Science in Short Chapters

Among the suitable vegetables, I may name a sort of perennial spinach which yields a wonderful amount of produce on a small area. Four years ago I took the house in which I now...

I have not visited the Hebrides, but the curious analogy of their position to that of the Lofodens suggests the desirability of similar observations to those I have made in the...

Every householder knows that the kitchen fire, whether it be an old-fashioned open fireplace, or a modern kitchener of any improved construction, is a very costly affair. He kno...

I put this in italics because so much depends upon it—I may say that all depends upon it—for if this barrier can be scaled at any part we may come upon a region as easily traver...

All the observations of astronomers, both before and since the discovery of the telescope, confirm this conclusion. The long nightly watching of the Chaldean shepherds, the star...

I was unable to see on any part of the extensive section, or among the fragments below, a single specimen of an unequivocal volcanic bomb; no approach to anything like those des...

Since the above was written I have received from Dr. Sterry Hunt a copy of his interesting “Chemical and Geological Essays,” in one of which he expounds a theory of the origin o...

Few sights are more melancholy than the contemplation of a party of English fire-worshipers seated in a semicircle round the family fetish on a keen frosty day. They huddle toge...

Comparing electric with gas-lighting, the hopeful believers in progressive improvement appear to forget that gas-making and gas-lighting are as susceptible of further improvemen...

But what becomes of this portion of the heat when the fireplace is all of metal? It is carried up the chimney by convection, for the metal, while it parts with less heat by radi...

The following is Mr. Geikie’s description of the distribution of the till (page 13):—“It is in the lower-lying districts of the country where till appears in greatest force. Wid...

The permeability of ill-constructed iron stoves to poisonous carbonic oxide, which riddles through red-hot iron, is a real evil, but easily obviated by proper lining, The frizzl...

Let us now consider the relative merits of lead and iron as material for water-pipes in places where exposure to frost is inevitable. Lead yields more than iron, and so far has...

With a statement of these properties before us, and the interesting description of the process by your Shanghai correspondent, the whole riddle of green-tea coloring and facing...

The latest novelty is a device to render darkness visible by capturing the sunbeams during the day, holding them as prisoners until after sunset, and then setting them free in t...

We know of nothing that can penetrate every form of matter without adding either to its weight or its bulk; we know of nothing that can communicate motion to ponderable matter w...

What, then, would be the course of the mining engineer when all the existing difficulties presented by water-bearing strata should be removed, and their place taken by a new and...

If these conditions existed in a perfectly calm and undisturbed solar atmosphere, there would be a continually increasing external envelope of aqueous vapor, and a continually d...

There are many discrepancies in the estimates that have been made of the total available quantity of British coal. The speculative nature of some of the data renders this inevit...

The most important prognostications of the barometer are those afforded by what is called the “barometric gradient or incline,” showing the up-hill and down-hill direction of th...

But this is not all. There is rotting and rotting. When the rotting of vegetable matter goes on under certain conditions it is highly favorable to the growth of other vegetation...

It is obvious that, under these circumstances, there must occur a series of precipitations analogous to those from the aqueous vapor of our atmosphere. These gaseous metals, or...

A paper was read on March 2, 1882, by Dr. C. W. Siemens at the Royal Society, and he published an article on “A New Theory of the Sun” in the April number of the _Nineteenth Cen...

The defect, however, was not observable from the press gallery, which is placed as nearly as may be to the focus of the orchestral curve, so that radial lines drawn from the aud...

Here, then, was fluidity, according to the above definition; not perfect fluidity, but fluidity attended with resistance to flow, or what we have agreed to call viscosity. But w...

The number of the _Quarterly Journal of Science_ for May, 1872, contains some articles of considerable interest. The first is by the indefatigable Mr. Proctor, on “Meteoric Astr...

The peasants of the sunny South will feed upon salads made doubly unctuous and nutritious by the abundant oil; their fried meats, their pastry, omelettes, and sauces will be so...

All the outer house-doors must be double, _i.e._, with a porch or vestibule, and only one of each pair of doors opened at once. These should be well fitted, and the staircase ai...

If we do this there is no difficulty in finding the ultimate reaction fulcrum of the radiometer vanes. It is simply the radiating body, the match, the candle, the lamp, the sun,...

If the difference of development between the human and canine internal antennæ produces all this difference of function, what a gulf may there be between our powers of perceivin...

The most prominent and puzzling reflection or conclusion suggested by reading Mr. Geikie’s description of the glacial deposits of Scotland was, that the great bulk of them are q...

This time we may fairly expect some approach to a solution of the riddle of the corona, as the one essential which neither scientific skill nor Government liberality could secur...

I have already referred to the muddled misstatement of Mr. Crookes’s position by the newspaper writers, who almost unanimously describe him and Dr. Huggins as two distinguished...

Pressure in Temperature, F. Rise of Temperature Atmospheres ° for each additional Atmosphere 1 212 2 249·5 37·5 3 273·3 23·8 4 291·2 17·9 5 306·0 14·8 6 318·2 12·2 7 329·6 11·4...

A similar cause retards the _beginning_ of summer in Arctic Norway and in Finland and Siberia. So long as the winter snow remains unmelted, _i.e._, till about the middle or end...

Besides this, it supplies a growing want of these busy times, when so many of us are prevented by the struggles of business from sitting down to the consecutive systematic study...

[19] The celebrated “Maelström” is one of the currents that flow down the submarine incline between these islands when the tide is falling. Although I have ridiculed some of the...