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Show I Science and Industry's Progress AtKBW and exceedingly profitable use has been discovered for the H waste milk produced in such fl abundance by all creameries. There H are -places where this waste is used m by the farmers who sell their cream B to fatten pigs, but then again there m are districts where the milk, thor- H oughly skimmed and watery in char- Hj actor, is allowed to run down the H drains. It has been found, however, H that by mixing the milk with phos- H phate of lime a mos.t efficient phos- H phate is 'produced. The phosphate of WM lime is placed in a hollow heap on the Kfl floor, the waste milk is run into the H hollow and a handful of yeast is add- H ed. In course of time the whole is H turnqd and thoroughly mixed, after M the fashion of mortar. After it has m dried and is broken up it is a most H excellent fertilizer, containing about M 72.30 per cent of phosphate and a lit- M tie more than 1 per cent of nitrogen. H Unlike the manufacture of most phos- H phates, this process is not attended P by any of the disagreeable smelb and CM other nuisances so closely associated H with the ordinary fertilizer factory. H M All the organs of life rest in some H way or other. The heart has an in- H torval of rest between each combined M act of contraction and expansion and B the beginning of a fresh act. Between H each expiration of the lungs and the M succeeding inspiration there is a H pel od of repose. Physiologists have Hi calculated that the heart reposes dur- H ing about one-fourth of the time. Cer- Hl tain of the othor organs suspend their H activity in part during sleep. Old R physiologists supposed that sleep H was caused by the pressure of the H blood on the brain. But modern H physiology, with a tendency to regard m the brain as the origin of all force HI and of all functions of the body, in- B clines to the view that sleep is caused B by a withdrawal of blood from the M brain. A curious trait haB marked H men of large brain that of sleeping H at will. Bonaparte used to throw him- M self on the ground and go to sleep H within a space of two minutes. Pitt Hj was a sound sleeper, and slept night H after night in the house of commons H while his colleagues watched the de- M bate and roused him when it was M necessary. H H Reviewing the guosses at the age of H the earth that have been made, Prof. H J. Bosler, at a meeting of the. French H Astronomical society, mentioned H first that the rate of the sun's heat H emission, supposing it to depend en- M tiroly on contraction under gravita- H tion, gives evidence thai the present M radiation has continued not more than H 20,000,000 years. This calculation, Hj which is made very uncertain by the H unknown effect on solar heat of radi- H oactivlty, would limit the age of the. H earth to a similar time. Turning to H the rock strata, the total thickness of H the sedimentary deposits is found to H bo about fifty miles, and, at the sea's H present rate of depositing material H two and a half inches a century about 80,000,000 years must have elapsed since the deposition of rocks on the earth began. The salinity of sea water has given Prof. Joly of Dublin Dub-lin the basis "for another estimate. The salt in the Ocean would entirely cover the continents to a depth of nearly 300 feet, and as this has been all washed from the land by rain, the iprosont rate of addition shows that the process has been going on about 100,000,000 years. The presence of helium has given rise to estimates of age, "ranging from 7,000 000 years for an ollgocone rock to 710,000 000 years for a specimen of archaean times. "How would you like to have a steak 50,000 or 100,000 years old served up to you?", asks Mr. James Oliver Gurwood, who, durJn0 a northern north-ern trip, came across some Indians who had discovered the carcass of a mastodon exposed by the falling of a frozen river cliff. "The flesh," says Mr. Curwood, "was of a deep red or mahogany color, and I dined on a steak an inch and a half thick. My first taste of the flesh sent me back, I suppose, 50 000 years or more. The flavor of the meat was old not unpleasant un-pleasant but simply old and dry. That it had lost none of its life sustaining sus-taining elements during those hundreds hun-dreds of centuries of 'cold storage waB shown by the fact that the dogs throve upon it." A serious attempt to investigate" what may bo called the hygiene ot sport 13 about to be made in Berlin. To carry out the objects in view a sport laboratory Is to be established and placed under the charge of the Charlottenburg municipal authorities. The idea had its origin in a department depart-ment of the hygiene exhibition held recently at Dresden, in which everything every-thing that could throw light on the influence of sports and gymnastic exercises ex-ercises on the human organism was brought together. Special attention was paid to bodily measurements arising under different conditions and from different muscular exercises, and particular observation was directed to the good and harmful effects of the several sports and gymnastics on the human body and its members. One of the chief objects of the new laboratory labor-atory will be the observation of all that possibly affects school children in respect of food and physical exercises. exer-cises. An interesting new tropical product is the "root cotton," described by S. Kusano, a Japanese botanist. It is a fibrous covering of the roots of Fa-gara Fa-gara integrifollola, an abundant plant of the Philippines, and especially especial-ly of Botel Tobago, an island near Formosa. The substance seems to be a kind of cork tissue, resembling the ordinary cork developed on the bark of trees. The fibers, of light straw color and silky luster, are very fine, soft, and weak, and are easily pulverized to a waxy ipowder. They are less hygroscopic than ordinary cotton, having remarkable resistance to wetting by water. In Botel Tobago Toba-go the natives use the root cotton foi calking boats, and in the Philippines it is employed for such purposes as stuffing pillows. Not least of the advantages ad-vantages of this material aa a possible article of commerce is the fact that it can be removed without injury to the roots, thus making cultivation simple. |