The clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1883-1888, 1885-06-03
scientific MISCELLANY.


Under electric illumination, DIR.
Theodore Stein finds himself able to
photograph the throat and larynx in
health or disease.
The forests of the United States COM
prise 412 species of trees. belonging to
158 genera. OF these, IS genera and
90 species are peculiar to Florida
An interesting case of phosphores-
cent snow has been observed by 81
Philadelphia geologist. a mountain
covered with this snow shining in q
dark night as if illuminated by the
moon.
4 botanical phenomenon was wit
messed last season on the shore of
Todos Santos Bay. lower California,
where an apple-tree blossomed and
bore large perfect fruit on its runk,
an inch from the ground.
An accident in a Melbourne foundry
has led to the discovery that plunging
iron castings into a mixture of treacle
and water softens the metal to such q
degree that it can be punched, bored
and tapped as readily as wrought iron.
Experiments have been made IN
France with electricity as an agent to
prevent the incrustation of boilers.
The passage of a current through a
boiler not only caused the impurities
of the water to settle as loose powder
but detached the old inerustation.
The anchorages of Narrakal and AL
| leppy, in India, are stated to be per-
| fectIy smooth and quiet even when the
/ sea outside is tumbling in before strong
southwesterly gales. To explain this,
/ DR.. w. King mentions that analysis
! proves the existence of oil in the muddy
| bottoms of these anchorages. and he
| supposes that there are deposits of pc
/ troleum, either beneath the sea bottom
or along the coast, from which oil con-
tinually oozes up, and calms the other
wise troubled waters.
| A remarkable phenomenon of the
North of England is there known as
| the helm wind. A late description
| states that it blows out of clouds which
! collect on the Pennine range of noun
| tains. and makes a rushing noise like
| the roar of the heavy sea breaking
upon a rocky shore. Its lifting force
| is so great that it sometimes overturne
| vehicles, and takes animals off their
feet. 1t prevails chiefly in the Carlisle
| district, and is seldom felt at greater
| distance than seven miles from its APP
parent place of origin.
The gigantic animals which existed
in the western part of the United States
| during the tertiary age, and which con-
! stitute an order known to science as
| the Dinocerta, form the subject of an
elaborate treatise by Professor o. C..
Marsh, of Yale college. A basin in
| Wyoming Territory, drained by Green
river, Is the only locality in the world
where remains of these creatures have
been found. This basin, now from
5000 to 5000 feet above sea-level, is
the site of an ancient lake, on whose
borders the great beasts, nearly equal
! ing elephants in size, roamed in great
/: 1-HaDors, and in which many of them
| were entombed. In the same region
ancestral forms of the tapir, the horse
! and the pig tlourished at the same geo
logical period; and the lake swarmed
with crocodiles, tOrtoiSes, snakes and
fishes, while its shores were fringed
with palms and other plants which are
now characteristic of the tropics.
Professor Marsh believes the age Of
great mammals to be past, and that the
elephants must soon disappear from the
earth.
A German physicist attributes the
-well-known phenomenon of the APP
parent enlargement of the sun and
moon, when rising or setting, to two
| physiological causes. One is the
greater sensitiveness of the eye to angu-
lar magnitudes when seen horizontally
and the other is an effect of the dila-
ton of the pupil under the feeblel
light reaching us from the heavenly
bodies when near the horizon, such di
lation tending to magnify the image:
received. He finds experimental proc.
of these theories, and shows the alb
surdity of the common explanation
that intervening objects enable us bet
ter to estimate the real size of the sur
| and moon.