The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-05-02
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 SCIENTIFIC MiscRLLANY.

offered for safe substitute for guupewder in coal-mining. &
 The only land from which the total phase of the solar eclipse of September s,h can be be seen is New Zealand. The ,otaiitv lasts only two minutes and half. An ex- petition will be sent from Melbourne to ob- serve 1t.
 Mounds resem bling those of Ohio ex- ist ner Kalgan, China, and in one has been found stone hafchet which is said to be in. distinguishable from those shown as the work of the "mound-builders ' of ancien, America.
 The membership of the American As. sociation for the Advancement of Science. which was doubled at the annual meeting in | Boston in 1880, has rapidly increased since. and has now reached a,s47. Its members are drawn from no less than 5o7 places.
 The presence of even I-3o oooth of a pound of antimony in pound of melted lead increases the rapidity with which the | lead oxidizes and burns, and lead containing more than I-4ooth of its weight of copper has been found to be unfit for the manufac. ture of white lead.
 A Weather Prophet.-It is possible, | according to French authofity. to foretell the weather, sometimes ten or twenty hours in advance, by observing and comparing the sounds emitted by telephone connected by leads with two iron bars stuck into the ground few yards apart. Tn case of thunderstorm especially noise like that of shriveling leaves increases until flash of lightning oc- CUTS, when the sound resembles that of rain or hail falling on grass.
 What Becomes of Arctic Animals ?- It has been source of much surprise 10 Prof. Nordenskjold that, during his numer- ous expeditions within the Arctic circle, In regions where animal life is abundant, he has found only very few remains of animals which died natural death. No one has any idea of what becomes of the bodies of such animals, and it is indeed very strange, as he remarks, that on Spitzbergen it is easier to ind bones of gigantic lizard of remote geological time than those of :" self-dead seal, walrus or bird. Tho same is also true of some places not so far north.
 Errors Corrected -Rheem, of the Smithsonian Institute, has contradicted much of the popular belief concerning snakes. The venomous hoop snake, which takes its tail in
 its mouth and rolls along like a hoop, and the blow snake, the breath of which is deadly. exist only in the ina agination. The idea that ssrpents sting with the tongue is erroneous. An impression prevails that the number of poisonous srakes is great, but in North America there are but three species-the rattlesnake, the copperhead or moccasin, and the coral. Snakes do not jump; they reach suddenly forward-perhaps half the length of their bo dies.
 Ancient Philosophers on E Earthquakes. -Anaxagoras, the Rhodian, held that earth quakes are nothing but sort of cosmic fiat ulence-winds which have strayed into cav erns where they cannot find an outlet. Aris- totle ascribed them to vapors generated by the inhltration of water through the Assures ot rocky sea-bottom and Pliny, to the pressure of air in deep caves, confined and react'ng against the collapse of incumbent rock strata. But the most ingenious explaa- ation was offered by St. Thomas of Aquinas, who suggested that earthquakes may be caused by the struggles of defunct mishe- lievers trying to escape (by a simultaneous stampede, perhaps) from pit of torment.
 Insect Pain.-Shakespeare betrayed an ignorance of insect anatomy when he wrote, The poor beetle that we tread upon in cor poreal sufferance feels a pang as great as when giant dies" Minute dissections have proven that insects, though possessed of nerves, have no well-dehned organs repre- senting the brain, the seat of concentrated feeling, where all the nervous connections meet. They have, instead, a chain of gan glia or bundles of nerve-substance, from each of which nerves branch out to con- tigucus parts; so that the sensations are not all, carried to one grand focus of acute sensi- bility as with us, but form in fact separate systems, any one of which might be destroyed without disturbing the sensation of the others. Sleeping moths may be pinned to trees without feeling pain enough to awaken them; and it is related that a dragon-fy. whose long abdomen an entomologlst had accidently severed from the rest of the body. suffered so little inconvenience or loss of appetite that it at once greedily devoured two small flies.
 The Origin of Lfe.-" Men of science" says Proctor anent a recent speculation on supposed organic remains found in a meteorite, "may anu SC themselves by speaking of life being brought to the earth by the arrival of meteor in reality a fragment of some once peopled world which has been destroyed by conflict with anotheror by internal disturbance. But this is more a scientific jest than grave reality. Astron- omy knows nothing of worlds coming in con- fiict. On the contrary, the laws of motion as- sure us that if anything is SO unlikely that it may be regarded as absolutely impossible, it is the encounter of two orbs in mid space; nor have We any reasnn fa sunnaxa 4hat