Civilization Flying Merrily Along

1911

Editorial Winks

Siam is to have an aviation week, and so the march of up-to-date civilization goes — or rather flies — merrily on.

The United States Army wants aeroplanes. They will probably be manned by the flying divisions.

Winter may be trying to keep it up until March. It began early and it has been told throughout.

The new census of Berlin and its suburbs shows a population of 3,400,000. It is camping on New York's trail.

Over-study killed a promising youth in Baltimore, but there is no danger of this malady ever becoming an epidemic.

A German has invented a noiseless telephone booth. A noiseless telephone party line would be a greater blessing.

It is necessarily true that the worst is yet to come.

No man becomes a jailbird just for a lark.

Fishes in Sleep — Changing Color for Protection

1907

In Most Species They Experience a Change of Color

The way fishes sleep is a study which few people have taken up, but which is nevertheless very interesting. They are very light sleepers and frequently assume singular positions, but the most remarkable thing is the change of color which the majority of them undergo while asleep. Usually their spots and stripes become darker and more distinct when they have successfully sought temporary oblivion.

Sometimes the pattern of their coloring is entirely changed. The ordinary porgy, for instance, presents in the daytime beautifully iridescent hues playing over its silvery sides, but at night, on falling asleep, it takes on a dull bronze tint, and six conspicuous black bands make their appearance on its sides.

If it is suddenly awakened by the turning up of the gas in the aquarium it immediately resumes the silvery color that it shows by daylight. Naturalists ascribe these changes to the principle of "protective coloration" and point out that the appearance of black bands and the deepening of the spots serve to conceal the fish from their enemies when lying amid the seaweeds. — Buffalo Times.

Grafting In a New Root — Renew Your Old Life, Do Something New

1921

By DR. WM. E. BARTON

IF THE top of a tree dies down, or does not bear a satisfactory kind of fruit, new branches can be grafted in. But what if it be the root that dies? Is there any way of grafting in a new root?

In Riverside, California, stand the two parent navel orange trees. If I have the information correctly, the entire navel orange industry on the Pacific coast began with the successful propagation of that kind of orange from these two trees.

One of them stands on Magnolia avenue, and the other was transplanted by President Theodore Roosevelt, and stands in front of the Mission Inn.

Both these trees are very old and manifestly dying. But they are trying the experiment of creating a new root for one of them. If that succeeds, I presume they will do the same for the other.

They take a vigorous young tree, cut off its top, plant it as close to the old tree as possible and at an angle, and graft the top into the side of the old tree a little above the root.

They have grafted in several such young roots, and they appear to be growing and to be saving the life of the old tree.

Such an undertaking lends itself to reflection. There are men who are dying at the top because they have not sufficient root. Why not dig down near the root, and put in a new one?

You can learn Greek at forty, or study Browning at fifty, or become an expert on psychoanalysis at sixty, or make yourself either a learned man or a fool at seventy.

Maybe you do not care for those particular studies — in that case there are others.

Why should not a man who lacked opportunities, in his youth for higher education, set about it in middle life, and pursue a course of good reading? Why not study astronomy, or botany, or literature?

Many men die a good many years before the undertaker carts them away. A man begins to die when he ceases to grow. Why not graft in a new root?

Ten Benefits of Literature Named by Brown in Talk

1922

"Literature — Why Study It," is Subject of English Lecture

"Literature is the textbook on human nature," said H. G. Brown, instructor in English, Tuesday afternoon at the Law building in his lecture on "Literature — Why Study It." Ten benefits which can be derived from reading literature were given. "Knowledge of human nature is acquired better through familiarity with the masterpieces than even real life," Brown declared. Brown, who explained that one can associate with a man for month without knowing him as well as you could know Macbeth or Hamlet in four hours. "Literature gives all the significant details of a man's life in complete sequence, while real life gives only glimpses."

"Literature is a cure for provincialism. With this as the medium we may travel and know the world from the Moab of Ruth to the Mississippi Valley of Tom Sawyer," said Mr. Brown. "We may travel back over great periods of time and know the common people of the fourteenth century through Chaucer's Prologue. We may travel up and down through unfamiliar society."

—The Capital Times, Madison, Wisconsin, July 27, 1922, page 8.