The burner is conveniently mounted to a wooden pyramid by means of two screws. No air pressure is required to operate it, so that the only connection to the burner is that of a gas line. The pyramid base makes it possible to direct the flame away from the operator, and the small size of the burner and its base permits considerable freedom in manipulating the work. The cost of the burner is so small that the item could be furnished to every student as standard locker equipment. The articles shown in the photo are an H tube and a V tube, both made from six inch by t h r e e - q u a r t e r inch test tubes; an L bend with a bulbed portion near one end to stretch tubing slipped on a t this end and make a more gas-tight joint; a U tube of capillary tubing.
Oxygen-Carrier of Blood Analyzed in Germany. An important step toward the understanding of how the process of breathing sustains life has been made by Prof. Otto Warburg who, in an address before the Kaiser Wilhelm Association for the Advancement of Science a t Berlin, demonstrated the constitution and action of the comDonent in the blood which controls the conveyance of the oxygen of the air from the lungs I., the muccles. So minute an amount of this contptmt~lid pre~entin the blood that it cannot be d a t e d , yet it is sn essmrinl factor in t h e \upply of r m l encrgy to a11 animal.; Its chief constituent is hemin, a chemical compound which has been known for the last seventy-five years, but which was first made artificially in the laboratory a few months ago by Prof. Hans Fischer. It contains iron and is a component of the familiar red coloring matter of the blood, hemoglobin. But the axygen-carrier is ten thousand times more sensitive to light than hemoglobin. The color of the light makes more difference than its intensity. Rays of a certain frequency will be ahsorbed while light of another wave-length will not affect it. One of the derivative compounds can act as a sensitizer to sunshine so that a person taking a dose of i t would be light-struck, perhaps fatally, by ordinary daylight, while he would be all right so long as he remained in a dark room. When the "breath-ferment" described by Warburg is poisoned by combination with carbon monoxide, the combination is readily broken up by faint light, and the ferment can then resume its function of carrying oxygen.-Science Senrice
