HEREDITARY NEEDLES.

1895

A Case That May Arouse Some Apprehension In the Rearing of Families.

Needles have never been supposed to be hereditary, but a recent case reported by a physician of eminence offers undoubted evidence to the contrary. A lady accidentally ran a needle into her foot 80 years ago, and it lay apparently dormant in her system for so many years that its existence was almost forgotten.

In 1878 she was married, and a year after the birth of her infant daughter the needle made its appearance in the infant's shoulder. There could be no doubt that it was the original needle by which the mother had been attacked in 1860, for it was of a peculiar and now obsolete pattern, and the mother distinctly remembered that needles of that pattern were in use at the time of her attack.

There could be no doubt that the infant inherited the needle from her mother, and that henceforth physicians will expect to find a natural tendency to needles in the tissues.

As it is asserted that people have died from needles, although there are very few such cases on record, the insurance companies will doubtless add to the questions which they put to candidates for insurance, "Did your father or mother ever swallow needles, and, if so, how many, and Of what kind — sewing, darning or carpet?" — Spare Moments.

Rapid Growth of Fungi

1895

The rapidity with which many, if not all, fungi grow baffles calculation. The great puffball, Lycoperdon giganteum, will grow as large as a peck measure in 48 hours, and 'specimens of Agaricus campestris have developed from the button — of the size of a pea — to a mushroom as large as a coffee saucer in a night. But this great increase is not actual growth. These species are many weeks forming under the surface of the ground. Their cells are small and closely packed. When the proper degrees of moisture and heat around this incipient fungus coincide, it rapidly absorbs moisture, and stimulated by the heat swells to its full size in a few hours. — Boston Transcript.


Sun and Tan

Some people "tan" in the sunshine because the chemical action of the light on the skin causes the deposit of a pigment in its substance. Tanning is a provision of nature to protect the true skin from the bad effects of too much light and heat.

Dickens' "Situations"

1895

The Similarity of His Methods In Winding Up His Plots.

It is curious what a penchant Dickens had for certain melodramatic situations, which smiled to his fancy so telling that he repeated and reproduced them many times over. He had a lively dramatic turn, and I always thought would have had extraordinary success as a dramatist. I once asked him why he had not taken up this "line" seriously, and I think he made the excuse — it was long ago, many years before his death — that he had not time, taste or patience. The real reason no doubt was that he could not work without expanding and could not "carve heads upon a cherry stone."

A literary friend, who has his "Boz" at his fingers' ends, has with great acuteness pointed out to me that Nicholas Nickleby was a genuine "Adelphi walking gentleman." His manner, heroic bursts, protection of his sister, boarding of Ralph, etc., were all elements in the Adelphi melodrama. Ralph was a regular stage villain. That his works are all dramatic and conceived in the true spirit of the stage is plain from the vast list of adaptations. Each story has been adapted again and again and will bear the process admirably.

One method for winding up his plot, to which he was excessively partial, was the unmasking of the villain owing to the betrayal of some confederate. The parties are generally brought together in a room by the more virtuous members. The confederate then emerges from his concealment and tells a long story of villainy. We have this denouement first in "Oliver Twist," where Monks makes his revelations. In "Nickleby" Ralph is confronted with "the man Snawley and Squeers." In the "Old Curiosity Shop" Quilp is similarly exposed. In "Barnaby Rudge" Haredale forces his hereditary enemy to make revelations. In "Chuzzlewit" Jonas is confronted with another betrayer. In "Copperfield" Uriah Heep is denounced and exposed by Mr. Micawber. In "Bleak House" Lady Dedlock is similarly tracked. In nearly all the cases the guilty person goes off and commits suicide. — Gentleman's Magazine.



A Compulsory Conclusion

He was a flirt, and the girl knew it.

He had been saying tender things and looking unutterable ones for weeks.

And every time he opened his mouth he put his foot in it.

At last he came to the point.

"I have lost my heart," he said to her in that way which every woman knows so well the interpretation of.

She looked at him searchingly. "Science," she responded, "says that nothing is lost."

He was about to reply, but he caught himself.

Then he got out of the presence of that girl, for he knew in his soul that she was science, and that in her opinion his heart was nothing. — Detroit Free Press.

An Arc Lamp

1895

Scientists Just Beginning to Study Its Heat and Light Characteristics.

Long as the arc lamp has been in use the nature of its phenomena is still far from being known or understood. In a communication recently made by M. Violle to the French Academie des Sciences interesting evidence was adduced to show that the temperature of the arc increased with the current. Photographs of the crater of the carbon, on which the little oval of white light appears to stand, showed that its intrinsic brilliancy was the same with 1,000 or 1,200 amperes as with 10 amperes.

Examining the spectra of the arc and of the positive carbon, M. Violle found a large number of the bands of the spectrum of the arc stood out brilliantly against the continuous spectrum of the crater. They were, however, unsteady and varied in brightness, being brighter the greater the current. It is doubtful whether the brilliancy of the bright bands forming the spectrum of a gas light are related to its temperature in the same way as are the corresponding portions of the continuous spectrum of a solid body. The doubt is increased when the gas is illuminated under the action of electricity, which seems capable of converting itself into light without heat.

On the other hand, if the arc behaves like a conductor carrying a current, it must be the seat of an evolution of heat proportional to the energy consumed, so that its temperature should increase with the current. In any case the cause which limits the temperature of the crater does not apply to the arc. M. Violle tried to determine the temperature of the arc by introducing into it a thin rod of carbon. A carbon rod introduced into the arc produced between two poles of the same metal burns away differently with different metals, slowly with copper, quickly with zinc, showing, however, a much higher temperature than that of the volatilization point of zinc.

M. Violle concludes that the temperature of the arc is, generally speaking, higher than that of the positive carbon, and that it increases with the energy consumed. — Philadelphia Press.

The Octopus as a Tree Climber

1895

The screw pine is a familiar decorative plant among us, and in its native habitat in the South Sea islands it attains perfection. On the male tree are scented flowers, and on the female bunches of hard fruit.

Aristotle relates "that the octopus occasionally climbs trees," but as no one ever corroborated this it was not considered correct. Now we find that the ancient philosopher was correct in his statement, for Mr. Henry Lee, F. Z. S., the eminent zoologist, proved for his own satisfaotion that the octopus is often attracted by the smell of the pine flower and climbs toward it.

Our great scientist, Professor Huxley, says of Aristotle's "Historia Animalium," "As a whole, it is a most notable production, full of accurate information, and of extremely acute generalization of the observations accumulated by naturalists up to that time." — Philadelphia Ledger.


Not His Fault

Mrs. Newrich — Suzanne, tell Robert, the butler, that if he must smoke in the kitchen to use better tobacco.
Suzanne — I did tell him, but he sez they're the best cigars master has. — Boston Budget.

Tenacity of Life

1895

It is one of the wonders of everyday life how long the lower forms of created creatures retain their vitality under certain conditions. Microbes of various sorts, that seem dependent on moisture for existence, have been dried half a score of times, put away and kept dry for a long period, and have, under favorable conditions, revived, apparently none the worse for their hibernation. They have been heated to 150 degrees F., then kept in a vacuum for a month. Notwithstanding all this, they revived upon being placed in a warm, moist atmosphere. Even snails may be deprived of oxygen, water, food and heat, but will merely curl up and go to sleep, awakening when conditions are favorable. — New York Ledger.


The Fork Fad

Marker — The spread of the opium habit is something terrible. I am told that women of the highest class have been seen going into opium joints.
Parker — Oh, that's all nonsense. Ladies of fashion go to such places to watch the Chinamen use chopsticks. They want to learn how to eat soup with a fork. — New York Weekly.


Learning

Wear your learning like your watch, in a private pocket, and do not pull it out and strike it merely to show that you have one. If you are asked what o'clock it is, tell it, but do not proclaim it hourly and unasked like the watchman.

A New Heating Project

1895

One of the schemes for future engineers to work at will be the sinking of a shaft 12,000 or 15,000 feet into the earth for the purpose of utilizing the central heat of the globe. It is said that such a depth is by no means impossible, with the improved machinery and advanced methods of the coming engineer.

Water at a temperature of 200 degrees centigrade, which can, it is said, be obtained from those deep borings, would not only heat houses and public buildings, but would furnish power that could be utilized for many purposes. Hot water already at hand is necessarily much cheaper than that which must be taken when cold and brought up to the required temperature. Once the shaft is sunk, all cost in the item of the hot water supply ceases. The pipes, if good, will last indefinitely, and as nature's stokers never allow the fire to go out there would come in the train of this arrangement many advantages.

When by sinking a shaft in the earth we can secure a perpetual heating apparatus which we can regulate by the turning of a key, one of the trials of life will fade into nothingness. — New York Ledger.

A Microbe That Is Hard to Kill

1895

Professor Renk, who is engaged in making some interesting experiments on the vitality of the comma bacilli, the so called "microbe of cholera," has found that they will live for some time and exhibit all their usual liveliness in a temperature 10 degrees colder than freezing.

A single "culture" of these germs in a bowl of beef broth, reduced to a temperature of from 5 to 7 degrees below the zero of the centigrade thermometer, which is about the same as 20 to 23 above the zero mark of the Fahrenheit instrument, were unusually lively at the end of 100 hours' exposure.

He found, however, that as they were uninterruptedly exposed to such a degree of cold for a longer period than that mentioned above they gradually lost vitality and at the end of five days were perfectly lifeless and utterly unable to do damage should they be taken into the human system. — St. Louis Republic.


A Sight at Night

Smythe — Too bad Miss Brown's so awfully nearsighted, isn't it, Chawles?
Chumley — Y-a-as, me boy.
Smythe — Why, d'ye know, I've been told she weahs her glasses to bed.
Chumley — How's that, Haw-wy?
Smythe — So's she can wecognize the people she meets in her dweams. — Philadelphia Times.

The Ophthalmoscope

1895

An Instrument Which Reveals the Innermost Recesses of the Living Eye.

To the oculist Professor von Helmholtz gave the ophthalmoscope, and thus made it possible to investigate the conditions of the inmost recesses of the living eye. If the eye be illuminated, a portion of the light returns from the hinder surface, is brought to a focus by the lenses of the eye itself and forms an image of the retina in the external space. To see this was no easy matter. If the patient's eye were focused on a luminous object, the image would coincide with the source of light, and even if otherwise visible would be lost in the glare. If he looked elsewhere, the image would move, but inasmuch as the lenses cannot be adjusted to the clear vision of any object nearer than about ten inches that is the minimum distance from the eye at which it can form the image of its own retina. To see this clearly an observer without appliances must place himself at least ten inches from the image — that is, at 20 inches from the patient. At that distance the view would be so limited that no result could be obtained.

Von Helmholtz, however, convinced himself that if these difficulties could be overcome the image of a brightly illuminated retina could be seen. He made the observations through a small hole in the center of a mirror, which reflected light into the eye under examination. Then by means of a lens he shifted the position of the image backward until the relative positions of the observer and the patient were such that, according to calculation, the retina should be visible.

Again and again he tried and failed, but was convinced of the validity of the theory, and at last the experiment succeeded. From that time the oculist has been able to look into the darkness of the pupil and to see through the gloom the point of entry of the optic nerve and the delicate network of blood vessels by which it is surrounded. — Fortnightly Review.

Omnipresent Hydrogen

1895

One of the Commonest Elements of the Earth and the Universe.

No result of spectroscopic research among the heavenly bodies has been more remarkable than that which demonstrates the extraordinary abundance with which the element hydrogen is diffused throughout the universe. It is, of course, one of the commonest elements of the earth, entering, as it does, into the composition of every drop of water. Hydrogen is also a constituent part of a vast number of solid bodies, but the remarkable circumstance for our present purpose is that this same element is found in profusion elsewhere. Surrounding that visual glowing globe of the sun there is an invisible atmosphere, of which hydrogen is one of the most prominent components.

A like conclusion is drawn from the spectra of many of the stars. In the case of certain specially white and brilliant gems, of which Sirius and Vega may be taken as the types, the chief spectroscopic feature is the extraordinary abundance in which hydrogen is present. Even in the dim and distant nebula gaseous hydrogen is the constituent more easily recognized than any other which they may possess. Indeed it may be affirmed that we do not know any other substance which is so widely diffused as hydrogen.

It need hardly be said that this gas is an important constituent in those compound bodies with which life is associated. In that somewhat grewsome exhibition which shows the actual quantities of the several elements of which an average human body is composed the bulk of the hydrogen forms one of the most striking items, and indeed in connection with all forms of animal and vegetable life hydrogen is of primary importance. In the argument from analogy for the existence of life in other worlds it is significant to note that an element associated in such an emphatic manner with the manifestation of life here should now be shown to be widespread through the universe. — Sir Robert Ball in Fortnightly Review.

A Study of The Sun

1895

A FASCINATING RECREATION WHICH ANY ONE MAY ENJOY.

How It May Be Observed Without Danger. A Method of Getting a Perfectly Pure Beam For Inspection — A Lesson In Astronomy Couched In Simple Terms.

Every day a royal presence, attended by numerous unseen courtiers, sweeps across the sky. The sun looks us so boldly in the face that we are compelled to veil ourselves from his accursing gaze. Let us commence our now studies by contemplating his attractiveness.

A piece of well smoked glass will give us good service. If this be covered with another piece, with strips of paper at the edges to separate them and prevent rubbing, and other mucilaged strips to bind the outer edges, we shall have a respectable and lasting astronomical instrument.

The eye may now examine the dazzling orb without danger, and it will discover a disk which is apparently no larger than that of the full moon, but the fact that the sun is about 400 times farther away accounts for the resemblance in size. But the disk is not all of the immense world, for a very important envelope of vast dimensions is invisible except to special instruments. The limb of the sun is seen to be not quite so bright as the central portions, because the light from it has to penetrate a greater depth of atmosphere.

Occasionally we see a "spot" upon the solar surface, in which case it must be very large, but if we are fortunate enough to have access to even a small spyglass we shall many times see spots. There are years when the spots are very numerous (the writer counted 168 one day and more than 300 on a day in 1893), and years when none is seen for months, and this appears to be governed by a "period" of about 11 years.

If we use a telescope with our smoked glass, the spectacle will be curiously interesting, for the object glass — a very large eye — gathers many rays of light and bends them to a focus, producing a magnified image which is yet more enlarged by the eyepiece, which is a microscope. Now, the very grain of the sun, so to speak, is visible, the surface being completely flecked with gray white matter, while here and there huge masses of white protrude. These latter are called faculae and are usually associated with the spots which are depressions in the surface — deep, dark cavities, but dark only as contrasted with the shining regions, for they are brighter than the calcium light. Very recently the writer measured a large group and found that it occupied an area of more than 100,000 miles in length and about three-fourths as wide, into which could be cast 100 earths without crowding them. Still larger groups have sometimes been noticed. Watching the spots from day to day reveals the time of revolution of the sun upon its axis, about 25 days, which means that one day on the sun is as long as 25 of ours.

As yet the sun has not yielded the secret of its composition, and the telescope, unaided, is inadequate to solve the mystery. Perhaps in childhood we beguiled hours of church service, which were a trifle wearisome to little ones, by noticing the play of color in the "lusters" which hung in profusion from the old fashioned lamps. How little we dreamed that the sun was whispering through this simple medium intelligible messages of very high importance, for this three faced form of glass is called a prism, the change of direction of objects viewed through it being due to the bending (refraction) of the rays of light passing through it, and the color fringe along the edges of the images the primary rays of which white light is composed, which is easily proved by passing the colored rays through another prism, when they form a beam of white light once more.

The same color band, or spectrum, is shown by a grating of parallel wires strung in a frame, or by a close grained feather, or even by the eyelashes when the eye is half closed.

But we can easily improve upon these primitive instruments by employing a series of prisms of fine construction or a grating produced by ruling lines with a diamond upon a piece of perfectly flat and highly polished speculum metal.

To get a perfectly pure beam for inspection we let the telescopic image of the sun fall upon a delicate slit in a metal plate, which is in the focus of the object glass of a little telescope, whose duty it is to make parallel the rays to be examined, and which sends them through the series of prisms referred to or causes them to fall upon a grating. In either case they are viewed by another little telescope, and the beam of sunlight tells its story in a magnificent spectrum, far exceeding the rarest touches of world renowned artists.

Now for the precious secret! The beautiful color band is threaded with thousands of slender dark lines, which correspond with the bright lines, which are the sign manual of metals in a glowing state, and we need only to put a pinch of salt in the flame of a candle and let the light fall alongside the sun's image on the slit, when there will be two spectra, side by side, and the two bright yellow lines of sodium will exactly coincide with two black lines in the orange of the solar spectrum, and the crowning proof appears when the calcium light is permitted to shine through the candle flame, instantly turning the bright lines to dark ones. So with the lines of other metals.

We have learned from the sun's own messages, after a journey of 93,000,000 miles, that it is a gaseous body; that many of the metals of earth are vaporized in its awful temperature, and that the surface is probably a shell of luminous clouds surrounded by an "atmosphere" of gases thousands of miles deep, out of which spurt for hundreds of thousands of miles, with a speed in contrast with which the movement of whirlwinds on earth is a dead calm, jets of flaming hydrogen intermingled with the metallic vapors, which, becoming cooled by exposure to the cold of space, fall upon the surface and cause the depressions known as spots. — Philadelphia Ledger.

The History of Quinine

1895
How the Use of the Drug Supplanted the Practice of Bleeding Patients.
In 1830, when the French were conducting a campaign of conquest in Algeria, the mortality among the troops and colonists there was frightful. France was being continually called upon for fresh levies of men and youths to supply this terrible loss, chiefly through fever incidental to the climate and the life the French in Algeria were leading. At that time the practice of bleeding still prevailed. "Bleed them until they are white," was the injunction which Broussais, the medical master of the French, gave to his followers when the condition of the soldiers was reported to him. At Bona in one year, out of an effective force of 5,500 men, 1,100 died of illness in the hospital.

At that time the effects of a sulphate of quinine were known, but few physicians ventured to employ it. Maillot had interested himself in the new remedy, and going to Bona in the medical service of the government he resolved to see if it would not reduce the frightful mortality, which was 1 to every 3-1/2 men who entered the hospital. At first he employed the quinine merely as an adjunct to the bleeding. He soon found that bleeding was killing the men, and that quinine was saving them. Little by little he left off bleeding, to the great scandal of the medical profession. Exactly in proportion as the bleeding ceased the deaths in the hospital decreased. In two years the deaths fell off from 1 in 3-1/2 of all who entered the hospital to 1 in 26 and finally to 1 in 46.

Maillot quite naturally enough grew to be the opponent of bleeding, but he was so ceaselessly vilified by members of the medical profession that he became imbittered toward his colleagues. Nearly 30 years passed before Maillot saw the complete triumph of his ideas. Doctors continued to bleed their patients heartily for all manner of ills. But in 1860 Maillot was made commander of the Legion of Honor and chief of the medical staff of the French army, and his influence with others in bringing about a virtual revolution in the practice of medicine was fully recognized. — Pearson's Weekly.

Comment: Ask your doctor if bleeding is right for you!

A White Frog In a Solid Rock

1895

The sensation of the Salt Lake valley some years ago was the finding of a queer white frog, with enormous eyes, in a solid rock blasted out at the Varley & Everill quarry at Salt Lake City. The rock in which the little hermit was found had been blasted from a strata several feet below the surface and was being separated into pieces suitable for loading when the pocket, or cavity, which contained the frog was discovered. The local account at the time says that "the discovery created an immense sensation among the workmen, and all operations at the quarry were for a time suspended."

Examination by the Salt Lake scientists proved that the creature was of a species supposed to have been extinct for thousands of years. Its immense eyes were sightless and covered with a thick, tough, horny substance, and the mouth was entirely closed up. Mr. Everill, one of the proprietors of the works, took charge of the curiosity, but it died within 24 hours and was presented to the city museum, where it is now preserved in alcohol. — St. Louis Republic.

The Tail of A Comet

1895

Its Ever Changing Mass and Why It Flees From the Sun.

The tail of a comet is not formed of the same particles which composed it yesterday or even an hour or a moment ago. It is constantly being renewed at the expense of the nucleus. As the long stream of black smoke from the neighboring factory or mill is being continually renewed by fresh particles of carbon released by the combustion going on in the furnace below, so is the wonderful luminous train of cometery bodies being constantly replenished by particles flying from, of rather driven from, the nucleus by the intense heat of the sun.

Then, again, how infinitely small and how intensely luminous must these particles that go to make up the tail of a comet be! This thought is suggested by the fact that it has been proved that in some cases the nucleus of comets which are only a few hundred miles in diameter will have enormous fanlike tails stretching across space for a distance exceeding 200,000,000 miles and having a bulk exceeding that of the sun by more than 10,000 times! Professor E. E. Barnard beautifully illustrates the formation of a comet's tail by "supposing" thus: "Suppose, for example, that the nucleus of a comet is composed of ice. Then suppose the heat of the sun to be so intense as to rapidly melt that portion of the ice globe exposed to the action of its rays, which are strong enough to immediately convert it into vapor, which ascends toward the sun.

"Imagine now a fierce wind blowing out from the sun, causing the vapor which meets it to be whirled out into space behind the comet. This will clearly illustrate the theory of the formation of a comet's tail, only that the nucleus of the comet is not ice and the vapor is not water vapor; neither is the force which drives it away from the sun a fierce wind."

The unknown force hinted at by the astronomer above quoted readily explains why a comet's tail, as a rule, points in an opposite direction to the sun. The Russian astronomer, Brediechen, distinguishes three different types of cometary tails — those composed of particles having the specific gravity of hydrogen, those having the specific gravity of hydocarbon gas, and a third class having all the peculiarities of an equal mixture of hydrogen and iron vapor. — St. Louis Republic.

The Stork

1895

In Holland some bad boys presumed upon the absence of the stork from her nest to substitute hen eggs for her own. The mother never suspected the trick and conscientiously hatched out her false progeniture. But when the little pullets made their appearance father and mother were in consternation. They screamed in turn, flapped their wings, turned around their nest in great excitement, then together pounced upon the fraudulent children and massacred them without pity.

A similar story comes from a greater distance. At Smyrna a French surgeon, wishing to procure storks' eggs for some purpose, abstracted them from a nest in the vicinity and replaced them with hens' eggs, as in the preceding case. The mother faithfully hatched them out, but at the critical moment there was a conjugal scene, and the husband left home only to return very soon with a large number of his brethren. A court was constituted and a circle formed around the wife accused of adultery. The husband exposed his complaint, and the poor innocent, condemned to death, was immediately hacked to pieces. The nest remained deserted.

Like Caesar's wife, the female stork remains above suspicion. — French of Maurice Englehart.

Gulls Perched on Cedars

1895

The captain of a steamer that plies along the New England coast, and that was passing one of the rugged, lonely islands off the Maine shore, pointed to an enormous flock of gulls that whitened the rocks, the surface of the sea and the branches of the cedars that cling to the hard soil. "There," said he, "what do you think of that? And yet if you turn to a book on natural history they'll tell you that gulls won't perch on trees. Some fool sailors believe that the petrels, or Mother Caray's chickens, never alight, even on the water, but are always on the wing. They don't use their eyes. And some of these scientific fellows are as bad as the sailors." — Lewiston Journal.

Hairpins In the Trolley

1895

On a Walnut Hills electric car recently there was a rather entertaining sight. The passengers paid nothing extra to see it, and some of them forgot to get off at their homes, so absorbed were they in the occurrence.

Three young ladies furnished the amusement.

"Did you over notice," said one, "that a hairpin will stand up on end if you put it on the floor of an electric car just over the motor?"

"Oh, it won't either!" her companions shouted in a chorused giggle.

"I can prove it," said the first.

And she did. Taking a hairpin from the bright knot at the top of her head, she stood it on the floor, and it performed such antics as set all the passengers in an uproar.

The reader who does not believe the story can easily demonstrate its probability. Let her take a hairpin and try it, or let him borrow one, and he will discover a most interesting experiment. — Cincinnati Tribune.

A New Insect Pest

New York, 1895

The San Jose Scale Threatens Destruction to Fruit Trees.

Special legislation may be required for the extermination of the San Jose scale, which has been found in nurseries on Long Island and in Columbia county. State Entomologist Lintner has been investigating the ravages of the pest for several months, and reports that unless active measures are soon taken the fruit-growers of New York will feel disastrous results.

The scale is a small insect no larger than the diameter of a common pin, and gets its name from being so well known in San Jose. It injures fruit trees in devitalizing the trees by boring through the bark with its proboscis, there being millions on a tree at one time.

The New York state experiment station at Geneva obtained an appropriation last year of $8,000 for the extermination of insect pests on the farms of the produce gardeners of Long Island, and will probably investigate the damage done by the scale in that part of the state. In case the fruit-growers neglect to interfere with the pest, as they have done thus far, the Legislature will be asked to pass a law allowing state employes free access to nurseries to spray infected trees with whaleoil soap which is fatal to the scale.

Professor Lintner will soon issue a cautionary circular on the scale to the fruit-growers of the state.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, N.Y., Jan. 18, 1895, unknown page number.

Signals To Mars

1901

What a British Scientist Thinks of Their Possibility

In a London newspaper Sir Robert S. Ball writes of the futility of human endeavor to attract the attention of possible inhabitants of Mars. He says: "If the whole extent of Lake Superior was covered with petroleum and if that petroleum was set on fire, then I think we may admit that an inhabitant of Mars who was furnished with a telescope as good as that which Mr. Percival Lowell uses at Flagstaff might be able to see that something had happened. But we must not suppose that the mighty conflagration would appear to the Martian as a very conspicuous object.

"It would rather be a very small feature, but still I think it would not be beyond reach of a practical observer in that planet. On the other hand, if an area the size of Lake Superior on Mars was to be flooded with petroleum and that petroleum was to be kindled we should expect to witness the event from here not as a great and striking conflagration, but as a tiny little point of just discernible light. The disk of Mars is not a large object, and the conflagration would not extend over the three-hundredth part of that disk.

"It is sufficient to state these facts to show that the possibility of signaling to Mars is entirely beyond the power of human resources."

Artificial Spring New Device for Seed Analysts

1929

New York, Jan. 2. — A method of simulating spring artificially in a modern version of the old family ice box was described today before the association of official seed analysts.

It is used for testing the germination of farm seeds at the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Immigration, Richmond. By a specially prepared chamber and an artificial refrigerator, controlled temperatures are obtained over test seeds planted in special soil boxes.

Even the breezes of spring, so far as they are useful to the fields of farmers, are preserved through the action of cold water running through the apparatus, and providing the air purification that takes place in open fields.

Spring's sunshine is reproduced in its essential effects through an electric heater whose emanations are distributed from beneath a covering of water.

The apparatus was described by Carroll M. Bass of the Virginia department of Agriculture. The seed analysts met with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which closed its eighty-fifth annual meeting here last night. The seed men held over for a session today.