SCIENCE AND INVENTION.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3200, 22 April 1911, Page 3

SCIENCE AND INVENTION.

STONE AGE FOLK STILL EXTANT

Prof. Erland Nordenskiold in the course of an exploration of Bolivia, found districts inhabited by Indians. These are still living in the age of wood and stone. Because of the scarcity of stone in the Chaoc region, the natives of the banks of the Pilyomayo River do not possess even stone implements, but employ hone and.hard wood as the material of knives, saws, awls, needles, and spades. The virgin and unexplored forests of the province of Sara, are the home of entirely wild and uncivilised Indians, called Siriones, who have no friendly intercourse with their white neighbors. It is not even known whether they form a single tribe or a number of tribes. This.part of Bolivia presents the extraordinary phenomenon of natives till living in the stone age within a few miles of places which have been inhabited by white men during several centuries. Nordenskiold obtained various implements which had been captured in punitive expeditions directed- by the whites against the marauding Siriones, but lie was not able to come into contact with these interesting aborigines.

CAUGHT BY THE CAMERA

A recent instance of the application of photography to settle a disputed question in natural history is an experiment made on a voyage to Sau Francisco by Mr. A. Kingsmill. A large albatross has been following the steamer and keeping pace with itfor several hours, and the wonder grew among the watchers on ship-board as to how the bird was able to flv so swiftly while apparently keeping its wings extended without flapping them. As this is a common manner of flight with the albatross, the explanation has been offered that the bird takes advantage of slight winds and air currents, and so is able to glide upon what might be called atmospheric slopes. As the albatross sailed alongside of the ship, about fifteen feet away, Mr. Kingsmill snapped his camera at it, and obtained a photograph which astonished him and his fellow voyagers.

The photograph revealed, what no eye had caught, the wings of the albatross, each some five feet long, raised high above its back in the act of making a downward stroke. The explanation naturally suggested is that, more or less frequently, the bird must have made a stroke of this kind with its wings, although the eye could not detect the motion, and that the camera chanced to be snapped just at the right moment.

A HUGE SHEET

It is known that a sheet of chalk more than a thousand feet in thickness underlies all that portion of England which is situated to the south-west of a line crossing the island diagonally from the North Sea at F’lamborough Head to- the coast on the English Channel in Dorset. This enormous sheet of chalk is tilted up in the west, and depressed* eastern portions that dip towards the water of the North Sea. are usually buried from* sight by means of overlaying sande and clays. Where the edges of the chalk floor come upon the sea the cliff scenery is strikingly grand and beautiful. Anyone who has seen the magnificent rocks of Flamborough Head and Beaehy Head, the jagged stacks.of the Needles, or the dingy mass of Shakespere’s Cliff, near Dover, can understand why “the white cliffs of Albion” has grown into a stock phraser This massive sheet of chalk appears again in Ffaiice, in many other parts of, Europe as far east as the Crimea, an fid even in Central Asia, beyond the Sea of Aral. How far it stretched westward into what is now the Atlantic may never be known, but chalk cliffs of at least two hundred feet in thickness are seen at Antrim, in Ireland, and-less conspicuous formations are found in parts of Scotland. There can he little question that all these - now isolated patches were once connected in a continuous sheet. -