Heppner gazette. [volume] (Heppner, Morrow County, Or.) 1892-1912, 1906-03-15
'PopuleI:,5EsTience

Chicago Tribune.

Just about the time when the Galap-
| agos Islands were discovered by the
Spanish, not quite 400 years ago, a
tortoise was born there. The same tor
| toise died a week or two ago in the
London geological gardens.
If odors were solid particles, they
| would tend to form nuclei of cloudy
condensation in supersaturated air. DR..
John Aitken has tested musk and twen-
ty-three other Odorous substances with
out finding such nuclei, and he con-
cludes that odors are gaseous and that
smell has gas as its fundamental basis.
The highest kite ascent was lately
made at Lindenberg, Prussia, 21,1OO
feet being reached, with six attached
kites and sixteen thousand yards Of
wire. The temperature fell from Al
degrees at the surface to 13 degrees
below zero; the wind-eighteen miles
at surface-was fifty-six miles an hour
at highest point
Ones hair, If never cut, would fur
nsh record Of his health during life.
This Is the interesting discovery Of
Matsura. a Japanese Psychologist, who
shows that the har-like the finger
nails-grows smaller in disease, and
that the duration of the malady may be
estimated from the length of the thin
ner section of the hairs. The variations
are most striking in the coarse haired
races of people.
DR.. Lindsay Johnson, the celebrated
opthalmologist, says that the dog has
two ancestors, one round-eyed, the 9th
er oval-eyed The first is the hyena,
the second the bear through the rae
coon. All dogs descend from these ami
mails. The corpus niger" or black
body of pigment in the eye of the
horse, which has puzzled veterinarians,
naturalsts and biologists so much,
provides, through the Opthalmoscope,
a new means Of tracing the ancestry
and relationship of the horse. It is
the same eye curtain that is found in
troDical animals-the onager, the camel
and the antelope-for protection from
sunlight.
A recent British scientific expedition
discovered that in the Indian Ocean
floating Life is exceedingly abundant
at all depths down to about 200 feet
In seas $4,000 feet deep. BY floating
life is meant animals which form the
food of whales and deep ocean fish,
and which, up to the present, have been
believed to live on or very close to the
surface. A variety Of enormous squids
we're fished out, as well as tel-
lyfish, and prawns fully six inches
long. Some Of these latter were
blind, while others had huge eyes, but
nearly all Of them had phosphorescent
organs. which would naturally be due
to the fact that they live at depth
where almost total darkness prevails
The blind varieties had enormous feel
ers Of antennae, some Of them extend
ing to twice the length Of their bodies
Prof. Dewar has found that the
mower of charcoal to absorb gases Is
vastly increased at very low tempera-
tures. so that 1t can be employed for
eXhauSting lncandeScent lamp DulDs
and Crookes tubes, and also for separ
ating mixed gases. Experiment has
shown that the freezing point Of water
and at normal atmospheric pressure
gram of charcoal absorbs 4 cubic cent?
meters of hydrogen, and 1S cubic cent?
meters of oxygen, but that at 1882
degrees c., the temperature Of boiling
air / gram of charcoal absorbs 135
cubic centimeters Of hydrogen and 25O
cubi centimeters Of oxygen. When
several gases are mixed, the charcoal
.bsorbs some Of them much more free
ly than others, 80 that by multiplying
the operation gases can be separated
from mixtures In sufficient quantity
for Industrial uses.