Chapter 1

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SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SUPPLEMENT NO. 829

NEW YORK, November 21, 1891.

Scientific American Supplement. Vol. XXXII, No. 829.

Scientific American established 1845

Scientific American Supplement, $5 a year.

Scientific American and Supplement, $7 a year.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS.

I. ASTRONOMY.--The Sun's Motion in Space.--By A.M. CLERKE.-- A very interesting article on the determination of this hitherto uncertain factor.

II. BOTANY.--Hemlock and Parsley.--By W.W. BAILEY.--Economic botany of Umbelliferæ.

Raphides--the Cause of the Acridity of Certain Plants.--By R.A. WEBER.--Effect of these crystals on the expressed juice from calla and Indian turnip and other plants.

The Eremuri.--A very attractive flower plant for gardens.--1 illustration.

III. DECORATIVE ART.--The Decorative Treatment of Natural Foliage.--By HUGH STANNUS. The first of a series of lectures before the London Society of Arts, giving an elaborate classification of the principles of the subject.--5 illustrations.

IV. ELECTRICITY.--The Independent--Storage or Primary Battery--System of Electric Motive Power.--By KNIGHT NEFTEL.--Abstract of a recent paper read before the American Street Railway Association on the present aspect of battery car traction.

V. GEOGRAPHY.--The Colorado Desert Lake.--A description of the new overflow into the Colorado Desert, with the prognosis of its future.

VI. GEOLOGY.--Animal Origin of Petroleum and Paraffine.--A plea for the animal origin of geological hydrocarbons based on chemical and geological reasons.

The Origin of Petroleum.--By O.C.D. Ross.--A further and more lengthy discussion in regard to petroleum and theory of its production by volcanic action.

VII. GUNNERY.--Weldon's Range Finder.--An instrument for determining distances, with description of its use.--3 illustrations.

VIII. MECHANICAL ENGINEERING.--Mercury Weighing Machine.--A type of weighing machine depending on the displacement of mercury.--1 illustration.

Wheels Linked with a Bell Crank.--Curious examples of mechanical constructions in the communication of motion between wheels.--3 illustrations.

IX. MEDICINE AND HYGIENE.--Cold and Mortality.--By Dr. B.W. RICHARDSON.--The effect of cold upon the operation of the animal system, with practical rules.

On the Occurrence of Tin in Canned Food.--By H.A. WEBER.--A very valuable and important series of analyses of American and other food products for tin and copper.

The Treatment of Glaucoma.--Note on the treatment of this disease fatal to vision.

X. METALLURGY.--On the Elimination of Sulphur from Pig Iron. By J. MASSENEZ.--The desulphurization of pig iron by treatment with manganese, with apparatus employed.--5 illustrations.

XI. MISCELLANEOUS.--The California Raisin Industry.--How raisins are grown and packed in California, with valuable figures and data.

The Recent Battles in Chile.--The recent battles of Concon and Vina del Mar.--2 illustrations.

XII. NATURAL HISTORY.--The Whale-headed Stork.--A curious bird, a habitant of Africa and of great rarity.--1 illustration.

XIII. NAVAL ENGINEERING.--A Twin Screw Launch Run by a Compound Engine.--The application of a single compound tandem engine to driving twin screws.--2 illustrations.

Improvements in the Construction of River and Canal Barges.--By M. RITTER.--A very peculiar and ingenious system of construction, enabling the same vessel to be used at greater or less draught according to the requirements and conditions of the water.--5 illustrations.

Reefing Sails from the Deck--An effective method of reefing, one which has been subjected to actual trial repeatedly in bad weather off Cape Horn.--3 illustrations.

XIV. PHYSICS.--The Cyclostat.--An apparatus for observing bodies in rapid rotary motion.--5 illustrations.

XV. TECHNOLOGY.--A New Process for the Bleaching of Jute.--By Messrs. LEYKAM and TOSEFOTHAL.--A method of rendering the fiber of jute perfectly white, with full details.

A Violet Coloring Matter from Morphine.--The first true coloring matter obtained from a natural alkaloid.

Liquid Blue for Dyeing.--Treatment of the "Dornemann" liquid blue.

New Process for the Manufacture of Chromates.--By J. MASSIGNON and E. VATEL.--Manufacture of chromates from chromic iron ore by a new process.

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THE RECENT BATTLES IN CHILE.

The battle of Concon took place Aug. 21, 1891. Nine thousand Congressional troops advancing toward Valparaiso from Quinteros Bay, where they had landed the day previous, were met by Balmaceda's troops on the other side of the river Aconcagua. The Esmeralda and the Magellanes, co-operating from the sea, made fearful havoc among the Balmacedists with their machine guns and shell. After a stubborn fight the Balmacedists were totally defeated, and were pursued by the victorious cavalry, losing 4,000 out of 12,000 in killed, wounded and deserters. All their field pieces were captured, and thus the road was left open for the Congressionalists to advance on Viña del Mar.

THE BATTLE OF VIÑA DEL MAR, CHILE.

A general engagement took place on Aug. 23, 1891, between divisions of Balmaceda's and the Congressional troops, with the Esmeralda and the Almirante Cochrane aiding the latter by firing at Fort Callao, endeavoring to silence the field batteries at the back. The Congressional troops failed to capture Viña del Mar, but eventually cut the railway line a few miles out, and crossed over to the back of Valparaiso, which was soon captured.--_The Graphic._

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THE SUN'S MOTION IN SPACE.

By A.M. CLERKE.

Science needed two thousand years to disentangle the earth's orbital movement from the revolutions of the other planets, and the incomparably more arduous problem of distinguishing the solar share in the confused multitude of stellar displacements first presented itself as possibly tractable a little more than a century ago. In the lack for it as yet of a definite solution there is, then, no ground for surprise, but much for satisfaction in the large measure of success attending the strenuous attacks of which it has so often been made the object.

Approximately correct knowledge as to the direction and velocity of the sun's translation is indispensable to a profitable study of sidereal construction; but apart from some acquaintance with the nature of sidereal construction, it is difficult, if not impossible, of attainment. One, in fact, presupposes the other. To separate a common element of motion from the heterogeneous shiftings upon the sphere of three or four thousand stars is a task practicable only under certain conditions. To begin with, the proper motions investigated must be established with _general_ exactitude. The errors inevitably affecting them must be such as pretty nearly, in the total upshot, to neutralize one another. For should they run mainly in one direction, the result will be falsified in a degree enormously disproportionate to their magnitude. The adoption, for instance, of system of declinations as much as 1" of arc astray might displace to the extent of 10° north or south the point fixed upon as the apex of the sun's way (see L. Boss _Astr. Jour._, No. 213). Risks on this score, however, will become less formidable with the further advance of practical astronomy along a track definable as an asymptote of ideal perfection.

Besides this obstacle to be overcome, there is another which it will soon be possible to evade. Hitherto, inquiries into the solar movement have been hampered by the necessity for preliminary assumptions of some kind as to the relative distances of classes of stars. But all such assumptions, especially when applied to selected lists, are highly insecure; and any fabric reared upon them must be considered to stand upon treacherous ground. The spectrographic method, however, here fortunately comes into play. "Proper motions" are only angular velocities. They tell nothing as to the value of the perspective element they may be supposed to include, or as to the real rate of going of the bodies they are attributed to, until the size of the sphere upon which they are measured has been otherwise ascertained. But the displacement of lines in stellar spectra give directly the actual velocities relative to the earth of the observed stars. The question of their distances is, therefore, at once eliminated. Now the radial component of stellar motion is mixed up, precisely in the same way as the tangential component, with the solar movement; and since complete knowledge of it, in a sufficient number of cases, is rapidly becoming accessible, while knowledge of tangential velocity must for a long time remain partial or uncertain, the advantage of replacing the discussion of proper motions by that of motions in line of sight is obvious and immediate. And the admirable work carried on at Potsdam during the last three years will soon afford the means of doing so in the first, if only a preliminary investigation of the solar translation based upon measurements of photographed stellar spectra.

The difficulties, then, caused either by inaccuracies in star catalogues or by ignorance of star distances may be overcome; but there is a third, impossible at present to be surmounted, and not without misgiving to be passed by. All inquiries upon the subject of the advance of our system through space start with an hypothesis most unlikely to be true. The method uniformly adopted in them--and no other is available--is to treat the _inherent_ motions of the stars (their so-called _motus peculiares_) as pursued indifferently in all directions. The steady drift extricable from them by rules founded upon the science of probabilities is presumed to be solar motion visually transferred to them in proportions varying with their remoteness in space, and their situations on the sphere. If this presumption be in any degree baseless, the result of the inquiry is _pro tanto_ falsified. Unless the deviations from the parallactic line of the stellar motions balance one another on the whole, their discussion may easily be as fruitless as that of observations tainted with systematic errors. It is scarcely, however, doubtful that law, and not chance, governs the sidereal revolutions. The point open to question is whether the workings of law may not be so exceedingly intricate as to produce a grand sum total of results which, from the geometrical side, may justifiably be regarded as casual.

The search for evidence of a general plan in the wanderings of the stars over the face of the sky has so far proved fruitless. Local concert can be traced, but no widely diffused preference for one direction over any other makes itself definitely felt. Some regard, nevertheless, _must_ be paid by them to the plane of the Milky Way; since it is altogether incredible that the actual construction of the heavens is without dependence upon the method of their revolutions.

The apparent anomaly vanishes upon the consideration of the profundities of space and time in which the fundamental design of the sidereal universe lies buried. Its composition out of an indefinite number of partial systems is more than probable; but the inconceivable leisureliness with which their mutual relations develop renders the harmony of those relations inappreciable by short-lived terrestrial denizens. "Proper motions," if this be so, are of a subordinate kind; they are indexes simply to the mechanism of particular aggregations, and have no definable connection with the mechanism of the whole. No considerable error may then be involved in treating them, for purposes of calculation, as indifferently directed, and the elicited solar movement may genuinely represent the displacement of our system relative to its more immediate stellar environment. This is perhaps the utmost to be hoped for until sidereal astronomy has reached another stadium of progress.

Unless, indeed, effect should be given to Clerk Maxwell's suggestion for deriving the absolute longitude of the solar apex from observations of the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites (Proc. Roy. Soc., vol. xxx., p. 109). But this is far from likely. In the first place, the revolutions of the Jovian system cannot be predicted with anything like the required accuracy. In the second place, there is no certainty that the postulated phenomena have any real existence. If, however, it be safe to assume that the solar system, cutting its way through space, virtually raises an ethereal counter-current, and if it be further granted that light travels less _with_ than _against_ such a current, then indeed it becomes speculatively possible, through slight alternate accelerations and retardations of eclipses taking place respectively ahead of and in the wake of the sun, to determine his absolute path in space as projected upon the ecliptic. That is to say, the longitude of the apex could be deduced together with the resolved part of the solar velocity; the latitude of the apex, as well as the component of velocity perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic, remaining, however, unknown.

The beaten track, meanwhile, has conducted two recent inquirers to results of some interest. The chief aim of each was the detection of systematic peculiarities in the motions of stellar assemblages after the subtraction from them of their common perspective element. By varying the materials and method of analysis, Prof. Lewis Boss, Director of the Albany Observatory, hopes that corresponding variations in the upshot may betray a significant character. Thus, if stars selected on different principles give notably and consistently different results, the cause of the difference may with some show of reason be supposed to reside in specialties of movement appertaining to the several groups. Prof. Boss broke ground in this direction by investigating 284 proper motions, few of which had been similarly employed before (_Astr. Jour._, No. 213). They were all taken from an equatorial zone 4° 20' in breadth, with a mean declination of +3°, observed at Albany for the catalogue of the Astronomische Gesellschaft, and furnished data accordingly for a virtually independent research of a somewhat distinctive kind. It was carried out to three separate conclusions. Setting aside five stars with secular movements ranging above 100", Prof. Boss divided the 279 left available into two sets--one of 185 stars brighter, the other of 144 stars fainter than the eighth magnitude. The first collection gave for the goal of solar translation a point about 4° north of [alpha] Lyræ, in R.A. 280°, Decl. +43°; the second, one some thirty-seven minutes of time to the west of [delta] Cygni, in R.A. 286°, Decl. +45°. For a third and final solution, twenty-six stars moving 40"-100" were rejected, and the remaining 253 classed in a single series. The upshot of their discussion was to shift the apex of movement to R.A. 289°, Decl. +51°. So far as the difference from the previous pair of results is capable of interpretation, it would seem to imply a predominant set toward the northeast of the twenty-six swifter motions subsequently dismissed as prejudicial, but in truth the data employed were not accurate enough to warrant so definite an inference. The Albany proper motions, as Prof. Boss was careful to explain, depend for the most part upon the right ascensions of Bessel's and Lalande's zones, and are hence subject to large errors. Their study must be regarded as suggestive rather than decisive.

A better quality and a larger quantity of material was disposed of by the latest and perhaps the most laborious investigator of this intricate problem. M. Oscar Stumpe, of Bonn (_Astr. Nach._, Nos. 2,999, 3,000), took his stars, to the number of 1,054, from various quarters, if chiefly from Auwers' and Argelander's lists, critically testing, however, the movement attributed to each of not less than 16" a century. This he fixed as the limit of secure determination, unless for stars observed with exceptional constancy and care. His discussion of them is instructive in more ways than one. Adopting, the additional computative burden imposed by it notwithstanding, Schonfeld's modification of Airy's formulæ, he introduced into his equations a fifth unknown quantity expressive of a possible stellar drift in galactic longitude. A negative result was obtained. No symptom came to light of "rotation" in the plane of the Milky Way.

M. Stumpe's intrepid industry was further shown in disregard of customary "scamping" subterfuges. Expedients for abbreviation vainly spread their allurements; every one of his 2,108 equations was separately and resolutely solved. A more important innovation was his substitution of proper motion for magnitude as a criterion of remoteness. Dividing his stars on this principle into four groups, he obtained an apex for the sun's translation corresponding to each as follows:

Number of Proper motion. Apex. Group included stars. " " ° ° I. 551 0.16 to 0.32 R.A. 287.4 Decl. +42. II. 340 0.32 to 0.64 " 279.7 " 40.5 III. 105 0.64 to 1.28 " 287.9 " 32.1 IV. 58 1.28 and upward " 285.2 " 30.4

Here again we find a marked and progressive descent of the apex toward the equator with the increasing swiftness of the objects serving for its determination, leading to the suspicion that the most northerly may be the most genuine position, because the one least affected by stellar individualities of movement.

By nearly all recent investigations, moreover, the solar _point de mire_ has been placed considerably further to the east and nearer to the Milky Way than seemed admissible to their predecessors; so that the constellation Lyra may now be said to have a stronger claim than Hercules to include it; and the necessity has almost disappeared for attributing to the solar orbit a high inclination to the medial galactic plane.

From both the Albany and the Bonn discussions there emerged with singular clearness a highly significant relation. The mean magnitudes of the two groups into which Prof. Boss divided his 279 stars were respectively 6.6 and 8.6, the corresponding mean proper motions 21".9 and 20".9. In other words, a set of stars on the whole six times brighter than another set owned a scarcely larger sum total of apparent displacement. And that this approximate equality of movement really denoted approximate equality of mean distance was made manifest by the further circumstance that the secular journey of the sun proved to subtend nearly the same angle whichever of the groups was made the standpoint for its survey. Indeed, the fainter collection actually gave the larger angle (13".73 as against 12".39), and so far an indication that the stars composing it were, on an average, nearer to the earth than the much brighter ones considered apart.

A result similar in character was reached by M. Stumpe. Between the mobility of his star groups, and the values derived from them for the angular movement of the sun, the conformity proved so close as materially to strengthen the inference that apparent movement measures real distance. The mean brilliancy of his classified stars seemed, on the contrary, quite independent of their mobility. Indeed, its changes tended in an opposite direction. The mean magnitude of the slowest group was 6.0, of the swiftest 6.5, of the intermediate pair 6.7 and 6.1. And these are not isolated facts. Comparisons of the same kind, and leading to identical conclusions, were made by Prof. Eastman at Washington in 1889 (Phil. Society Bulletin, vol. xii, p. 143; Proceedings Amer. Association, 1889, p. 71).

What meaning can we attribute to them? Uncritically considered, they seem to assert two things, one reasonable, the other palpably absurd. The first--that the average angular velocity of the stars varies inversely with their distance from ourselves--few will be disposed to doubt; the second--that their average apparent luster has nothing to do with greater or less remoteness--few will be disposed to admit. But, in order to interpret truly, well ascertained if unexpected relationships, we must remember that the sensibly moving stars used to determine the solar translation are chosen from a multitude sensibly fixed; and that the proportion of stationary to traveling stars rises rapidly with descent down the scale of magnitude. Hence a mean struck in disregard of the zeros is totally misleading; while the account is no sooner made exhaustive than its anomalous character becomes largely modified. Yet it does not wholly disappear. There is some warrant for it in nature. And its warrant may perhaps consist in a preponderance, among suns endowed with high _physical_ speed, of small or slightly luminous over powerfully radiative bodies. Why this should be so, it would be futile, even by conjecture, to attempt to explain.--_Nature._

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ANIMAL ORIGIN OF PETROLEUM AND PARAFFIN.

R. Zaloziecki, in _Dingl. Polyt. Jour._, gives a lengthy physical and chemical argument in favor of the modern view that petroleum and paraffin owe their origin to animal sources; that they are formed from animal remains in a manner strictly analogous to that of the formation of ordinary coal from wood and other vegetable debris. For geological as well as chemical reasons, the author holds that Mendeleeff's theory of their igneous origin is untenable, pointing out that the hydrocarbons could not have been formed by the action of water percolating through clefts in the gradually solidifying crust until it reached the molten metallic carbides, as these clefts could only occur where complete solidification had taken place, and between this point and the metallic stratum a considerable space would be taken up by semi-solid, slag-like material which would be quite impervious to water. Under the conditions, too, existing beneath the surface of the earth, such polymerization as is necessary to account for the presence of the different classes of hydrocarbons found in petroleum is scarcely credible.