SCIENCE NOTES.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2544, 3 July 1909, Page 1 (Supplement)

SCIENCE NOTES.

j. AN EARLY ANATOMIST. Andrew Vesalius is sometimes called s the father of anatomy, but* he certainly - was the high priest of its revival in the f 16th century. He represented the four- - | th generation of a lamily of pliysic- ? | ians. He was born in 1514, and afterstudy at Louvain and Paris, and servs ing for l some time as an army surgeon , in the Low Countries, lie settled at Pa- \ dua. where he taught medicine from > 1537 to 1544. Towards the close of 3 this time he published his great work - on “Human Anatomy.” It represented - an enormous advance, though Vesalius t was accused of having appropriated • the work of such eminent eontempor--5 aries as Sylvius, Eushtachius, and Eal--7 lopius—men who have given their > names to various human organs. Mon--1 dinus, also, who lived # nearly two een- * turies earlier, had dissected a man in ' 1306, and two women in 1315—t0 say I nothing of Galen and Aristotle. But none the less. Vesalius’ book was strongly stamped with originality. According to some accounts the drawings were made bv Titan, though there is no direct evidence that this is so. At all events they are, worthy of the master and they pretty certainly came from his studio. Of the skeleton Vesalius 1 had such knowledge that when blindfolded he could name any bone placed in his hands ; and the plates of the book are said to be remarkably accurate. Respiration and circulation, the structure of the heart and brain, and so on, are shown with much accuracy, and drawn with consummate skill. The strange thing is that a man who bad seen so much could see so little. He describes the whole mechanism of circulation, for instance, wonderfully well, and yet he knew nothing of the -circulation of the blood. Ten years after the publication Vesalius became Court physician to Philin of Spain. In 1562, however, he seems to have lost caste, and effaced himself by a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. One story is tlpat he opened the body of a young nobleman who-m he believefel to be dead, but whose heart- was still beating—an accident not unknown even now' —and the parents, 1 naturally incensed, had him accused of impiety before the Inquisition. He was offered a chair of physics at Puda, but being wrecked on the voyage he died of hunger and exposure in 1564, 14 years before the birth of Harvey.

IRRIGATION IN EGYPT. Lefts than thirty years ago Egypt was on the verge of utter ruin. Its ■ haprr- position to-day is wholly to be j attributed to British control, and in j that control the work of irrigation has I bulked largely. The completion of the 1 Esneh dam marked another Step in ad- i vance. The rainfall of Northern Egy- i ‘ pt is not much more than an inch and a half a year, and large areas ore practically rainless. Cultivation depends entirely on the' Nile, which gives a strin of arable land eight to fourteen miles wide. As it sweeps through the 3000 miles of its course the Nile .brings, down from Central Africa about 62.000.000 tons a year, raising the level of the cultivated land at the rate of inches in a century. 1 There are places where this detritus is 1 30 feet deep. The first great work for J the control of the river after the begin- J ning of British influence in 1883 was j the completion of the great barrage ‘ at the head of the delta. Another b >.r- • rage was then built half way between ; Cairo and the sea. These two works ; increased the cultivated area by a mil- j lion acres, and doubled the cotton crop : of the districts served. Then came the ! great dams of Assouan and Assiout for j regulation of the water supply of Upper I Egypt. The whole cost of the latter was saved in one season, in 1902, when the Nile flood was exceptionally poor, and without the dam the crops would have been completely lost. The last dam, at Esneh, is 110 miles below Assouan. It will store water for 250,000 acres, and enable two crops a year to be grown instead of one. The Assouan dam rests on solid rock; but at Esneh the substratum is sand, and a cement concrete floor nearly a hundred feet wide had to be laid down. The work was completed in half the specified time of three years. Tho cost was over £1,000,000. NAMING NEW PLANETS. When William Herschel in 1781 discovered Uranus he did not for a long time recognise its planetary nature, and treated it as though it were a comet. When it was found to be a genuineplanet the question of naming it arose, and in a letter to Sir Joseph Banks, who was then president of the Royal Society, Herschel expressed his intention of calling it the Georgian star, for which there was precedent in the Virgilian “Georgium Sidus.” On the Continent, however, Lalande proposed to call it Herschel, and Bode suggested the name Uranus. All there titles were in common use- for half a century, and the name “Georgian” did not disappear from the Nautical Almanac until 1851. When. Neptune was being discovered Adams used the name Uranus and Le. Verrier the name Herschel. 'Between 1801 and 1850 some 13 minor planets were discovered, aud the problem of naming became complex. Various fancy names were, propounded as one or other of those bodies—of which there were five or six hundred —became known. When number 250 was found, in 1885, the. following curious advertisement appeared in tho “Observatory”.— “Herr Palisa being desirous to raise funds for his intended expedition to observe the total solar eclipse of August, 1886, will sell the right of naming tho minor olanet mimber 248 for £50.” He g/ot no offer immediately, and, indeed, discovered number 248 and 250 before a patron appeared, in' the shape of Baron Albert de Rothschild, who chose the name of ‘-‘Bettina.” - These little planets have been a great worry to astronomers. They are usually known by a number, but as it is easy to rediscover ones already known, and_ mistake them for any new ones, provisional names from the letters of the alphabet bad to bo assigned; and “new planets kept on probation for a year or so: ’ .

>).. ahi i iih FORCE CUT UP. - OFFICER AND HIS PARTY . AMBUSHED. a '■ f From Nigeria comes nows of a (Roaster which reminds the public at Hornin vivid fashion of the perils that beset the pioneers of Empire—perils quick with romance that often becomes tragedy! In this, case a message from /intigeru (via Lagos) states that Lieutenant D. A. Varrenen, whilst fproceed--1 iing to Gussoro Wa.gan, a Guari town ; about 50 miles to the north-east of Zun- }' gem, with'three Europeans and 35 na- ' tive police, to instal a chief, was am- . bushed on May 6. The lieutenant, the chief, and 11 police were killed. Majo r Williams has been sent to Kuta with a , large force. The rising is ) of a local character. An official telegram from ’ Sir, William Wallace, Resident-General p in Northern Nigeria, confirms tbo _ above. The scene of the attack, the naj tive village of Gussoro, is situated on the Kaduna River, in the Guari dis--1 triet. The party does not appear to have been a military force, but merely police who word escorting Lieutenant | Varrenen and the new chief who was to be installed. The other Europeans beside the resident were probably police or political officers. The Guari people 1 are described as difficult and truculent, and it is supposed that, as often hap- ’ pens, they were hostile, to the new 1 chief, presumably a Government nominee, who was to be installed, proba--1 bly oii account of the removal of his ; predecessor for some offence. Kuta, a 1 somewhat larger town, to which Major Williams has been despatched from 1 Zungeru with a largo force., is some trwo days’ march from the capital, and close to the scene, of the ambush. There is ample force on the spot to restore order, and it is stated that there is no probability of the trouble qpreading. That no hostility was expected is evident by the fact that there -were no military officers with Lieutenant Varrenen’s party. Lieutenant Donald Adrian Varrenen, ! formerly of the Manlchester Regiment, j was one of " the 78 assistant residents j who are employed in Northern Nigeria, j where he was appointed in 1906. He ; served through the South African war, j ‘being present at the operations in Natal to July, 1900, and afterwards in the Transvaal and Orange River Colony to May, 1902. He received the Queen’s and the King’s medals with three and , two clasps respectively, and was ap- j pointed to the reserve of officers in ! 1904. | HOME OF CANNIBALS. ! Nigeria is at once one of the most : valuable and turbulent of British >pos- ; sessions in West Equatorial Africa. Its j area is from 400,000 to 500.000 square j miles, and it ha's a .population roughly estimated at between 30.000,000 and j •b) 000,000. It was 'constituted r. Bri- j tish Protectorate on January 1, 1900, j and Lagos, practically the chief town, was added in 1906. 'The district was] i taken over from the Royal Niger Com- I

| pany 'and the Niger Coast Protectorate, J | and it extends from the Gulf of Guinea • j as far a,s Lake Chad. The whole area 1 ! ‘is situated in the earth’s region of > [ greatest heat, and it abounds in swamps . j and forests, and few Europeans <c.an • live anywhere in the interior, though in ' the north it is comparatively healthy. From a commercial point of view the ■ district is immensely valuable. In the north there are great agricultural resources. The products there 'comprise cotton, indigo, hides, rubber, ivory, and minerals (silver tin, and lead). In the south the chief products are palm oil and kernels, rubber, ivory, indigo, gums, coffee, and hides. The princi- | pal imports are cotton and spirits. The j natives in the north are fairly civilised i and industrious. They belong to the | Haussa race, which form the best part | of the population, and from which the : British native force of 3000 men is rei cruited. Coming towards the south : and in the great forests cannibalism is ; largely practised. The last disaster to ; a British column was in Northern Ni- . j geria, when .a force was attacked, and | Captain D. S. P. O’Riordan and Mr C. t Amyatt Burtiey. district superintendent of police, were killed, and the greater i part of their men cut up by a horde of savages. Only 15 men out of 52 succeeded in escaping. At the time they were in the heart of a cannibal district, , and were ambushed in much the same way as in the present case. ~ j