Professor Tyndall writes that their does not play a sensible part in the bursting of water pipes by frees In pipes approaching uniformity, the slightest necident "on the interior surface—a speck of dirt, for will start the crystallization at another. It is physically impossible for pipes to freeze with absolute uniformity throughout their len Specks of dirt, will cause some portions of x pipe tv be filled with plugs of solid ice, while liquid spaces continue between; and the plugs are pushed through the pipes with such difficulty, while the pressure becomes so great, that the tubes may be torn asunder along the line of least resistance, Phe value of oil insulation of electricity, especially for currents of high potential and frequency, was shown by Prof. D. Hughes at a recent meeting of the Land: Institution of Electrical Engineers. Pro Hughes was led to suggest the use of oil ug early as 1858 after the failure of the first Transathintic cable. It then appeared sulator with self-cor-vuld be preferable such as gutta percha or indin-rubber, which, when once punctured by the spark, cannot close the wound, and thus renders the entire circuit, useless until the fault is removed. Rosin oil, which la somewhat viscid, has been found to be most serviceable. Electricians have been slow in adopting oil insulation, but it now used for transformers, and promises to be employed in other ways.
Tu 1,200 years Japan has had 29 earth quakes—like that of Oct. 28th, 1391 such severity as te rank aa national disasters. OF less violent earthquakes there are fully 500 every year, and their frequency has led to the establishment of no fewer than 700 earthquake-observing stations.
Berlin, an electrical workman—accustomed, in testing battery cells, to put the two ends of the wires into his mouth see whether the current was flowing—has been poisoned by the soluble salts of copper, which eventually caused his death, Europe and North America, writes Dr. Felix L. Oswald in a paper on "the frost cure," have for years recorded the progress ofa phenomenon which one individual calls Siberia mystery," the northward exodus of the more enterprising elements. of population. During the last 9,000 years the centres of civilisation have moved at Joust 800 miles norrer the poles; the balance of political and intellectual power has been transferred from Rome and Athens to Berlin, London, St. Petersburg, Boston and w York, Within the limits of Auerican territory " similar current is setting towards the frozen table lands of the northern border. The overpopulation of the sunnier latitudes caumot explain the enigma, for there is more elbow-room in the Elysian terrace lands of the southern Alleghanies than on nny bleak prairies ut the far North-west. The key of the mystery may be found in the stimulating fluence of low temperature, Frost is an antidote, and greatly modifies the penalties of our manifold sins against Nature's health laws, It enables gluttons to digest greasy made dishes; it helps topers to survive excesses that would kill x native of the tropics in a few weeks. It also counteracts the chronic indolence of exhausted constitutions. The remarkable results of the mountain treatment prescribed by American physicians us a last resource in consumption have been variously ascribed to the purity of mountain nie or to. ozone, but itis extremely probable that they are simply due to the protracted influence of cold air, Pulmonary diseases decrenso with every mile northward from the factory districts of the English border to the pastoral regions of sewgirt Scotland, and next to the natives of Senegambia, where indoor work is almost unknown, the Norwegian, Iceluiters, and the Yakuts of Northern Siberia, enjoy the most complete immunity from, consumption. The frost cure dvetrine is, indeed, a logical, and, practically, by fat the most important, cor= relative of the gem theory of disease,"" In a modified form, the motto of m Hot Springs sunitarium—" Warmth is life; cold i y become the keystone-print-i aty philosophy: Warmth is life; cold, even moderate, is death—not to man——but to myriads of disease-germs far more sensitive to changes of temperature.
Oxygen has been administered by a British physi Dr. Aubrey Blukiston, in three unusually severe cases ut pnenmonia, and one "f acute bronchitis, No cuse was fatal, and ho believes that at least two of the lives were saved by the oxygen, He has tried oxygen in three cases asthma, giving it through an inhaler at the commencement of an attack, with the result that the inspiration almost immediately became longer and the. patient Tess dist in two of the cases cut short by a few ts, als, wers, bene-Hy when used sage. Dr. Blakiston concludes that oxygen is a remedy of grent therapeutic value, unt solely confined to the treatment of diseases of the respiratory organs, and that in combination—wich electricity and massage its use must trove, to the convalescent und debilitated con: he best. substitutes: for "Silver thaw," or rain falling when air is below trocaing point and congealing as it falls, has been the subject of consider: able study at Scotland's mountain observatory on Ben Nevis. The phenomenon indicates an inversion of air temperature at the time, the hill-top being considerably cooler than higher atmospheric levels. Daring the six years ending with 1890, no less than 198 cas of silver thaw were observed, having x mean duration of 44 hours, The phenomenon is practically confined to the winter months, being rare from April to October and unknown in July. It occurs usually during a light wind, fluctuating barometric pressure, ing temperature, and seldom when the thermometer stands below 27°. It is very often followed by severe gales
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.