The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1895-01-24
SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY.
Europe produces every year abe

Europe produces every year about
100000, 600 pounds of tobacco, of which
Austria grows about one third.
France imports from the United
States nearly one-half of the tobacco
manufactured in the government fac
tories.
According to DIR. Chalmers re-
searches, the mean duration of life at
birth-based upon the mortality eXpe-
rience of Glasgow during the ten years
-1Ss1-1S90-is 1874 years, 35.2 for males
and 377 for females.
1t has long been known that car
bon exists plentifully in comets. So
dunn has also been found in some of
them. Prof. w. w. Campbell, of the
Lick observatory, reports that he has
examined Gales comet with a spectre
scope, and is satisfied that nitrogen is
also one of the elements thereof
1T has already been demonstrated
in the case of the Yarrow aluminium
torpedo boat that that metal, even in
alloy, is unable to resist the corrodiDg
action of salt water. The experiments
recently made by the American naval
authorities in this respect are fully
borne out 1t remains to be seen
whether the claim made in behalf of
the aluminium boat recently tested in
the Thames is justified.
The habits of the penguin are ex-
ceedingIy interesting To see them
swimming under the surface at the
geological gardens of London or at
Amsterdam is rare sight. In nature
they swim like porpoise, in pro-
longed dive, broken at intervals of
about thirty yards, as they rise to take
breath, when they leap entirely out of
water, Immediately disappearing with
scarcely ripple, after clearing space
of from two to two and a half feet,
One was found to survive being held
under water six minutes. Their food
consists of a large shrimp (Euphansia),
and their stomachs generally contain
number of angular pebbles.
Recent discoveries in Africa have
all tended to prove that Herodotus, the
father of history, was not also the
father of lies. The four lakes from
which the Nile rises have been shown
to exist. Stanley's Ruwenzori noun
tains take the place of the Mountains
of the Moon; the pigmies live in the
equatorial forests, and now Signor
Robbecchi Bricchetti, the Italian eX-
explorer of Somali land, tells of a de-
graded race which he has found on the
shores of the Indian ocean, without
weapons or proper dwellings, living
exclusively on fish and bivalves, whom
he considers the descendants of the
fabulous Ichthyophagi, or fish eaters,
described by the old Greek historian.
Referring to the warmer climate
which is evidenced as having existed at
one time all over the earth. Sir Will
liam Thompson says: THE earth
might be globe of white hot iron,
covered with a crust of rock 1000 feet
thick, or there might be an ice-cold
temperature within fifty feet of the
surface. yet the climate could not on
that account be sensibly different from
what it is, or the soil be sensibly more
or less genial than it is for the roots of
trees or smaller plants" Manifestly,
| therefore, the duration of life upon
the surface can in no way be depend
ent upon 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.