Science/Nature Books

FOUNDATIONS IN QUICKSAND. Foundations in quicksand often have to be built in places where least expected, and sometimes the writer has been able to conveniently span the vein with an arch and avoid trouble; but where it cannot be conveniently arched over, it will be necessary to sheath pile for a trench and lay in broad sections of concrete until the space is crossed, the sheath piling being drawn and... more...

 read the telegram for the second time. Then I folded it up, put it in my pocket, and pressed the little button on my desk. My mind was made up.To save Imee's race of Men-Who-Returned-To-The-Sea, two Land-Men answer the challenge of the dreaded Rorn, corsairs of the under-seas."Miss Fentress, I'm leaving this afternoon on an extended trip. The Florida address will reach me after... more...

obert Thorpe reached languidly for a cigarette and, with lazy fingers, extracted a lighter from his pocket. "Be a sport," he repeated to the gray haired man across the table. "Be a sport, Admiral, and send me across on a destroyer. Never been on a destroyer except in port. It ... would be a new experience ... enjoy it a lot...." In the palm-shaded veranda of this club-house in Manila,... more...

In admiring the recent developments of electric science as evidenced by the number of important inventions which have during the past few years been given to the world, especially in those branches of applied science which deal more particularly with the generation of electricity and the production of the electric light, there is often too great a tendency to forget, or, at least, to pass over in... more...

TOMBS OF THE FIRST EGYPTIAN DYNASTY. By LUDWIG BORCHARDT, Ph.D., Director of the German School in Cairo. For many years various European collections of Egyptian antiquities have contained a certain series of objects which gave archæologists great difficulty. There were vases of a peculiar form and color, greenish plates of slate, many of them in curious animal forms, and other similar things. It was... more...

THE STORY OF THE UNIVERSE. By Dr. WILLIAM HUGGINS. The opening meeting of the British Association was held in Park Hall, Cardiff, August 18, where a large and brilliant audience assembled, including, in his richly trimmed official robes, the Marquis of Bute, who this year holds office as mayor of Cardiff. At the commencement of the proceedings Sir Frederick Abel took the chair, but this was only pro... more...

The use of electricity in the reduction of metals from their ores is extending so rapidly, and the methods of its generation and application have been so greatly improved within a few years, that the possibility of its becoming the chief agent in the metallurgy of the future may now be admitted, even in cases where the present cost of treatment is too high to be commercially advantageous. The refining... more...

THE NAVAL FORGES AND STEEL WORKS AT ST. CHAMOND. With the idyls and historic or picturesque subjects that the Universal Exposition gives us the occasion to publish, we thought we would make a happy contrast by selecting a subject of a different kind, by presenting to our readers Mr. Layraud's fine picture, which represents the gigantic power hammer used at the St. Chamond Forges and Steel Works in... more...

A huge agave, or century plant, is now blooming at Auburn, N.Y. A few days ago the great plant became tinged with a delicate yellowish-white color, as its 4,000 buds began to develop into the full-blown flowers, whose penetrating fragrance, not unlike that of the pond lily, now attracts swarms of bees and other insects. The plant was purchased in 1837 by the owner, and was then twelve years old. For... more...

MOLECULAR WEIGHTS. A new and most valuable method of determining the molecular weights of non-volatile as well as volatile substances has just been brought into prominence by Prof. Victor Meyer (Berichte, 1888, No. 3). The method itself was discovered by M. Raoult, and finally perfected by him in 1886, but up to the present has been but little utilized by chemists. It will be remembered that Prof.... more...