Amador Ledger-Dispatch, 27 April 1906 — SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY [ARTICLE]

SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY

Reported weekly for the Legder.

Voices of Fishes.— Regulating a Great River's Flow.— Britain's Alti-tude.—Gas-Cooled Cars.— A D«iudling Desert.-llair-Stimulating Rays. —Electrically Made Barrels.— New Theory of Deafness.— A Big Cake of Ice.

The "talk of flahe3" is peculiar, as Prof. T. VV. liridges a British lecturer, showed the other day in pointing out tho voluntary sounds ol these creatures. Some part of the bony skeleton is movnblo, and when this is rubbed against aomo fixed part of the skeleton the friction of the rough surfaces sets up a sound. The stickleback gives an illustration. In other fish a murmuring pound is produced by the pressure of air upon the values ot the air-bladder. In. still other fl3h there are two little flexible spines, attrached to which is a muscle whoso contraction causes the spines to tap against the air-bladder, and this produces a sound like the roll of a drum.

The Sudd country, to the south of Egypt, is a region of papyrus swamps which has resulted from tho silting up of an ancient lake, more than (i' 2-,-000 square miles in area, which once received tho waters not only of the Albert Nile, but also of the Blue Nile and the Sobat. It is pioposed to cut off this swamp area from the river channel by a canal from Bor to .the junction of the Sobat and tho Nile, a distance of .200 miles. The summer discharge ot the Upper Nile, about COJ cubic meters pet second, would thus bo passed on to Khartoum and would increase the vulumne of the stream at that season f>o per cent, instead of being lost by evaporation in the swamp. No storage works at the equatorial lakes can give effective regulation without this "cut off."

■ Of the 58,3-21 square miles of England and Wales, Miss Nora IC. MacMunn- finds that i!G,482 are under 230 feet in elevation above the sea; 16,3G5 are between 250 aud 500 feet; 10,470 are between 500 and 1000 feet; 4U9H are between 1000 and 2000 feet; 300 are between 2000 and 3000 teet; and i are more thau 3000 feet.

Refrigerator cars cooled by the expansion and re-evaporation of a readily liquefied gas were tried last season with good results on one of tbo iail roads leading from Paris. .Evaporation was controlled by an automatic thermostat. This consisted of a coiled tubo tilled with a volatile liquid that expanded to a considerable degree on heating, and as this caused the pressure to rise the coil was unwound, and tho motion ot coiling and uncoiling was made to move the valves controlling the liquefied gas. The thermostatic regulator was so arranged as to be automatically thrown out of gear or restoied to working condition on the opening or closing of the doors of ths car.

Theworthless area of the Sahara Desert is proving smaller than has been believed. Prof. E. F. (Jautier, tho first explorer since IS2G to cross from Algeria to the Niger, has lately found in the Adrai plateau, 300 miles from Uao on the Nigor, a wide dolt of steppe having from six to twelve inches ot rain a year, aud coveieJ with ponds and grass. Evidenoea of a large Stone Age population abound, including weapons, grinding-stoues, rock-drawings and craves. It appears that the reigon must havo gradually dried up, but that the desert conditions ate now disappearing and the rain-belt is again extending more and more to the north.

Ultra-violet light is claimed by Prof. Kroumayer, a German experimenter, to havo had remarkable effect in the treatment of falling hair aud baldness. In thirty-two cases where every other remedy had failed the light rays cured twenty-seven, and not only the hair but in some cases the eye-brows aud beard were restored, although the trouble was mostly of long standing.

Siberian ice is reported by Middendorf to have an ordinary depth of 1.50 met9rs (five feet) to 1.80 meters,, never exceeding 2.40 meters. In just completed measurements on running streams, Prof. Voickov has found a thickness of 0.70 to 0.80 meters on the Jenessei, 2 to 2.35 metors in the extreme north, and only 1.80 melers at Verkhoyansk, one of the earth's cold spots, in latitude 07 degrees.

Steel barrels are now welded by electricity. At a factory at Uxbridge, England, a rectangular sheet of steel is rolled into cylindrical tbape, the edges are trimmed by shearing, and the quarter-inch- opening is closed by rapidly melting into it strips of steel two inches long and half an inch wide. The sheet, is held by clamping to an anvil, which serves as one pole ot an electric circuit, a carbon rod in a movable handle forming the otb.r. For each head a flanged dish is driven in, flange outward, a strip of steel is clamped round trie joint on the inside aud another on the outside, aud the four thicknesses thus formed are welded together by the arc A stamped steel bung-hole is welded into a hole punched for it. A product of the factory, is its own chimney, njiich is 50 feet high and 4 feet in diameter, ami id formed of quarter-inch steel plates with . electrically welded horizontal and vertical joints. Electricity is supplied, by ■ a continuous current genorator, .with a capacity of 2100 amperes at 1)5 volts.

A new plan for improving the hearing is being tried in France. Action of the drum of the ear, as is well known, vibrates a .chain of three tiny bones impinging upon a liquid, which in turn excites some 21,000 minute hairs terminating the auditory nerve; and' deafness is usually regarded as a disease of the drum or the middle. ear. The idea of Dra. Kocig, Marcel Natier and Rousselot is that, unless distinct- external defect is shown, atrophy of the nervehairs is the cause ot impaired hearing. Each of the fibers responds to a certain specific tone, ■ and by means of the "tonometer," a apparatus yielding a great variety, of tones through the action of tuning forks and a sounding-board, it is sought to give exercise to as many nerve ends as possible. This has seemed to strengthen the responding nerveflbers while others are gradually aroused into activity.

The largest mass of ice on earth is beyond the control of the Ice Trust. It has been accumulating in Greenland for thousands of years, and the immense block 13 supposed to average a mile aud a half in thickness, its area being about 000,000 miles.