The Londonderry sifter. (South Londonderry, Vt.) 1883-19??, 1886-07-29

POPULAR SCIENCE.

iho Ii'tsDuiS opscfNcis say tiut 'ho
natural gas interferes more with their
telescopic operations than smoke ever
did, the heat so agitates the atmosphere.
A boring made by the Prussian gov.
ernment at Schladebach in search Of coal
is said to be the deepest in the world.
Its depth is 4, $50 feet, its breadth at the
bottom two inches, and at the top eleven
inches, The temperature at the bottom
is 11s degrees.
The peculiar varnish-like lustre of the
petals of the buttercup is attributed by
DR.. Mobius, who has recently been in
vestigating it, to highly refractive yell
low oil existing in the epidermal cells,
increased by the fact that the layer Of
cells of the mesophyl is densely filled
with minute starch grains.
The ice of arctic regions, according to
Major Greeley, does not usually form to
a greater thickness than five feet, but
in Baffin's Bay, the Greenland Sea and
parts of the Arctic Ocean thicker masses
are produced by the jamming together
of foes, which are thus piled up and
become frozen together The ice of the
Polar Sea is of almost lnconceivable
roughness, and it is doubted whether
any explorer has ever seen 800 square
yards of it that is level.
French scientists are discussing tn,
peculiarities of Gambetta's brain, which
weighed only 1851 grammes, Will,
Cromwell's weighed 1900 grammes and
Cuvier's 1929 grammes. The distin
gushing feature of Gambetta's brain
was that it was particularly we'll devel
oped in that portion of its structure
where most undersized brains are founc
to be detective, that is, in the third
frontal circumvolution. The folds il
this portion of it exhibited uncommon
richness and variety of complication.
The recent French surveys have show,
that the magnitude of the Algerian Sc,
project has been greatly exaggerated
No large part of Northern Africa can be
flooded, the desert of Sahara proving to
have an average height of 1, 100 feet, ano
the only area below sea level being com
prised in two "Chotts" commencing
about one hundred miles due west of tn,
Gulf of Gabes and covering only abou
3, 100 square miles-less than half tn,
area of Lake Ontario. The flooding of tn,
depressed region would give lake aver
aging seventy-eight feet IN depth. Tn,
creation of a new sea of such size coulc
hardly produce the great effects upor
the worlds climates and upon the deptt
of the ocean which have been foreseer
in the speculations of some scientific
writers.
Professor Cerebotani, of Vienna, ha
contrived an ingenious instrument for as
certaining the distances of accessible ant
inaccessible points from the observer
and from each other-in other words, al
easy method of range finding. The ap
paratus consists mainly of pair of tele
scopes mounted on stand and fixed Oh
tripod for use. The telescopes ART
both brought to bear on the object, and
reading is then taken from graduated
scale on the instrument, which, compared
with set of printed tables, gives th'
distance. Distances can be measured
between far off objects, and, by means o
a sheet of paper fixed on drawing
board, rough plan of the country undel
measurement may be sketched. In th'
same way the distances of ships at sea O.
of moving objects on land can be deter
mined Thus the contrivance appears t.
be well adapted not only for land survey
ing, but particularly for military pur
poses. In fact, it is stated to have beeI
already adopted in the latter connection
by the German government, and vii
probably be by that of England.