Part 11

About 40,000 lbs. of fossil ivory--that is to say, the tusks of at least 100 Mammoths--are bartered for every year in New Siberia, so that in a period of 200 years of trade with that country, the tusks of 20,000 Mammoths must have been disposed of--perhaps even twice that number, since only 200 lbs. of ivory is calculated as the average weight produced by one pair of tusks. As many as ten of these tusks have been found lying together, weighing from 150 to 300 lbs. each. The largest are rarely sent out of the country, many of them being too rotten to be made use of, while others are so large that they cannot be carried away, and are sawn up in blocks or slabs on the spot with very considerable waste, so that the loss of weight in the produce of a tusk before the ivory comes to market is of no trifling amount. A large portion of this ivory is used by the nomad tribes in their sledges, arms, and household implements, and formerly a great quantity used to be exported to China; a trade which can be traced back to a very distant period. Notwithstanding the enormous amount already carried away, the stores of fossil ivory do not appear to diminish; in many places near the mouths of the great rivers flowing into the Arctic Ocean, the bones and tusks of these antediluvian pachyderms lie scattered about like the relics of a ploughed-up battlefield, while in other parts these creatures of a former world seem to have huddled together in herds for protection against the sudden destruction that befell them, since their remains are found lying together in heaps. In 1821, a hunter from Yakutsk, on the Lena, found in the New Siberian Islands alone 500 poods (18,000 lbs. English) of Mammoth tusks, none of which weighed more than 3 poods; and this, notwithstanding that another hunter on a previous visit in 1809 had brought away with him 250 poods of ivory from the same islands. Entire mammoths have occasionally been discovered, not only with the skin (which was protected with a double covering of hair and wool) entire, but with the fleshy portions of the body in such a state of preservation that they have afforded food to dogs and wild beasts in the neighbourhood of the places where they were found. They appear to have been suddenly enveloped in ice, or to have sunk into mud which was on the point of congealing, and which, before the process of decay could commence, froze around the bodies, and has preserved them up to the present time in the condition in which they perished. It is thus they are occasionally found when a landslip occurs in the frozen soil of the Siberian coast, which never thaws, even during the greatest heat of the summer, to a depth of more than 2 feet; and in this way, within a period of a century and a half, five or six of these curious corpses have come to light from their icy graves. A very perfect specimen of the Mammoth in this state was discovered in the autumn of 1865, near the mouth of the Jenissei; an expedition was despatched to the spot by the Imperial Academy of Sciences in the summer of 1866, and the result of that expedition, it is considered, will be the disclosure of some interesting facts in the natural history of a former creation.--_Mr. Lumley's Report on Russian Trade._

VELOCITY OF ELECTRICITY.

One of our most profound electricians is reported to have exclaimed, "Give me but an unlimited length of wire, with a small battery, and I will girdle the universe with a sentence in forty minutes." Yet this is no vain boast; for so rapid is the transit of the electric current along the lines of the telegraph wire, that, supposing it were possible to carry the wires eight times round the earth, it would but occupy _one second of time_. The immense velocity of electricity makes it impossible to calculate it by direct observation; it would require to be many thousands of leagues long before the result could be expressed in the fractions of a second. Yet Professor Wheatstone devised some apparatus for this purpose, among which was a double metallic mirror, to which he gave a velocity of eight hundred revolutions in a second of time. The Professor concluded, from his experiments with this apparatus, that the velocity of electricity through a copper wire, one-fifteenth of an inch thick, exceeds the velocity of light across the planetary spaces; that it is at least 288,000 miles per second. The Professor adds, that the light of electricity, in a state of great intensity, does not last the millionth part of a second; but that the eye is capable of distinctly perceiving objects which present themselves for this short space of time.

MONOCHROMATIC PAINTING.

A very delicate experiment, yet a very natural one, which Buffon appears to have first noticed, led in all probability to the invention of the monochromatic mode of painting, or painting with a single colour. If, at the moment which precedes sunset, at the close of a cloudless day, a body is placed near a wall, or against another polished body, or on a smooth chalky soil, the shadow carried by this body is blue, instead of being black or colourless. This effect is produced by the light of the sun being so weakened, that the blue rays which are reflected from the sky--which has always this colour on a clear day--fall, and are again driven back or reflected on that part of the wall which the dying light of the sun cannot strike; for even at its last moment, the light which falls straight and direct, is sufficiently strong to destroy that of the heavens, which is only reflected, wherever they meet.

THE MARINER'S COMPASS.

The time at which the attractive property of the magnet was discovered, is by no means known; certain, however, it is, that mankind were acquainted with it at a very early period. Father Kircher endeavours to prove that the Jews were aware of the magnet's singular property of attracting iron; and from Plutarch, it appears that the Egyptians were not ignorant of it. Pythagoras, Ptolemy, and several other ancient philosophers, knew and admired this wonderful property of the magnet. Thales and Anaxagoras were so struck with it, as to imagine that the magnet had a soul; and Plato said that the cause of its attraction was divine. But the _directive_ property of the magnet was not known to the ancients. To the simple application of this property, which was either discovered or introduced into Europe about 500 years ago, mankind is indebted principally for the discovery of a new continent nearly equal to the old one, for an extensive commerce between the most distant nations, and for an accurate knowledge of the shape and size of the world we inhabit. The use of the magnetic needle was not known in Europe before the thirteenth century. The honour of its discovery has been much contested; but by the consent of most writers, it seems to belong to Flavio Gioja of Amalfi. He lived in the reign of Charles of Anjou, who died in 1309; and it was, it is said, in compliment to this Sovereign that Gioja distinguished the North Pole by the emblem of France, the _fleur-de-lis_. Du Halde, in his book upon China, indeed, intimates that the use of the magnetic needle was known to the ancient Chinese. Speaking of the Emperor Hoang-ti, when he gave battle to Tchi-Yeou, he says: "He, perceiving that thick fogs saved the enemy from his pursuit, and that the soldiers rambled out of the way and lost the course of the wind, made a car which showed them the four cardinal points. By this method he overtook Tchi-Yeou, made him prisoner, and put him to death. Some say that there were engraven on this car, on a plate, the characters of a rat and a horse, and underneath was placed a needle to determine the four parts of the world. This would amount to the use of the compass, or something near it, being of great antiquity and well attested." In another place, speaking of certain ambassadors, Du Halde says: "After they had their audience of leave, in order to return to their own country, Tcheou-Kong gave them an instrument, which on one side pointed towards the north, and on the opposite side towards the south, to direct them better on the way home, than they had been directed in coming to China. The instrument was called _Tchi-ran_, which is the same name as the Chinese now call the sea-compass by; this has given occasion to think that Tcheou-Kong was the inventor of the compass." This happened in the twenty-second cycle, about 1040 years before Christ; but, notwithstanding the assertions of Du Halde, strong reasons have been adduced against the mariner's compass being known among the ancient people of China and of Arabia. The French also have laid claim to the discovery of the compass, and in the Imperial Library at Paris there is a poem, contained in a curious quarto manuscript of the thirteenth century, on vellum, in which the mariner's compass is evidently mentioned; but still it appears that the Neapolitan, Flavio Gioja, if not the original discoverer, was at least the first who used the mariner's compass, or constructed it for the use of vessels in the Mediterranean.

THE DISCOVERY OF LITHOGRAPHY.

The invention, or more properly the discovery, of lithography, claims a high rank among those of the present age, on account of its extensive usefulness. The honour of the invention belongs to Alois Sennefelder, originally a performer at the Theatre Royal of Munich. He had conceived the idea of etching on stone instead of on copper, and was proceeding to make the experiment, when an accidental discovery gave a more beneficial turn to his speculations. The discovery, which was that of the lithographic art, has been thus narrated by Sennefelder himself:--

"I had just succeeded, in my little laboratory, in polishing a stone plate, which I intended to cover with etching ground, when my mother entered the room, and desired me to write her a bill for the washerwoman, who was waiting for the linen. I happened not to have even the smallest slip of paper at hand, as my little stock of paper had been entirely exhausted by taking proof impressions from the stones; nor was there even a drop of ink in the ink-stand. As the matter would not admit of delay, and we had nobody in the house to send for a supply of the deficient materials, I resolved to write the list with my ink prepared with wax, soap, and lamp-black, on the stone which I had just polished, and from which I could copy it at leisure."

"Some time after this, I was going to wipe this writing from the stone, when the idea, all at once, struck me to try what would be the effect of such a writing with my prepared ink if I were to bite it in the stone with aquafortis; and whether, perhaps, it might not be possible to apply printing ink to it in the same way as to wood engravings, and to take impressions from it." Sennefelder surrounded the stone with a border of wax, and applied aquafortis, by which in a few minutes the writing was raised. Printing ink was then applied with a common printer's ball, impressions were taken off, and the practicability of the important art of lithography thus was fully established.

The first application of the art to purposes of usefulness unconnected with the fine arts, was made by the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsular War, for the purpose of rapidly multiplying copies of general orders, instructions, etc., and accompanying them with sketches of positions. It has since been introduced into the public offices of almost every state in Europe; and its uses in every department of commercial, social, and artistic activity are innumerable.

THE END.

MURRAY AND GIBB, EDINBURGH, PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE.

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