Gloucester County Democrat. (Woodbury, N.J.) 1878-1932, 1886-07-22
POPULAR SCIENCE.

The Pittsburg observers say that the
natural gas interferes more with their
telescope operations than smoke ever
did, the heat 50 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 !, $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 filed
with minute starch grains
The ice Of arctic regions, according to
Major Greeley, does not usually form to
greater thickness than five feet, but
in Bafin'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 the
peculiarities of Gambetta's brain, which
weighed only 1,161 grammes. while
Cromwell's weighed 1000 grammes and
Cuvier's 1899 grammes. The distin-
gushing feature of Gambetta's brain
was that it was particularly well devel-
oped in that portion of its structure
where most undersized brains are found
to be defective, that is, in the third
frontal circumvolution. The folds in
this portion of it exhibited uncommon
richness and variety Of complication.
The recent French surveys have shown
that the magnitude of the Algerian sea
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 l, 100 feet, and
the only area below sea level being com
prised in two ''Chotts' commencing
about one hundred miles due west Of the
Gulf Of Gabes and covering only about
8, 100 square miles-less than half the
area of Lake Ontario. The flooding of the
depressed region would give lake aver
aging seyenty-eight feet in depth. The
creation Of a new sea Of such size could
hardly produce the great effects upon
the worlds climates and upon the depth
of the ocean which have been foreseen
in the speculations of some scientific
writers.
Professor Cerebotani, of Vienna, has
contrived an ingenious instrument for as
certaining the distances of accessible and
inaccessible points from the observer
and from each other-in other words, an
easy method Of range finding. The ap-
paratus consists mainly of pair of tele-
scopes mounted on stand and fixed on
tripod for use. The telescopes are
both brought to bear on the object, and
a areading is then taken from graduated
scale on the instrument, which, compared
with set Of printed tables, gives the
distance. Distances can be measured
between far off objects, and, by means of
sheet of paper fixed on drawing
board, rough plan Of the country under
measurement may be sketched In the
same way the distances Of ships at sea Or
of moving objects on land can be deter
mined. Thus the contrivance appears to
be well adapted not only for land survey
ing, but particularly for military pur-
poses. In fact, it is stated to have been
already adopted in the latter connection
by the German government, and will
probably be by that Of England.