The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1898-06-25
ITEMS OF INTEREST.

quickly as a shot through the heart The
odor of bad egg is due to the presence
of sulphuretted hydrogen and the object
ionable fumes of sewers and bone factories
are attributable chiefly to the same gas.
Chemical, laboratories are famous for bad
smells Berzelius, who discovered the ell
ement called 'selenium," once tried the
experiment of permitting a bubble of pure
hydrogen selenide gas to enter his nostrils
For days afterwards he was not able to
smell strong ammonia, the o.factory
nerves being temporarily paralyzed. Sele-
mum gas has the odor of putrid horse
radish. Telurium is even worse. There
is a story of a physician whose patient,
lady, refused to take an absolutely neces-
sary rest because she was so fond of be-
ing always on the go in society. He gave
her pill containing a small quantity OF
tellurium, and her breath was affected by
it 10 such an extent that she was not able
to appear in pubic for a month. She never
guessed what the trouble was. The vola-
tilted essential oil of roses is supposed to
cause nose cold" This peculiar COM
plant is so far nervous in its character
that the paper roses sometimes excite it,
Prince Krapotkine writes Interestingly
in the Nineteenth Century on The Effects
of Erosion" The amount of erosion ac-
complished by the Colorado river and its
tributaries in the great plateau of western
North America, he says, was revelation
for biologists. The surface of the plateau
being covered with tertiary lacustrine de-
posits, and these deposits having re-
manned intact on both banks of the 5000 to
5000 feet deep canyons which intersect the
plateau, 1t was proved that the rivers had
cut their beds through these deposits, as
well as through thousands of feet of I'M
DERIVING hard rocks since the tertiary pc
Rod. In certain places the horizontal
strata of which the plateau is built up have
been excavated so as to produce a cleft
5000 feet deep, running between two verti-
cal walls which are separated from each
other by the width of only the river. II
becomes evident that under certain favor
able conditions of relief and climate a
river was able to eXcavate a bed 300 miles
long, about II miles wide at the top of the
gap, and from 5000 to over 5000 feet deep,
almost since mans appearance on the
earth. Moreover within the same rela-
lively short geological period masses of
rock, several thousand of feet thick 10000
feet deep in certain places, had been re-
moved by denudation from the surface of
the plateau.
The art of photomcrography has re-
Gently made a great advance through the
application of the electric arc light. Here
tofore, says the Youths Companion, it
! has been very difficult to make good pho
tographs of minute objects magnified more
| than 1000 diameters, because the oXhy-
drogen light employed to illuminate the
objects was not sufficiently uniform in in
tensity. With the electric arc light this
difficulty has been largely overcome, and
| fine photographs have been made of OBJ
| jects magnifed $500 diameters. Micro
scopy is far ahead of astronomy in the
magnifyng powers that it can employ. 1t
| is seldom that a power of so much as
| 1000 diameters can be usefully applied
! with a telescope and IN phOtOgra Dhing the
heavenly bodies comparatively slight mag
| MITIGATION can be used. A photograph of
| the moon with a magnifying power of
| 5000 diameters would be wonder indeed.
| There are spots in the ocean where the
! water is five miles deep. If it is true that
| the pressure of the water on any body in
the water is one pound to the square inch
| for every two feet of the depth anything
| at the bottom of one of the ''five-mile
| holes would have a pressure about IL of
1920 feet to every square inch. There is
/ nothing of human manufacture that
would resist such a pressure. 1t is said
| that pieces of wood have been weighted
| and sunk in the sea TO such a depth that
| the tissues have become so condensed that
| the wood has lost its buoyancy and would
| never float again. 1t could not even be
made to burn when dry.
Most amateur photographers have oc-
casionally met with ghostly markings on
their gelatine plates, for which they could
not account, and the manufacturer is gem
| orally blamed when such a spoiled plate is
| discovered. But ii would seem from ex-
periments lately conducted by DR.. w. J.
| Russell and described by him in the an
nual Bakerian lecture, delivered before the
| British Royal Society, that several sub
| stances, some organic, some metallic will
affect sensitive plate by being kept near
It, and not necessarily in contact with it,
| Wood kept near a plate in darkness for a
| few days will picture itself on the sensi-
| tive surface, the image showing when the
| plate is developed. sheet of perforated
zinc will, in like manner, give up its pat
| tern to the plate, and a nickel coin is es-
| pecialy active giving an excellent copy
| OF all its markings in a comparatively
short time. Gum cOpal and printers ink
are two of the organic substances which
| are most active-a reminder to the anna
teur not to wrap his plates in newspaper.
! Or. Russell states that the general conclu-
| sion TO be gathered from the experiments
| is that the metals and substances under
| consideration have the property of giving
off vapors which affect the sensitive sur
face of a Photographic plate; such bodies
| as geiatine, celluloid. colodion, etc, and
| that the action is greatly intensified by
| rise of temperature. DR.. Russell will con
!
| hope of being able to bring further deval-
| opments of these curious and at the pres
ent time little understood action
As is web known, Americans born of
foreign parentage. are larger than their
! ancestors, whether English. Irish German
| or French, and DR.. Bowditeh has shown
that the children of Americans of both
! sexes, born in the United States are larger
! than those of foreign races saws the In
| dependent. This is generally attributable
| to difference in the climate of the Old erd
| New Worlds, our American climate being
| dried, more changeable and stimulating
| than that of Europe 1t appears that the
| introduced English sparrow mas under
gone a gradual modification since it's in
| PRODUCTION about thirty years ago into his
country. DR.. H. c. Bumpus has oritti-
! cally examined over 200 eggs of this bird
one-half from England and the other balf
from Providence, r. l. 1t was. saws
Science, found that the eggs of the Amerf
can race, or breed, vary much more than
the European, that they are smaller
and of a strikingly different shape. being
more rounded and with a much greater
| amount of color variation. This is attri-
buted by the author to a suspension of
natural selection. However this may be il