The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1885-05-16
Correspondence Baltimore County Union.
SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.
AMERICAN TIMERS.


complete collection of the native woods of
the United States is being prepared for the New
York Museum of Natural History. 1t will COM
prise SO varieties of oak 81 of pine, of fir, of
spruce, of hemlock, II of ash, of hickory, IL
of willow, 8 of cherry, 9 of poplar, of maple,
Of persimmon, and of cedar. Each specimen
will display both longitudinal and transverse
grainings of the wood, as well as the log in its
natural condition, with the bark attached.
WHAT BECOMES OF ARCTIC ANIMALsy
1t has been a source of much surprise to Prof.
NOrdenskjOld that, during his numerous expedi-
tons 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 indeedivery strange as
he remarks that on Spitzbergen it is easier to
find bones of gigantic lizard of remote geologi-
cal time than those of 'self-dead" seal, walrus
or bird. The same is also true of some places net
SO far north.
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE.
"Men of science" says Proctor anent a recent
speculation supposed organic remains found
in o meteorite, "may amnse themselves by speak
ing of life being brought to the earth by the ar
rival of meteor, in reality fragment of some
once peopled world which has been destroyed by
conflict with another or by internal disturbance.
But this is more a scientific jest than grave re-
atty. Astronomy knows nothing of worlds COM
ing into conflict. On the contrary, the laws of mo-
ton assure that if anything is so unlikely that
itmay be regarded as absolutely impossible, it is
the encounter of two orbs in mid space nor have
we any reason to suppose that a. planet can be
rent into fragments by internal commissions. If
we had, we have not the slightest reason for sup.
posing that orbs thus unfortunate would be more
likely to be inhabited than their more lucky worlds
If these were inhabited already, we gain nothing
BY bringing to them the fragments of other worlds
which have exploded; and if they were not in
habted, whilst the burst shattered worlds we're,
we are called on to imagine the absurdity that
only inhabited worlds are liable to destruction,
for the benefit of those which are without inhabi-
tants To which ab.urdity this is superadded,
that the seeds of life would survive the destruction
of their planet home, and to journeyings through
millions on millions of years which science as
sures us they would have to make through the
cold of interstellar space before they would fall
on any other world. And all these absurdties to
purpose so far the origin of life is concerned
Ior they take us back but step, which brings us
in reality nearer to all life."
SOLAR POWDER.
The light of the sun is estimated to equal in
quantity 1,574, OOO OOO OOo 900, 600 OOO 600, 900
candles the lights intensity at the suns surface
being 10000 that OF candle flame, $500 times
that Of metal in Bessemer converter LAG times
that Of calcium light, or 81 times that of an
electric arc. The temperature, according to Ro-
sette, is about $4,000 degrees Fair. The me-
chanical equivalent of the solar radiation, contn-
uously acting, is nearly 10000 horse power per
square foot of solar surface.
ANCIENT PHILOSOPHERS ON EARTHQUAKES.
Anaxagoras, the Rhodian, held that earthquakes
are nothing but sort of cosmic fatulence-winds
which have strayed into caverns, where they can
not find outlet. Aristotle ascrbed them to
vapors generated by the infltration of water
through the assures of rockey sea bottom and
Pliny, to the pressure of air in deep caves, con-
fined and reacting against the collapse of super
incumbent rock strata. But the most ingenious
explanation was offered by St. Thomas of Auuinas
who suggested that earthquakes may be caused
by the struggles of defunct misbelievers trying to
escape (by simultaneous stampede, perhaps)
from a pit of torment.
INSECT PAIN.
Shakespeare betrayed an ignorance of insect
anatomy when he wrote, "The poor beetle that we
o
as great as when giant dies" Minute dissec-
lions have proven that insects, though possessed
of nerves, have no well-defned organs represent
ing the brain and the seat of concentrated feeling
where all the nervous connections meet. They
have, instead, chain of ganglia or bundles of
nerve-substance, from each of which nerves branch
out to contiguous parts; SO that the sensations
are not all carried to grand focus of acute
sensibility 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
related that q dragon-fy, whose long abdomen
an entomologist had accidentally severed from
the rest of the body, suffered SO little inconvenience
or loss of appetite that it at once greedily de-
voured two small flies.
MISCELLANEOUS.
The presence of even one-thirty- thousandths of
pound of melted lead increases the rapidity
with which the lead oxidizes and burns and lead
containing more than MISUNDERSTANDING
of its weight of copper has been found to be unfit
for the manufacture of white lead.
The only land from which the total phase of
the solar eclipse of Sept. 9Th can be seen is New
Zealand The totality lasts only two minutes
and half. An expedition will be sent from
Melbourne to observe it.
An equivalent of $500 has been offered for
safe substitute for gunpowder in coal-mining.
Mounds resembling those Of Ohio exist near
kalgan, China, and in one has been found a stone
Ratchet which is said to be indistinguishable from
those shown as the work Of the "mound- builders"
of ancient America.
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II u-r IL.