Corvallis gazette. [volume] (Corvallis, Benton County, Or.) 1900-1909, 1901-01-22
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ever made have been ordered in this
country for foreign government, and
will give an electric spark forty-flve
inches in length, expending energy
amounting to three or four horse pow
.r, and having a potential of half a mil
ion volts.
Japan and South America have been
an earthquake there is hardly worth
notice. In 1854 a wave trayersed the
Pacific from Japan and broke on the
American coast. Sailors say wave
over fifty feet high is an impossibility,
but wave ninety feet high destroyed
Callao, Peru, in 1886. Mexico, the
East Indies, China, Argentina, Haw-
ali, the Philippines, California-these
places have been the scenes of fearful
disasters from earthquakes and vol
canoes.
The question as to whether birds in
herit their ability to build nests re-
sembling one in which they were
hatched was discussed. Wallace's
theory that bird learns to make its
peculiar kind of a nest by remember
it was reared and by imitation was re-
jected, and an instance cited of pair
of English chaffinches which, reared
apart from individuals Of their species,
and afterward released in an inclosure,
proceeded to build a characteristic
chaffinch nest.
In describing the career of the Col
orado potato beetle, Professor Tower
relates that during the rush of gold
seekers to California in 1S49 and 1850
the emigrants lost and threw away
potatoes which took root, until there
was more or less continuous line of
potato plants from Council Bluff along
the Platte River to the canons of the
Colorado region. The beetles, which
had been confined to the potato patches
of the canons, took advantage of the
situation, and along the highway of in
yasion thus opened for them began
heir triumphant and destructive march
eastward.
The science of clouds has attracted
many devotees within the past few
years, and photography has greatly as
sisted in advancing it. Clouds, like
stars, become far more interesting to
the non-scientific observer of nature
when he knows the names attached to
them. While the grandest and most
imposing form of cloud is the domed
and pinnacled cumulus which fire.
quently accompanies thunderstorms,
the most beautiful is the feathery cir
rus. Cirrus clouds sometimes exist at
enormous elevations. While their
mean height is about $4,000 feet-the
height Of Mount Everest-they have
been measured at an elevation of 49,
600 feet, or more than nine miles. They
move with great velocity, about ninety
miles an hour on the average, and in
winter sometimes more than 200 miles
an hour.
Some Of the astronomical photo
| graphs made at the Harvard Observ-
atory reveal the fact that in April,
1899, new star appeared in the con-
stellation Aquila. At first it's spectrum
resembled the spectra of other new
stars, but in October a photograph
showed that the character of the light
had changed, and now its spectrum
was that of gaseous nebula. Last
summer a telescope observation of
this curious object was made by Pro
fessor Wendell at Cambridge, and he
l
graph showing that it had become a
nebula. Such occurrences are rare,
and one explanation of them is that
they are the result of collisions in
space, the heat developed being suffi-
cient to turn solid matter into gas and
vapor.