The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-03-24
Compiled for The Ark0as0W TTGusIer. SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY,

Seven varieties of fish examined by
 Daturalists of the Challenge expedi-
 tion are found totally blind in the
 deep sea, but have eyes when inhabit-
 ing shallow water.
 An analysis of mystery gold" re-
 veals an alloy of copper, silver, gold, aluminium, and iron, the last proba-
 ply being an impurity. Even when
 present in small proportion, the al-
 uminium resists the nitric acid test.
 Abdominal massage has been suc- cessfully applied by Dr. H. Sahli, of
 Berne, to the cure of constipation.
 His patients arc recommended to roll five pound cannon ball over the ab- domen for five or ten minutes daily. Austrian engineers speak favorably of GieszPs pilot engine for preventing railway collisions. It is worked by electricity, under the control of the engineer, and is run at any desired distance in front of the train, which it stops automatically on encountering any obstacle.
 An English chemist has shown that the brittleness of the bones of the aged IS not due, as is generally SUD- posed, to an increase of the proportion of mineral salts with advancing years. From section of the femur of fifty subjects of different ages no difference in the proportion of ash could be de- termined.
 The power of various explosives has been calculated to be equivalent to the following pressures, the figures giving tons per square inch: En- mensite, new explosive for which important advantages are claimed in addition to great power, 283; nitro- glycerine, 264; explosive gelatine, 253; forcite, 250; oxomite, 249; pan clastite, 203; gun cotton, 19S; dy- namite, IA atlas, 133; rackarock, ,117; roburite, 24; blasting gunpowder, 2S.
 A TERMINATING ScIENCE.-Accord- ing to Dr. Horatio Hale, ethnology, or "the science of the races of man,'' will become true science only when the tribes are grouped by the evidence of language. A scientific treatise on ethnology will commence, like treat ise on chemistry, with the primary clements, which are the linguistic stocks. It will determine, as far as possible, the mother tongue and the original geographical center of each stock. It will describe the moral and intellectual traits and the physical characteristics of the people. It will ascertain their mythology, their social ind c%,,ia IA will trace their migrations, their in- terminglings with other septs, and the moral and physical changes caused by these wanderings and mixtures, and by climate, soil, food, manner of life, and all other influences. And finally, from ascertaining what has been, it will seek to determine what is to come, and to show us something of the future which the human species. in its various divisions, may expect to attain.
 SEALS WITH BALLAsT.-The seals are carnivorous mammals divided into two classes-the Phocde, or common seals, with rudimentary ears, and the Otartde (sea lions, bears, elephants), which have the ears developed. In late paper before some British nat uralists, Dr. A. J. Harrison stated that the Otartoe, which inhabit the waters of the southern hemisphere. are supposed by the fishermen to have an internal pouch in which rounded stones are carried to enable the animal to sink below the seas surface when fat. Observations have shown, how ever, that the so-called "ballast- bag" is only the stomach. To account for the presence of the stones in this organ it has been suggested that they are intended to aid in the trituration of food, while other persons believe that they have been accidentally in- troduced with the food, or in play. Similar rounded stones have been found in seals and lions which have been confined in London, and the stomach of a Newfoundland seal which died at Clifton in 1886 con- taiDed gravel, nuts and pieces of stick.
 THE ORGANIC CYcLE.-The idea of the indestructibility and ceaseless change of matter leads to curious re- factions. Sir Henry Thompson has remarked that when an animal body decomposes, whether the process oc- cupies four hours, four months, four years, or even four thousand years,- any one of these periods being quite possible,-those clements which as- sume the gaseous form mingle at once with the atmosphere, and are taken up from it without delay by the ever open mouths of vegetable life. By thousand pores in every leaf the car bonic acid which renders the atmos- phere unfit for animal life is' absorbed, the carbon being separated and assim-