The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-08-23

Improvements in telescopes and in pho- tography have been bringing the moon nearer to us each year. until now 1t is as the ocean depths. W. de Fonville points out that the existence of the cities imagined by Schrotter has been already disproved. and we seem now on the verge of acquiring a start in lunar natural history. At any rate, changes have been noted in the tint of certain regions that suggest the development and disappear ance of some kind of vegetation. kepier suggested that all water on the moon must take the form of ice during the long night of 36 hours, and it is now argued that the air itself-probably not more than a sixth as dense as that of the earth-may be converted into snow by the intense cold. This idea is con- frmed by indications of an atmosphere in places that have been lighted by the sun long enough to change the solid air into the gaseous state. liquefed or solid atmosphere could not be easily de- tected at our distance as its average depth would be only six or seven feet, the earth's atmosphere being sufficient to give a liquid ocean of only about s feet in depth.
 Coal workings around Cheadle, in North Staffordshire, Eng, have been traced back as far as the reign of Rich ard III. The early mining is explained by local geological conditions, as the coal seams-instead of being hidden un- der drift as in other parts of England were brought to notice through dark streaks turned up by the plow late discovery is an old lever that must have been driven at least 300 years ago for drawing a coal tract.
 A cold loving earthworm-Melamen- chytraeus solifugus-has been brought to notice by Russell and Filippi. 1t lives on Mt, St. Elias. Alaska and by night swarms on the snow of the Malaspina glacier, but when the sun shines bur- rows under the surface to a depth of IS inches or more.
 Tidal power has met with little favor on account of its inconvenience and cost It Is directly available only in two short periods daily, and the ordinary working head is so small-not more than six feet --that greatsexpense Is Tiecessarysto sreo- vide storage ponds of suitable capacity An engineering writer points out that 8 few places offer conditions that may make this power profitable. The most conspicuous example is the Bay of Fun. dy, where the tides run normally forty feet high and fill two natural reservoirs of 400 square miles through a channel less than three miles wide The dam ming of this channel should yield more than 200,OO0,O00 horse power hours daily The utilization of this power may be &C., complished at some future time, but the engineering feat will be vastly greater than anything yet attempted.
 A special malady of sponge fishers Is due to an Actinium, a small coelenterate, that lives on the sponges at depths of eighty to 150 feet. pr. Skevos Servos, a Greek physician, states that this para site Is from half an inch to an inch and a half long. and that the poisonous vis- cous substance secreted by it's tentacles produce deep sloughing sores on the nak- ed bodies of the divers. The Actinium Is also we'll known as an internal poison, the fishers themselves mixing it with bread or meat to destroy domestic ami mals. The toxic principle has been late ly found by Charles Richet to contain two distinct poisons, one of which-caus- ing intense congestion and hemorrhage has been named "congestin." while the other-giving rise to violent irrita- tion-is to be known as "thalassin.'
 Astronomers themselves seem to be tending now to belief in some connec- tion between the moon and the weather. From statistics from various sources Prof. W. H. Pickering has concluded that thunderstorms are really more nu- merous in the first half of the lunar month than in the last, liability to the