The Athena press. [volume] (Athena, Umatilla County, Or.) 18??-1942, 1907-02-19
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s 'SG7IIlventiOn :

An ingenious Yankee sea captain has
invented an apparatus with which he
thinks whales can be killed by electric
shock. A harpoon Is fixed at the end
of a long, metallic cable, properly in
sulated, and which serves in place of
the usual rope. Through this cable
an electric current of 10000 volts Is
to be sent by means of dynamo car
ried on the whaleboat.
An official of the national museum at
Washington gives some facts not gen.
orally known concerning the relative
values of diamonds and rubies. Ac-
,cording to the latest figures obtainable,
a ruby weighing as much as carats
! is worth ten to twelve times as much as
diamond of the same weight, even
though the latter be of the first water.
The ruby, therefore, instead of the dia-
mond, is the material that embodies the
highest money value in the smallest
compass.
Prof. Atkinson, a botanist of Cor
lnell university, is the discoverer Of an
example of the very rare specimen
called "plant atoll." 1t consists of
a ring of plants floating in pond,
with a circle of clear water within the
ring. The plants derive their nourish-
ment from the decayed vegetable mat
ter that collects about their roots and
these are gradually becoming anchored
to the bottom, so that In time true
ring island will be formed, resembling
the coral atolls of the southern oceans.
| Sir Patrick Manson, in his recent
lectures on tropical diseases, although
accepting the theory that the only mode
of transmission of marsh, or ma)arial,
| fever is through the bite of the Ano-
pheles mosquito, adds the statement,
which will probably be new to most
readers, that the mosquitoes are capa-
bic of becoming infected by absorbing
the blood not merely of human patients,
but also of anthropoid apes, and per-
haps even Of various other mammals,
which, in an evolutionary sense. are
related to man.
| A new estimate of the comparative
amount of light received on the earth
from the sun and from the brightest
| (apparent) fixed star in the heavens,
Sirius, has been made by Mr.. Ceraski
of the Astronomical Observatory of
Moscow. The sun, according to his es-
innate sends us about 00,00O,OOO
times as much light as Sirius does.
But this, of course, Is matter gov
erned by relative distance. so that If
the earth were halfway between Sirius
and the sun, Sirius would appear be-
| tween 16 and IL times as bright as the
sun.
Some interesting statistics have been
collected by Vice Consul Arnold at
Fcochow concerning the great decline
| in China's tea trade. From 1878, when
| tea was first introduced into England,
until 1887 China held exclusively the
tea trade of the world. Then India
began to enter the tea market. The
Chinese trade reached high tide in
1866, with a total export of 300,OOO,OO0
pounds. In 1884 China furnished about
72 per cent of the worlds total, India
and Ceylon IS per cent, and Japan and
Formosa 10 per cent. But in 1904, when
the total consumption had increased to
GA 100000 pounds, China contributed
only 80 per cent, India and Ceylon 90
per cent, Japan and Formosa ID per
cent. The decline in China Is ascribed
to careless methods Of cultivation and
preparation of the leaf.