The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1895-02-16
SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY.


The regions of the world which
have the greatest rainfall seem to be
the regions where the largest number
of tbunderstorins occur. Thus along
the equator fifty to one hundred, or
over, thunderstorps occur annually.
THE Dutch are the largest COLI
sumers of tobacco. In 1888 the con-
sumption in Holland and Belgium was
"a ounces to each inhabitant- Next
comes Switzerland with SO. Brazil and
Turkey follow with 20 each.
The first aerial voyage was made
September IS, 1883, by a sheep, cock
and duck to height of 1900 feet.
air was nj. Francois Pilatre de Rozier,
who mounted the following month in q
balloon.
The winter days in Sweden are
only six hours long. In the northern
part of the peninsula the sun does not
rise once for two months. This is made
up for, however, by the sunny summer.
In the north the sun does not set for
weeks and weeks. an endless day. The
most glorious sight of all the north
land is the midnight sun.
The observations of twenty-five
years. made in the Bay of Bengal by
the Indian government meteorologists,
have shown that the average tempera-
ture rises during years that sun spots
are numerous and sink when they are
few. When the number of sun spots
exceeded the average the barometer
pressure was less than its average.
AS far as is known swallows mi
gratory flights are always carried on
by day. The fact that, though war
blers and other migrants are constant
ly found dead around lighthouses, hav-
ing dashed themselves against the win
dows of the lanterns, swallows have
never been known to meet their fate in
this way, furnishes strong evidence of
this popularity of the swallow tribe.
Several hundred acres of unim-
proved land in the suburbs of Detroit
were planted with potatoes for the
benefit of the city's unemployed. The
profit, it is reported, will exceed 1000.
So successful has been the plan that
there is now serious talk of making it
permanent and putting the work in
charge of a regular city department to
be created especially for that purpose.
Observations and calculations have
led Mr.. A. Mallack to conclude that
insects do not see well, especially at a
distance. Their composite eye, how
ever, has an advantage over the simple
eye, in the fact that there is hardly
any practical limit in the nearness of
objects it can examine. The best in
sect eye examined would give a picture
about as good as if executed in rather
coarse wool work, and viewed at dis
lance of a foot.
Referring to the warmer climate
which is evidenced as having existed at
one time all over the earth, Sir William
Thomson says: 1.-THE earth might
be globe of white-hot iron, COW
cred with crust of rock two
thousand feet thick, or there might
be an ice-cold temperature within
fifty of the surface, yet the climate
could not on that account be sensibly
different from what it is, or the soil be
sensibly or less genial than it is for the
roots of trees or smaller plants" Mani
testify, therefore, the duration of life
upon the surface can in no way be de-
pendent npon the length or intensity
of heat supply from the interior. This,
it is claimed, could not at the present
time melt millimeter thickness of ice
per apnum.