The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-06-28
SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY WRITING AT A DISTANCE-DUST
 STARS. A Disease of Pavements-Imitati Mountain Building-In the Sea- Serpent's Home-Armed Crabs.
 Improved x-Ray Vision.

Improved X-Ray Vision. The telechirograph, or writing tele- phone, of Ernst Karl Iruhn, Is ingenious If not simple. The transmitter is pen Cil whose lead has a little play in the
 metallic casing. and the pressure of writ ing closes a vertical motion current in the up and down strokes and hort- zontal one in the forward movement
 These currents control magnets In the back of a small mirror in the receiver This mirror is rocked by the magnets and a pencil of light from concentrat- ing lens Is reflected upon strip of sen- sitized photographic paper. The defiected ray of light follows the movement of the
 writer's hand, producing fac simile or the pencils marking exact enough to serve as a signature to check. The sensitive film is drawn through devci- oping bath by little electric motor.
 That 6ust should settle, in regular fig
 ures-crystaiizing, so to speak, like the snowfiakes-seems rather surphising. Us- ing plates heated 10 or 15 degrees above
 the atmosphere. MT. w. J. Russell finds
 that the settling dust always tend to pro- duce regular geometric forms, which are always star-like, but are made by the
 shape of the plate to vary from three rayed to eight-raya a1 stars. In each in- stance the rays are of uniform length
 and form a perfect pattern, while super
 imposed stars often produce very beauti-
 ful figures which appear under a micro- scope.
 A fungus that rapidly destroys wood
 pavements is giving trouble in English cities using such paving. The fungus spreads from infected blocks to sound ones, and the only means of checking 1t seems to be careful inspection of all wood before laying and the prompt removal of infected blocks.
 Electric sparks are always obtained from kites reaching a height of a quarter of a mile, and increase as the kites go higher.
 In laboratory experiments on the for nation of mountain chains pressure has been applied In one direction only, but in the new apparatus of Lord Avebury four beams of wood are drawn together by screws so as to give compression in two directions at right angles to each other. The space between the beams is two feet square and nine inches deep. In this space are placed pieces of baize separated by sand, and the working of the screws. pushed the sand up until it is fiattened against the plate-gIass cover ing the apparatus. when casts are made of the different layers of baize. The re- suits are found to initiate closely much of the folding and other phenomena ob- served in Natures mountain building. The ridges in the bottom layer. as in nature, are narrow, rhort precipitous and greatly broken up but become wider, longer and less steep until the layer be- low the sand on the top is plateau-like Many variations in natural conditions can be represented.
 In spite of the efforts to trap the animals of the deep sea, many forms perhaps some of great size-must still be unknown. The Prince of Monaco. one of the greatest of marine naturalists, has shown that life of some kind probably reaches the deepest ocean bottom, and in a very ingenious way he has proven the existence of an enormous octopus that appears to frequent the middle depths of. the Atuantic. Noticing that the dying sperm whale rejects some of it's latest food. he hastened to secure some of this. It included fragments of such an octopus. and one of the antennae, though incomplete measured not less than 2 feet In length.
 The curious habit of carrying a live sea anemone in each of its two claws is ascribed to the Melia. a genus of small crabs of the Maldive Archipelago. NJ. Bor- radaile states that he crabs claws are too frail for use in defense. and it is not clear whether the anemones are held as a means of protection or as a trap for food.
 The X-ray stereoscope of M. T. Guilloz uses a single tube so mounted that it | can be rapidly os9illated between two po- sitions. The oscillations are given by a cam making 30G revolutions per minute and so arranged that only a. tenth of the | time of rotation is taken in moving from | one position of rest to the other. Two | distinct photographic images are thus formed, with displacement varying with | the degree of the tubes oscillation and | its distance from the screen. Two shut | ters, electrically controlled by the oscil- l lating apparatus, allow the right eye to | view one image and the left the other, | vision being entirely cut of during the | change of the tubes position. The com | bination of these images gives an appar- ] ently solid reproduction of the object, and | the effect is claimed to be superior to | that obtained with two tubes or with a | tube having two anti-cathodes.
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