The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-03-31
Co1.ptIsd foT The ATk0sso0 TroueEer. SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY

SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.
 Eggs of the extinct great auck, of which less than 100 are known, now sell for more than five hundred dol lars each.
 Tannin has been discovered as an animal substance by M. Villon, a French chemist, who finds that corn weevils contain about three per cent of it.
 Careful experiments have shown that waste silk is the most effective of all non- conducting coverings for steam pipes, and the demand for this pur- pose promises to be great, notwith- standing the high price.
 The largest known flower is the rafiesia, an extraordinary parasite of the forest trees of Sumatra, which measures three feet in diameter, weighs fifteen pounds, and has calyx holding six quarts. The odor is that of tainted meat. The plant consists only of the flower, growing directly on the stem of it's host.
 Soldiers in the Russian army are said to be cured of intemperance by curious and heroic method. The inc briate is locked up, and given only food boiled in his favorite Wretched spirit and water. He soon becomes horribly sick, but is kept on this diet until the very sight or scent of spirit creates in him an inextinguishable loathing for it.
 SLAVE DEPENDENT INsEcTs.-The curious fact has been demonstrated by Sir John Lubbock that certain kinds of ants are unable to exist without keeping other ants as slaves, though why this is so he has not found out. On removing the slaves from nest of fifty slave-holding ants, he found that the latter immediately con- menced to die off and were speedily reduced in number to six, when the slaves were returned, and the mortal ity ceased.
 DUsT STORMs.-Shower of grayish and reddish dust off the African coast and over southern Europe have been known from Homer's time. A "blood- rain" in l775 covered 200 square leagues of northern Italy, making a deposit an inch deep in places; and a dust fall near Cape Verde, described by Darwin, was 1900 or 1900 miles wide and reached 800 or 1000 miles from the coast. A shower of dust near Lyons, in 1846, was estimated by Ehrenberg tv~ amount to 730,00O pounds, one-eighth being micl oscopic organisms. The red color is due to oxide of iron.
 A BIFID PALM.-The famous forked palm of Cayenne is giving signs of weakness, and is threatened with de- struction in some gale. The proposi- tion is therefore made that it be cut down, and the trunk preserved in the Natural History Museum at Paris, after being shown at the Worlds Fair in 1889. This remarkable tree belongs to the genus Areca, is about 100 feet high and divides at height of about thirty feet, the two stems being equal in height and diameter, and flourish ing and fructifying like two isolated trees. The vegetable phenomenon is in grove with some 400 other palms, and shows nothing abnormal save its twin stems.
 THE EARTH's SUPPORTS. In the early gropings of the human mind probably no problem was more per- picking than that of the earth's foun- dations. One of the most primitive ideas represented the earth as a vast flat island, surrounded by an inter- minable ocean; and this view was sub- sequently modified by giving the ocean 8 circular boundary, with endless roots stretching downward beneath the whole. The priests of Veda asserted that the earth was supported on twelve columns, between which the sun passed. Anaximander regarded the earth as cylinder floating in compressed air. The idea that the earth foated long prevailed, even the early Hindoos, who supposed the hemispherical earth to rest on the | heads of four elephants standing on the back of tortoise, maintaining | that the tortoise rested on the univer- sal ocean. Aristotle and Strabo con- ceived the sphericity of the earth, but | what supported it as the motionless centre of their universe puzzled them. Cosmas, A. D. 535, propounded the system of square earth, resting on nothing, and supporting the heavens on solid walls. The venerable Bede, who lived in the eighth century, re- garded the earth as floating egg, and this notion lasted many centuries. These crude theories have come down to 8 surprisingly recent period-so much thing of to-day is our modern science.
 FISHES OF THE SEA.-Though no sharp line of separation can be drawn,