THE MONTH:
SCIENCE AND ARTS.
The abnormally mild winter—if winter it can be called—which has been experienced this year, has once more raised hopes in the minds of farmers that brighter times are in store for them. The extreme mildness of the season has not only been favourable for all field operations, but it has been most beneficial for stock. Lambs have never been so numerous as they are this year in many of the southern counties, for not only have they had the climate in their favour during the most critical time of their lives, but there has been a wonderful number of twins. Indeed, the proportion of these latter to single births has on some farms been as high as sixteen out of twenty.
A silver lining to the dark cloud which has so long overshadowed the British farmer may also perhaps be discerned in certain operations which are now being pushed forward at Lavenham, in Suffolk. A private Company has been formed to recommence, under the more favourable conditions which the progress of scientific agriculture has rendered possible, the making of beet-sugar in this country. Between the years 1869 and 1873, Mr James Duncan tried a similar experiment, and the present Company has acquired his works at Lavenham, to take up once more the industry which he tried to establish. The recently devised methods of extracting sugar from the beet are much easier and simpler, and far less costly, than the processes employed by Mr Duncan; and the promoters of the enterprise are sanguine of success, if they can only induce the farmers to grow sufficient beetroot for them to operate upon. The Company has arranged favourable terms of transport with the railway authorities; for instance, a truck-load of roots can be brought to Lavenham from Bury—a distance of eleven miles—for eighteenpence a ton. For the same distance, Mr Duncan formerly paid four shillings and twopence a ton. The experiment will be watched with extreme interest by all agriculturists.
Mr Wood’s lecture to the Institute of Agriculture on the subject of Ensilage gave some valuable particulars of experiments he had made with the object of ascertaining which are the crops that can be most profitably cultivated for that method of preservation. He first of all took the value of ensilage at twenty-six shillings and eightpence, or about one-third the value of hay. An acre of heavy meadow-grass produced twelve tons of compressed food; and the same quantity dried into hay weighed only two tons seven hundredweight. After allowing for the cost of producing each, the lecturer showed a balance in favour of the ensilage over hay of nearly five pounds sterling an acre. Buckwheat cultivated for treatment as ensilage, against the same valued as a seed-crop, showed a gain in favour of the silo of two pounds eight shillings and threepence per acre. Oats compared in like manner show a balance of five pounds per acre; and here there is a further gain, for oats cut in the green state have not had the time to exhaust the soil as if they had been left to mature. There is still a further gain in favour of ensilage, when it is remembered that the ground is cleared before the usual time, and is therefore ready very early for new crops. The lecturer concluded by throwing out a useful hint that dairymen and cowkeepers in towns could be with great advantage supplied with the new form of fodder in casks, a sixty-gallon cask holding about thirty-one stone-weight of the compressed material.
Mr W. F. Petrie, whose recently published book upon the Pyramids of Gezeh we noticed two months ago, has just undertaken some excavations in another part of Egypt, which are likely to bear fruitful results. Amidst a desolation of mud and marsh, there lies, in the north-eastern delta of the Nile, a place far from the track of tourists, and which is therefore seldom visited. This now remote spot, Sàn-el-Hagar (that is, Sàn of the Stones), was once a splendid city, in the midst of the cornlands and pasturage which formed part of the biblical ‘field of Zoan.’ Excavations were begun here in 1861 by Mariette Pasha, and he unearthed the site of the principal temple; but lack of funds and want of support generally, caused him to give up the work, though not before several treasures had found their way from his diggings to the Boulak Museum at Cairo, and to the Louvre. Mr Petrie, under the auspices of the newly formed Egypt Exploration Fund, commences the work anew in this promising field of research; and before long we may possibly have very important finds to chronicle.
At the recent meeting of the Scottish Meteorological Society, held in Edinburgh, an interesting account was given of the daily work which has been carried on in the Ben Nevis Observatory since its first occupation in November last, and which is telegraphed daily from the summit of the mountain. Several new instruments have been added since that date, and improvements in the buildings costing a thousand pounds will shortly be commenced. Referring to the new marine station at Granton, near Edinburgh, Mr Murray of the Challenger expedition gave an interesting account of the work going on there. The laboratory is now in working order, and there is accommodation for five or six naturalists. It is intended to offer this accommodation free of expense to any British or foreign naturalist having a definite object of study in view.
The French Academy of Sciences has just received an interesting account of a meteorite which fell not long ago near Odessa. A bright serpentine trail of fire was seen one morning to pass over that town; and the editor of one of the papers, surmising that a meteoric mass might have fallen from the sky, offered a reward to any one who would bring it to him. A peasant, who had been terribly frightened by the stone falling close to him as he worked in the fields, and burying itself in the ground, answered this appeal. He had dug the stone out of the soil, and preserved it, keeping the matter quite secret from his neighbours, as he feared ridicule. This stone was found to be a shapeless mass weighing nearly eighteen pounds. The fall of another meteorite, which in its descent near the same town wounded a man, was also reported; but it had been broken into fragments and distributed among the peasants, who preserved them as talismans.
The visitors to Cliff House, San Francisco, had recently the rare opportunity of viewing a marvellous mirage, during which the headland of North Farallon, which is under ordinary circumstances quite out of sight, indeed absolutely below the horizon, not only came into view, but appeared to be only a few miles from the shore. The strange sight fascinated the onlookers for many hours, and marine glasses and telescopes were brought to bear upon these veritable castles in the air.
It seems strange that Samuel Pepys, whose famous Diary is known to all English readers, should have been left without a monument in the old London church where his remains repose, until one hundred and eighty years after his death. This may be partly explained by the circumstance that Pepys’ Diary was not published until the year 1825. It was originally written in cipher, and the key to it, strange to say, was not made use of until that time. Although Pepys was a well-known man in his day, and occupied a good official position as ‘Clerk of the Acts’ and Secretary to the Admiralty, his fame is due to his unique Diary. At last, however, Pepys has a monument to his honour, which was unveiled the other day in the ancient city church of St Olave’s, near the Tower of London. The question has been raised whether Pepys, in using a cipher alphabet, did not intend his Diary as a private document. But still he left the key behind him, which he might have easily destroyed. However this may be, the book has delighted thousands of readers, giving as it does in a very quaint style a picture, and a true picture too, of London life two hundred years ago.
A curious record of the year 1478 is quoted in the Builder, which points to an early case of water being laid on to a town-house. The ingenious individual who thus tapped the conduit or watercourse running along the street, seems to have paid more dearly for the privilege than even a London water-consumer has to pay to the Companies in the present day. The man was a tradesman in Fleet Street, and is thus referred to: ‘A wex-chandler in Flete-strete had by crafte perced a pipe of the condit withynne the ground, and so conveied the water into his selar; wherefore he was judged to ride through the citie with a condit uppon his hedde.’ This poor man was nevertheless only adapting to his own purposes a system of water-conveyance that had been known and practised in many countries ages before his time.