The Opelousas courier., 1902-04-19

The United States Coast and Coed
| etic Survey now has four magnetic
| observatories cooperating in the in
ternational magnetic work will con.
tinue during the period Of Antarctic
exploration. They are n at Chel-
tenham, Md, near Washington; anoth-
er at Baldwin, near Lawrence, Kan.
a third at Sitka, Alaska, and a fourth
near Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands.
Can you tell by the manner in which
rainwater eats it's way down a hill
side whether the soil was originally
covered with forest? If the tract was
once wooded can you, by the same
sign, tell about how long it has been
cleared? Such observations are full
Of interest. The rains make rapid
work In eroding newly cleared an
newly titled land and hillsides; but the
prairie has reached a state of COMPARE
tive equilibrium.
The Imperial Academy Of Sciences
Of Vienna has a botanical expedition
at work in Brazil. Word has been re-
ceived from it that the Rivers Man,
bre and Aguapihy, which flow through
an almost unexplored country, have
been navigated in canoes, and that
large consignments have been shipped
for Vienna in the shape Of living
plants and roots, herbarium specimens,
preparations in spirits, woods, fruits
and economic products.
The deepest of all borings is at
ParnsdrowitZ, nea Ratibor, in Silesia,
where the Prussion Government sunk
a well 2003.34 metres below the sur
face (nearly 6573 feet. The diameter
Of the boring diminishes from 0.092
metre to &O69. The upper part of the
well is fined. Observations Of tenn
peratuIe have been made every thirty
one metres throughout the depth and
the average depth corresponding to an
increase of one degree Centigrade in
the mean temperature is 34.1 metres.
The results are practically the same as
those obtained in the well Of Schlade-
bach, situated near by, which is only
256 metres less deep.
New England rains are very IN
but in the long u reliable,
inches a year is not a local
affair, but for the most part an impor-
tation. 1t comes earring a slight
Atlantic sprinkling along the COAST
from the Gulf Of Mexico-a part Of
the Gulf Stream shipped over land
by an especially directed southwest
wind. But the southwest wind is not
a careful carrier. 1t spills its load all
along the road up the Mississippi and
Ohio valleys, SO that as you look at
a rain chart of the country, you see
it rains most a the Gulf, a little
less and less as you go away from it,
till when it arrives in New England
only four inches on the average re-
main in it for the monthly allowance.
The form of our satellite is that Of
an ellipsoid of revolution with its
axis almost equal. Theoretical consid-
crations led various mathematicians,
notably Hansen, to the conclusion that
the longest axis was directed toward
the earth. Professor Franz, director
the observatory Of Breslau, from a
series of precise measurements on
negatives taken at the Lick observa-
tory, arrives at the result that the
difference between the axes Is imper-
ceptible. The subject has lately been
Investigated by NJ. Mainka, with the
heliometer, and he concludes that the
axis directed toward the earth is not
above four-tenths of n per cent.
than the other-a quantity of
the same order as the errors of obser-