The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-06-04
SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY
PASSING OF THE sOII~-A-BIG FISH
 "A SWEET PLANT.
The Longest Life--Metal scenery- Prolonged Anaesthesia--Trains Without Engtneers-P0isOn-
 ous Dyes--Bees fin the
 HOme-German Fuel

Tba nreservation of the soil itself as we'll as its fertility seems to be a
 problem to which man must give early attention. Prof. N. s. Shaler, in call ing attention to this, points out that under savage life the undisturpea roots and stems of the wild plants
 bound the soil in the rocks, and the average washing away in four or hve centuries would not equal the men that may be carried to the sea from
 a modern plowed field by a single ram storm. To this latter-day waste must
 be adding cropping that takes away soluble minerals faster than they are formed. The soil is thus being reduced both in quantity and in quality, and inc results are to be seen in the tes- sened productiveness of lands in Italy. 1 Greece. Spain and most other parts of the world. The remedy to be sought is some means of preventing the loss of the soil at a greater rate than the decay of the rocks restores 1t.
 The most gigantic of the sharks, tbe largest of all fishes, is so little known that Dr. Theo. Gill reports diffi- culty in finding any information aoout 1t. The creature is the great whale shark, or mhor (Rhineodon typus)' and is not uncommon in the Indian ocean,
 where 1t reaches a length or sixty feet living lazily near the surface and rarely approaching land. With a mouth sometimes four feet wide. it has very small teeth, It's food being mostly minute crustaceans. It occas- ionally upsets boat by rubbing against 1t, but is otherwise harmless
 to man.
 The new sugar plant from South
 America which has been named Eupa- torIlim rebandium, Is pronounced Dy
 Rertoni. the German chemist to be of great industrial value. It grows elght
 or ten inches high, and Is found 10
 contain from twenty to thirty times
 as much seecharine matter as sugar
 cane or theAbeet
 The distinction of being the oldest living thing undoubtedly belongs to
 some giant tree. and many attempts
 to locate it and determine its age
 have been made. A century ago De
 CaniloIIe found two yews-one at
 Fortingue in Perthshire. and one at Hedsor, in Bucks--that were estimated to be respectively 2.500 and s.24O years
 old. Both are still flourishing. and
 the older treo has a trunk twenty
 seven feet in diameter. A gigantic
 baobab of Central America, with
 trunk twenty-nine feet through, was thought by Humboldt to be not less
 than 6,15O years old. Mexican bota- nists believe they have now discoV-
 cred ilfe-span even greater than this. and from the annual rings Cy-
 press of Chepultepec, whose trunk Is 11S feet in circumference, Is assigned an age of about 6.200 years.
 The fire-proof scenery of M Morris san, which is being tested in several Paris theatres, consists of frame work of iron tubing upon which wire gauge is strteched for the designs. Be- sides incombustibility, this scenery has the advantages of great solidlty and increased ease of handling, ana it's weight is not only no greater than wood and canvas but snort pieces are even lighter. The first cost Is lit- tie more than that of the old style scenery. Unpainted portions of the gauge remain invisible, and trees, flowers, etc, are given a very real istic effect.
 Stoyaine the new anesthetic of Dr.
 Fourneau, is injected into the spinal fluid. and within five minutes gives complete insensibility below the point of injection, while the patient does not lose consciousness. The effects last for an hour and a half. No un- favorable results have been reported in the numerous tests that have been
 made in France, but fears or lack o' control and danger of blood-poisoning
 have been expressed.
 Experiments with fifty of the coal
 tar dyes have shown that fifteen are | positively poisonous and twenty others caused harmful disturbances of diges- tive organs, kidneys or general health of animals. Only two colors proved ! harmful to the skin. The most poison ous colors are not among the greens, though the nOxious character of the arsenical greens has given that im- pression, but aomng the coal-tar dyes | the most seriously poisonous are yell | low and orange colors, such as auran-
 tia, mandarin, metanil orange and but ! ter yellow Next fin order of number 1 are the blues, browns and blacks, very | few among the violet and green colors l having proven at all harmful.
 l Apiaries are the novel addition to the | drawing room proposed by Miss Baden | Powell. sister of the hero of Mafeking. ] The bees are not found objectionable
 in any room of the house, and the one 1 hive in the home of Miss Baden Powell | at Princes Gate. London, last year | yielded sixty pounds of honev. A