The Arkansaw traveler., 1889-04-20
COweptlsd for ne Arkamsnw Trapeesv.
 SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.

delicacy.
 An electric tree felling machine has been put to work in Spain The cutting Is not done by Aw, but by special drills which either bore rows of holes close together or operate by a sweeping cut back and forth across the trunk.
 As local an@sthetic for speedy operations Dr. Voituriez, of Lille, recommends carbonic acid solutions under pressure. By projecting upon the skin two or three siphons of artificial sezer water, insensibility to pain is produced, and lasts five minutes.
 Prof Pickering. of the Harvard College Obser- vatory, estimates that 4,O0O or 5000 nebulae not yet found by direct observation, would be shown in photographs of the entire sky. By photo graphic aid he has discovered & number of these objects surrounding the great nebula of Orion.
 SPEoTAcLEs FOR HEADACHE-N is now under stood that many puzzling headaches are due to overwhelming of the eyes and defective vision. In such cases, skillful oculist may give permanent relief by removing the cause of straining provd ing suitable glasses to remedy the defects of the sight.
 DEADLY STovEs.-According to the declarations ofDr. Lancereaux and others to the Paris Academy of Medicine, the heating of dwellings with stoves, which usually have insufficient draught is attended by startling degree of danger from the carbonic oxide set free by slow combustion. This produces either acute chronic poisoning of the blood, ending fatally, or causing deterioration of health. 1t has been shown that even we'll ventilated rooms heated by stoves contain sufficient carbonic oxide to act on the blood and the minutest quantity may prove dangerous. Even in the open air, persons near lime- kilns poisoned, and accidents in vehicles from foot warmers filled with lighted charcoal are common.
 A STUPENDoUs MYsTERY-Proctor declared that few even scientific men appreciate the amazing my stery of the force we call gravity. Wonderful as is the familiar attraction of bodies to the earth gravitation Is altogether greater mystery when considered as property possessed by matter. The universality of the property, which belongs not merely to this that substance, but to every substance solid, liquid gaseous, and not to such and such aggregations of natter but to the ultimate molecules and atoms, is an amazing, if not an appalling, mystery. Here Is matter, which men call inert, not merely possessing inherent force, but with its whole texture instinct with inherent, nexplained, probably mex xplcabe, power But If the universalty of gravitation, and the infinite range of the force thus exerted by all matter are wonderful, infinitely more wonderful is the instantaneous nature of its operation This quality of universal gravtation is indeed wonderful that few who hear of 1t for the first time can even admit that it is possible Yet the astronomer has been able to demonstrate that the interval of time required for gravity to extend its action from one body in space to any other body, even if separated by distance SO great that light at 187 900 miles per second takes thousands of years to cross It, is less than any interval which can be measured!
 TIE EARrH's DuRArIoN-The present age of the earth has been placed by Sir William Thomson at 100 OOO years while the speculations of others have given much larger figures. M. Adolphe d. Assier who believes such estimates to be greatly exaggerated considers the life of the earth in three periods, which he terms the igneous or nebulo- stellar stadium, the stadium of solar illumination or of organic lie and the stadium of darkness cold and death. The hrst-which began with the detachment of the terrestrial nebua from the soar and ended in the formation of the crystalline crust of the globe-he calculates from physical laws to have been 5000 years in duration. The second- comprising the present epoch, and to close with extinction of the sum- embracing the entire cycle of geological formstions--is found by geological and physical evidence likely to have e total length of 25, ,OOO, 900 years, of which moro than half has passed. The third stadium-starting from the end of solar illumination, and closing in the terrible and inevitable catastrophe of the fall of the earth