Comparative Speed of Light and Electricity.—The French physicist Fizeau calculated the velocity of light at 185,157 miles a second; Cornu, another Frenchman, calculated it at 185,420, and Michelson obtained 186,380 as the result of his calculation. Wheatstone, the English electrician, found that free electricity travelled 288,000 miles a second; Kirchoff concluded, from theoretical considerations, that an electrical current sent through a wire in which it meets no resistance has the velocity of 192,924 miles a second. The velocity of an electric current sent through iron wire is 62,100 miles a second; through copper wire, 111,780 miles. We think justice will be done by deciding that electricity is the faster.—N. Y. Sun.
Yet practically speaking, electricity in wires is much slower. Prof. Gould found that telegraph wires at a moderate height, transmit signals at the rate of 12,000 miles a second; but if the wires are suspended high enough, the velocity may be raised to 16,000 or even 24,000 feet a second. Subterranean wires and submarine cables transmit slowly. Wheatstone’s experiments were made fifty-four years ago, and have not since been confirmed. I would say light is the faster, for electric currents are always retarded by the medium.
Wonderful Photography.—Dr. H. G. Piffard exhibited in New York to a society of amateur photographers a new method of taking instantaneous photographs by means of a brilliant light made by sprinkling ten or fifteen grains of magnesium powder on about six grains of gun-cotton. When this is flashed in a dark apartment it gives light enough to take a good photograph. It will do the same if flashed out of a pistol; so that a citizen may have his revolver with a small camera on the barrel and by flashing the gun-cotton out of his pistol he can make a photograph of any burglar or robber in the dark before he fires a bullet.
Wooden Cloth.—An Austrian has patented a process for boiling wood and cleaving it into fibres that may be spun into threads which may be woven.
The Phylloxera pest, which has wrought such havoc among vineyards throughout Europe, has invaded California also. France has lost many millions, and has offered a reward of 300,000 francs for the discovery of a remedy. A Turkish farmer is said to have discovered accidentally that the remedy is to plant Sorghum or sugar-cane between the vines, which draws the phylloxera from the grapevines. It is said to have been successfully adopted already in Turkey, Croatia, Dalmatia and Eastern Italy.
Falling Rents, in England.—While landlords are battling for rents foreign rivalry is destroying rent, and it is still going down. Large estates have a difficulty in getting either tenants or purchasers. The fall in prices and rents extends all over England. On a farm of 2,700 acres, in Lancashire, the tenant had been paying five dollars an acre, but he refused to take it for 1887 at two dollars and a half. Lands in 1876 were commonly valued at $260 per acre; but they would not bring over $150 to-day. The Court Journal says:
The depreciation in the value of English land is witnessed by one or two statements published last week. We are, in the first place, told that within a radius of twelve miles around Louth, in Lincolnshire, there are now 22,400 acres of land without tenants. In the same shire the largest farm in England has been thrown on the owner’s hands. It is 2,700 acres in extent and the tenant paid £1 per acre. This year a reduction of 50 per cent was made to him, but finding that although an experienced and energetic farmer, that even at this reduction he could not make two ends meet, he has thrown up his farm.
Boston Civilization.—During the four years ending Sept. 30, 1884, there were 971 liquor sellers condemned for violating the law, who appealed to the superior court. Of the entire number, only 19 were fined, and 729 were allowed to escape by dropping the prosecution. But the law against preaching on the Boston Common is enforced with faithful severity, and Rev. W. F. Davis has been sentenced to a year’s imprisonment for preaching without a permit. Evidently rum-selling is more popular than Protestant preaching, and pugilism is more popular than either, as the mayor and some councilmen participated in putting a $10,000 belt on John L. Sullivan, the slugger, before the largest audience the Boston Theatre would hold, on the 9th of August, 1887. But perhaps other cities are no better. Cincinnati has one liquor-selling shop to every twenty voters. The cities will not tolerate prohibition, but it is successful elsewhere.
Psychic Blundering.—The Psychical Research Society held a meeting a few weeks since in Boston. Their first communication was on Thought Transferrence, by Dr. H. B. Bowditch.
“It was stated that a large number of experiments had been made, but the results were of a negative value. The attempt to establish the reality of thought transferrence had not been very successful.” What else but negative results are to be expected from negative people,—people who have been in this matter mere negations for forty-five years, during which discoveries have been in progress all around them, which they have refused to look at, and refused to test by experiment. Still, if the march of mind for half a century can finally rouse the sluggard class, it is well. For “while the lamp holds out to burn,” etc. It was a Dr. Bowditch who, in 1843, certified as secretary of a committee to the facts which demonstrate the science of Anthropology, and then relapsed into an agnostic slumber and forgot all about it.