The Yakima herald. [volume] (North Yakima, W.T. [Wash.]) 1889-1914, 1896-09-24
SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY.


The fruit growing industry In Ore
gon is growing very rapidly. The state
secretary of horticulture estimates that
this fall there are Sc, 900 acres Of pears,
peaches, apples and such kinds of fruit
In the state; $1,000 acres of prunes and
1900 acres of berries.
Experiments made by the Italians
at Massowah in raising European crops
on the Abyssinian plateau have proved
very successful. Grain yielded espe-
cially good results this year. Plans
are made for greater extension of ag-
riculture In the colony next year.
Silk has been made of the threads
OF the Madagascar hal'ab'e spider which
has very nearly the same resistance
as that made from silk worm cocoons
Experiments made with ordinary
spiders web have proved failures ow-
ing to the weakness of the threads,
but the cnrysalis of the common moth
has yielded silk strong enough for q
lady's neckerchief.
The temperature of the earth's
crust increases at the average rate of
one degree Fahrenheit for each fifty
Ave feet in descent. At such uniform
rate of increase we find that we must
only descend to a depth Of something
like thirty miles into the bowels of the
earth to find heat sufficient to melt any
known substance, and that few miles
deeper all rocks and metals must be in
state of white-hot fusion.
There is variety of the caterpillar
Of the European Saturnia carpini, with
pink tubercles. The moth bred from
this larva, by DIR. Dixey, produced cat
erpillars OF which ten per cent. had
pink tubercles. In this connection
Prof. Poulton remarked, states Nature,
that he had found caterpillars of
Smerinthus ocellatus, with red spots,
and that this popularity had been
transmitted to their descendants.
THE accuracy of finger prints as a
test of personal identity is well shown
by some recent photographs of Mr..
Francis Cation says the Photographic
Times. 'sIn a case of twins, their pho
tographs and measurements were
closely alike, but the minuti@ of their
finger prints were quite different. An
enlarged photograph of the print of the
hand Of child eighty-six days old
shows the development of the dis
tinctive little ridges on the skin even
at that early age"
What we call light is a wave mo-
ton in the ether, and Is a transverse
movement, too. Molecules have moth
ing to do with it except to produce it.
The waves of ether which affect the
ax- IL.
millions OF millions per second to eight
hundred millions of millions per second,
the longest wave being what we call red
waves, while the shortest is called vio-
let, though it is well known that waves
much shorter than those In the COM
mon spectrum can be seen by some
eyes.
M. Raoul Pictet, the French chem
list, who has long been experimenting
with intense cold, finds that phosphor-
essence ceases at very low tempera-
lures. Glass tubes filed with sulphides
OF calcium, strontium and barium were
exposed to the sun and then taken into
a dark room where the intensity and
duration Of the phosphorescence was
noted. After being again exposed to
the sun the tubes were put into mix
ture where by rapidly lowering the
pressure their temperature was re-
du ced to minus one hundred aud forty
degrees; they then showed no sign of
phosphorescence, but after time the
upper parts of the tubes which had
been least cooled began to glow, and
as the temperature rose the light ex-
tended, becoming at last as bright as
In the first experiment.