
don International Health exhibition, "sces
in all such efforts to intermingle science
with practical daily work, and, above all,
with joyous recreation, the fulflmen of the
great object which alone iustihes the exist
ence Of science schools, universities, learned
societies, original research, etc. l put re-
creation above all, because the elevating
moral and intellectual influences of science
operate most powerfully on those who make
it recreation and least upon the specialist
who uses it as matter Of business like any
other trade, or in order to obtain social
status by public displays It is even posi-
bic that these latter may be morally degraded
| by their scientific attainments. They GER
tainiy are so wheneverthey assume the phar-
isaical airs Of a scientific priesthood, by look
| ing down with pedantic sef-complacency
| IL
| 'PYRAMIDs of instruction." so called,
have been erected at Weimar Munich and
other German towns. The faces show the
elevation of the place, the difference of local
time from that of the chief cities of the
world, the population. and variety Of sta
tistical information, while there are also ex-
posed to public view a clock, thermometer,
barometer and wind vane.
COMET FAMILIES. -"There IS a family of
COMETS" says Mr. z. A. Proctor, ''eyery
member Of which travels in an orbit passing
near the orbit Of Jupiter; another family
every member Of which can be similarly az
ISOLATED with Saturn; others depending in
the same way on Uranus; others on Neptune;
and in fact, so fully has this sort Of relation
been recognized that the idea has even been
thrown out that planet travelling outside
the orbit Of Neptune but as yet unknown
might be detected by the movements Of a
comet IntersectiDg the great plane of plan
etary movement far beyond Neptune's
orbit This remarkable relation among the
orbits Of the comets which travel periodically
around the sun has been interpreted by sup
| posing that all such comets were drawn from
outer space by the SUMS attraction, and pre-
vented from returning to outer space by the
disturbing influence of one or other Of the
giant planets. Mr.. Proctor regards this view
as utterly unsatisfactory and incon sistent
with observed facts, and explains the ex
istence Of the comet families of the giant
planets by assuming that masses OF matter
have been elected from those planets in
eruptions akin to those which take place in
the sun. Both Jupiter and Saturn may even
now eject matter from time to time with such
velocities that it never returns TO them, and,
in her planetary youth, our earth may have
thrown out many comets.
Gen. Keifer Out Of the Race.