The Sunday Oregonian., March 15, 1908, Magazine Section, Page 9, Image 55

THE SIAUAI OKfcUUMAA, I'ORTLAXD. 3IAKCH 15, 190S.
9
' N fS : 1 : . " R K U .
oome Gold
BY JIM XASIUM.
When a fallow die, his friends come In
To the darkened hou that day,
Anl with weeping hearts they speak of him
In the kindest sort of way.
And never a one but has a loving word.
That's been bottled for many a year.
'T 'would have pleased the man when he
could have heard.
But th corpse it cannot hear.
Then they bring; In flowers rich and rare,
And filled with sweet perfume.
And wreaths of roses everywhere
Make a-lad the darkened room.
1'erIiM.ps his life n sorrow hid
Would have filled, with Joy if he
Could have owned, those, wreaths on his
coffln-Hd,
But the corpse It cannot see.
Then here's a tip for neighbors, dear.
Who would praise me Rone, no doubt;
If yu have Joys to see and hear.
Why don't you trot 'em out ?
All the post-mortem carryings on
Am proppr-likft and nice.
But with the one that's dead and gone
They never cut any Ice.
YOU have probably noticed this to
some extent. It seems to be a
common practice in this old dump
of a world to bottle up the kind and lov
ing words and keep the bouquets to chuck
hi a man after he is dead. Attending fu
nerals isn't exactly my favorite means of
deriving recreation and amusement, but I
have been at a few in my time, and I
have usually picked up a few crumbs of
food for thought during the post-mortem
love feast.
I'erhaps on thest sad occasions I am
never btwy enough with my own tear
ducts, and fail to concentrate my power
ful mind sufficiently on the subject be
fore tlte house; perhaps 1 give too much
a Item ion to the. audience and not enough
to the poor fellow who has been compelled
to fold his icy limbs and cross the River
Jordon in order to get away from the
knockers and bring out a few kind ex
prefsious of regard concerning him. I'll
i-niifoss I've never been very long at the
prijf Job, at any rate it never keps me
too busy to dally with the thought flint
if these weepinfi friends had turned louse
s:niH of these nice things and carted in
tlelr bouquets while the poor fellow was
pugging along through the cruel world
11 would have done him a blamed sight
nore good.
I am not speaking from my own expe
rience, as I have never died, and hence
ii y own funeral has not yet been pulled
iff. But when it does come off I know
Solving Perplexing Problem of Aerial Flight
Wrlglit Bros. Want $1,000,000 for Tliclr Secret Details ofxTlieir Device as Gleaned Prom Interviews.
THE problem of flight through the
human brings. In France. Henri
air germs to bo noarlnp solution by
I't'rnmn, a few weeks ago, marie a suc
rrsaful flight of a circular kilometer,
with a 'heavicr-than-alr" machine. But
his exploit, it seems evident from recent
niiigaino accounts. Is far surpassed by
the flights of the American brothers
Wright, with a machine the simplicity of
whose operations lias made it necessary
to conduct all trials with extreme secrecy,
to prevent the design from becoming
known before it has been marketed;
whlrh may not occur for some time, ow
lnr to the fHct that the Inventors have
Placed the price of their patent at $1,000.
ii. and demand great concessions In ad
dition. The result is that information
ahout the exact working plans Is meager.
However, pictures have been drawn frqm
a model of the machine which lias been
patented in England. In addition to this,
t'arl Pienstbach, the-American represen
tative of the Berlin Aeronautical Asso
ciation, in The American Aeronaut, re
constructs the Wright -Flyer" from a
arefully-gleaned collection of the testi
mony of eye-witnesses, and in McClure's
Magazine the brothers themselves tell
their story through the pen of George
Kibne Turner.
"It Is Impossible, under these circum
stances, for us to discuss the exact se
crets of control and management which
are our only asset In our machine. We
have not even drawn working plans of
"iir machine, for fear they might fall
Into other hands. But there are general
principles of operating our aeroplane of
which we make no secret.
"It has been a common aim of experi
menters with the aeroplane to solve the
problem of equilibrium by some auto
matic system of balancing. We believe
thai the control should be left in the pos
session of the operator. The sense of
equilibrium is very delicate and certain.
If you lie upon a bed three-quarters of
an Inch out of true, you know it at once.
And this sense of equilibrium Is just as
reliable a mile above the earth as it is
upon It. The management of our aero
plane, like that of the bicycle. Is based
upon the sense of equilibrium of the op
erator. The apparatus for preserving the
balance of the machine consists of levers
operated by simple, uniform movements,
which readjust the flying surfaces of the
machine to the air. The movement of
these levers very soon becomes auto
malic with the aviator, as does the bal
ancing of a bicycle-rider. In fa-t. the
aeroplane Is easier to learn and simpler
to operate than the bicycle. In all our
experiments with gliding and flying ma
chines we have not even sprained a limb;
we have scarcely scratched our flesh.
"The only danger in our aeroplane is
of turning over. We have purposely
made our machine many times heavier
than necessary, so that it cannot break.
There is absolutely no danger as might
appear at first thought from the stop
ping of the engine. The aeroplane Is
supported by its motion through the air.
it is true; but. however high it is flying,
gravity furnishes it all the potential en
ergy it needs to get safely to the ground.
lien the power is shut off. it merely
scales through the air to its landing.
Theoretically. It is safer at a mile above
the earth than at 200 feet, because it has
a ider choice of places in which to land :
you can choose your landing from 256
suuare miles from a mile above the sur
face in descending 1 in 1. As a matter
of fact, we always shut off the power
when we start to alight, and eolne down
hv the force of gravity."
Mr. Pienstbach gives a more detailed
.-iccount of the perfected device as it ap
pears to him;
"The Wright Flyer consists, principal
ly, of two superposed surfaces 40 feet
from tip to tip. and li feet from front to
rear, the lop surface being 6 feet above
tlte lower one. and the total area 510
square feet. The wing-tips are about 10
Inches lower than the center of the sur
faces. The framework js made of a very
high-grade spruce, braced by steel wires
and covered with canvas. In which most
of ttie framing is embedded, the exposed
parts being especially sharpened and the
irad resistance kept low. The trussing
is flexible, making it possible to twist
Pickle r acts
exactly what is going to happcri. I have
the whole programme made out and the
advance sheets printed ready for distri
bution, so that there will be a unison of
efTort and everything will go oft smoothly
and nothing happen contrary to the es
tablished custom. I know that a lot of
pikers who are at present standing idly
by while my sensitive soul is starving
itself in a desert land where kind words
and flowers bloom not. are going to send
around bouqueta and pillows of forget-me-nots
and lilies of the valley, and that they
will say a lot of beautiful things about me
and inake my family feel bad by telling
them how much they have lost. I know
this, because they always do it. The cus
tom has been established too long to be
set aside for even as great a man and as
grand a character as I.
But I want to hereby advertise to the
world that if my wishes in the matter
are to be consulted I would a blamed
Bight rather have & funeral without a
eu'.ogy or even so much as a little bug
eaten rosebud, than a life without a kind
word or an expression of appreciation.
If I am pulling off anything worthy of
comment as I plug along through life, I
don't want them to save up their com
ments till the grim reaper has got in his
work. I want them to spit 'em out now
when they will do me some good, or keep
their mouths shut when it is too late.
If I have any floral wreaths or bunches
of mignonette or bouquets of sweet, lov
ing words coming to me, I'd like to use
them as I go aldng.
It's the one best bet that I'm not alone
in that feeling, either. You won't find
many In this world who prefer their bou
quets and applause served up with thetr
insurance money. It makes them feel
better'and benefits the world a lot more
If they get them while they have an op
portunity to pull off an encore or two.
My own personal opinion is that the
world would be a lot better place to live
in and conditions wouldn't present such
a violent contrast to those which exist
around the loafing places "on the golden
streets of the New Jerusalem, if people
formed the habit of using the information
which they hand to the minister for use
in the funeral sermon, and which they
eend to the .papers -to print in the obitu
ary, to hand around before the subject
under discussion has grabbed a harp and
elimbed the golden stairs. I have no
hesitation in saying that If a lot more of
the language that floats around flower
draped rooms at funeral sermons wore
used up in referring to living beings.
the whole frame, to some extent, in such
a way as to impart to the left tip a
negative, and to the right tip a positive,
angle of incidence to the path of flight,
or vice versa the whole surface assum
ing then somewhat the shape of a screw
propeller of very low pitch. This action
is under the control of the operator by
means of cords and pulleys. The cords
run back to a vertical, movable rudder
in the rear, which is made to move en
rapport with the twisting.
'Right here Is found one of the strong
A Perpele Vlrw of the Wrlffht Aeroplane) 1 and Wines; 3 Vp
rlKtat Standardm 4, Stay Wire on I'ullryat 5. Konrard Rudder; . In
clined Strata i 7. 8 and . Steering Mechanism; 10 Vertical Hear Rudder
or Tall; 11, I'radle for Hips.
points of the wYlghts' invention: dealing
with the disturbances collectively. If the
machine is struck by a side gust, the
rear rudder first tends to swing it around
sufficiently to decrease the disturbing ef
fect, whereas, if immovable, it would at
once make things worse by causing the
machine to continue ' spinning around,
through excess of the momentum initially
acquired. Whichever way the rudder
moves, the side regulation, by the afore
said twisting, acts upon it in a manner
that decreases the initial effect and neu
tralizes the subsequent one- The method
appears rather 'rough and ready. and was
later refined, but shows, from the begin
ning, a characteristic degree of efficiency.
"But to return to the machine's de
scription: Kight or nine feet in front of
the lower surface is the horizontal front
rudder, larger and more powerful than
that on the gliding-machines and more
sensitive to the slightest motion of the
controlling lever. This rudder has an
area of about 30 square feel, while the
vertical rear rudder is about VI feet
square and placed not quite 6 feet be
hind the main surfaces, making the total
fore-and-aft dimensions of the 'Flyer
about 20 feet.
'The main element in changing the ap
pearance of the 'Flyer from that of
the glider was the propellers. There are
two of them (not shown in our pictures,
which portray the gliding mechanism",
close to but not directly behind the rear
surface; each has two very narrow, sharp
blades of slightly increasing pitch, form
ing of each blade a sort of especially ef
ficient aerocurve the propellers being fig
ured, in fact, on the theory of the aero
plane: with less than To per cent effl
ciencv of the screws no flight would
have been possible with the available
power."
In closing their interview with Mr. Tur
ner the inventors say:
"We know that we have made the aero
plane a practical machine, but we are
not over-sanguine about its revolutioniz
ing the transportation of the future. It
will scarcely displace the railroad or the
steamboat: necessarily. Its expenditure of
fuel will be. too great. In a steamship it
is calculated that the heat from the
burning of a sheet of letter-paper will
carry a ton a mile: you could scarcely
expect such results In an airship. The
airship, so far as we can see at present,
will have its chief value for warfare, and
for reaching inaccessible places for such
uses as expeditions into the Klondike, or
to Peking during its siege a few years
ago. The value of an airship, moving
faster than a railroad train, for recon
noitertng or dropping explosives upon an
rnemv in time of war. is now obvious to
the entire civilized world. The aeroplane
mav also be of great value in the near
future for service like the carrying of
mail. When properly developed it will
m Quicker than any means of locomotion
there Wouldn't have to be so much of it
used on dead ones. And I really believe
there would be fewer dead ones to use
it on. One little rosebud or one kind
word to the living is worth a dozen
wreaths and eulogies to the dead.
Sentiment is -the grandest thing that was
IlLL-m-HR- Wffl- COfiJmjLATIONS-JfflD-mK-OLD-Sn0K6-lFTEBjY0U-F0R-(i00D-L'DK.v
ever invented, but practical sentiment Is
the kind that counts. If your wife is such
a blamed good woman as you will prob-
now in use for' direct journeys between
two places unless against hurricanes.
There will be no switches, no stops what
ever: and the journey can be made In an
air-line."
Odd Animals in Harness.
Jondon Answers..
The horse -must look to his laurels, as
a number of odd competitors for his place
as the friend of man are springing up.
At Anuiieim. a .German settlement in
Southern California, ostriches have been
trained to draw light four-wheeled traps.
One of these birds so harnessed has trav
eled a mile in 3 minutes, or at a rate
of 20 miles an hour. "
The African zebra was formerly re
garded as being too wild and vicioua to
be of use in harness. But time has
changed this, and now in British East
Africa any number of zebras can be pur
chased ready trained to bit and bridle.
The zebra will be found most useful in
Africa and India, as it is exceedingly
strong, a faM trotter and immune from
many diseases which attack horses.
Perhaps the oddest animal in harness is
the wild boar, which is driven by a
French peasant at Montlucon. It is now
3 years old and able to draw a small two
wheeled cart. As a bit is of no use the
i
4-
-- .
IHF, (Kll(lli,AK I
ably tell rfce minister she was after she is
gone, why In thunder don't you tell her
all about it now? It may go a long way
toward preventing the necessity of your
telling the minister anything at all. If
her pancakes and flapjacks are "good, and
if she spikes the patches on the quarter
deck of your office trousers in an artistic
style. and keeps the kids from acquiring
green mould, tell her about it as you go
reins are attached to the animal's eye
teeth.
SPRING: vX IRREPRESSIBLE POEM.
By A. B. Childers.
The coming of Spring? . It is here, by jing!
- The winds and the ong- birds show it;
And deep in my soul hath- the poet-fire
stole
Though few of ray friends seem to
know it.
My wifoi poor thing, will strong epithets
' flins. -' ... - -;
Says I'd better cut wood for -the kitchen,
Or be palling the cow or chasing tUe plow,.
Or out in the meadows be ditch i a'.
She says if I'd work and not try to shirk
The duties that come to each human.
That at some distant day my debts I could
pay
- Now. isn't tnat just like a woman?
Deep down in her heart she knows I am
smart.
But she tries her best not to show it;
She sits on my muse in a way to confuse.
And to blight all the dreams of a poet.
But sometime, I wean, when these lines are
seen
On the page of some Sunday paper.
She will have to admit her hubby is it.
And then she will cut a wild caper
Jump high in the air, or stand on a chair.
Or do some such fool thing as that;
Or stand by my side, as she did when a
bride,
And give my old bald head a pat.
Ah. sweet is the gleam I catch in my
dream.
Of a scroll, and within it a name.
By the world to be read long after I'm
dead,
On the perishless tablets of fame.
This is why I can sing- of the coming of
Spring,
Of its dewdrops and daisies and leaves;
The balmy days long, all fit in my song
Like the straws in a bundle of sheaves.
Tou can't crush desire. The deep-hidden
fire
Lives for aye in the soul of the poet;
And strive as he may. there cometh a day
When he'll bust if the world doesn't
knotr it.
Willie Small's Ambition.
By Sadie Pell.
'W hen I grow up." said Willie Small,
-I think I'll join the band.
And toot the biggest horn of alt
And look so fine and grand; .
Because nobody then can say
(The way folks say to-boys
"Who mce a racket when they play),
'You'll have to make less noise.' "
res,
CL
' St...-"1
SUIHSSKU. l-I.KillT.
along and don't save the information for
the obituary. There's a lot of nice senti
ment going to waste on the grave stones
up in the cemetery that might have done
a lot of good if the ones who are sleeping
their last sleep underneath could have
got hold of it while they lived.
That's the way I feel about it anyway.
It has always seemed to me that there
are too blamed many flowers and too
much good will and loving language used
up at weddings and - funerals and not
enough scattered in between.
At your wedding, a gang of your friends
get together and fill the air with congrat
ulations and fire old shoes after you -for
good luck After that if they chuck any.
old shoes at you there is always a foot
inside of it. and it is aimed t a section
of "your anatomy that renders it hard, for
you to accept it as a. token of good luck.
Perhaps I had grown cynical from inti
mate association with the editorial writer
and the Spring poet, but I recall when I
stood up before the altar and promised
to protect and feed the little woman who
is now decorating-my socks with large
and uncomfortable darnings which bring
excruciating pain to my pet corns, and
went down into my jeans for my last
simolean to hand over to the minister, as
I stood there dead broke but happy with
the future stretching a yawning abyss at
my feet and. the young bride I had basely
deceived with glowing tales of wealth and
bright prospects hanging onto my wing,
whenthe friends gathered around to wish
xls all kinds of success and hand us the
jolly I recall how the thought kept filter
ing through my mind that if some of these
people would refrain from slopping over
quite "so much on this particular occasion
and would save some of these lovely
things to splatter along our future pathway-
of life and kind of give us a boost
as we plugged along the trail, it would be
much rrfore to the point and do us a
blamed sight more good.
As I sit here today running my fingers
through the rapidly disappearing fohage
on my classic dome and grinding out the
glitterfng gems of thought . which the
world has come to expect from my gifted
pen. how pleasant and stimulating and up
lifting it would be to have some of these
people drift into the office with their bouquets-
of forget-me-nots and a little pres
ent of a silver set or a suit of parlor fur
niture or something that I could pawn,
and fill my gloomy little office with kind
words and well wishes for the future.
How encouraging and intoxicating it
would be to have the boss come in with a
bunch of fragrant blossoms for my dingy
little desk and a bedroom suit for my
squalid little home, and to have him slap
me on the back and wish me all kinds of
success. He did it when I was married,
why not now?
But no. Ail this would not be according
to the established precedent. The only
Incidents in thfe Life History
One of the Greatest of Globe Trotters; How His Immense
THE gift recently received at Yale
from the British Museum of skulls
of the moeritherium and palaeomas
todon, forefathers of the modern elephant,
has brought out in the American Jour
nal of Science a life history of the ele
phant, by Professor Richard S. Lull,
Yale's paleontologist. Dr. Lull traced the
history of the elephant from the little
tapirlike creatures that stood less than
three feet and a half high up to the
present day Jumbos, illustrating each step
In the development with caste, and restor
ations, of which Yale now has a com
plete collection.
Those who happened to meet the
moeritherium or the palacomastodon a
few million years ago would when they
wandered through Kgypt would fall to
see any resemblance between, them and
the present-day elephant. In tracing- the
elephantine tree Dr. Lull describes some
very queer relatives. Explorations have
recently brought to light evidence that
the Florida manatee is a near relative,
first cousin perhaps to the elephant. To
the uninitiated nothing could be more
unlike the elephant and the fish-like man-
witee with broad swimming tail, front legs
all. .
Another realtive, which anatomists have
already recognized as having certain sim
ilarities of structure with the elephant,
is the conies, little furry, rabbit-like ani
mals not more than 18 inches in length,
with short ears, tailless and with hoof
like nails instead of claws. They are
confined to Africa, the early home of the
elephant.
While the earliest forms of the elephant
family have been unearthed nowhere'
except in Egypt, and there only within
the last four or five years, .skeletons of
later members of the family have been
discovered in so many parts of the world
that the scientists are agreed that next
to man the elephant has been the greatest
traveler of the animal kingdom. This
may have been due, so one of the Yale
professors says, to the elephant's having
carried for centuries his trunk with him.
The early African elephants ' formerly
ranged from the Cape of Good Hope to
Spain, The moeritherium and the palaco
mastodon are not known to have left
Africa, but the tetrabelodon augustidens,
the animal representing the third re
corded stage in devolpment of the ele
phant, was the first member of the fam
ily to start on an exploring tour of
Europe.
These creatures made their exodus from
Africa not by way of the northeast, but
by the land'bridge connecting Tunis with
Sicily and the latter with Italy and thence
by way of "Greece to Europe and Asia.
Once in Asia the globe trotting instinct
apparently was strong in that branch of
the family, for the migration of this race
continued across - Siberia and the Bering
Isthmus to the New World.
The remains of the American species
have been found from Alaska to Cali
fornia, east to Prince Edward's Island
and from Hudson Bay to Florida. As
far as the paleontologists have been able
to judge these early elephants were con
tent to roam about North America until
a good dry walking place was provided
by which to reach the Southern hemis
phere via Central America.
"Two South American species are
known," says Professor Lull, "one fol
lowing the Chain of the Andes as far
south as Chile. This type Is often found
at great altitudes, a specimen from the
Quito Valley in Ecuador now in the Yale
collection, having been found 10.0UO feet
above the level of the sea.
"The African species has a vertical dis
tribution from sea level to a height of
13.O0O feet In the Kilimanjaro region.
Mountain ranges on the whole do not
impede elephant migration, except such
mightly uplifts as the Himalayas.
"Hannibal took a number of African
elephants across the little St. Bernard
Pass, which has an altitude of 7176 feet.
In. his Invasion of Italy in 218 B. C. The
great ranges of mountains in the New
World may have influenced somewhat
the trend of migration but they were
crossed at will." '
The most noticeable physical changes
in the development of the elephants, aside
from the great Increase in size are the
development of the incisor teeth of the
thing I get now is the hook. I remember
several distinct occasions when the donors
of these wedding presents have skinned
me out of the price of them twice over.
They have now fully -enough surplus cash
The wa?T)
' 5UCH a
" STRAND S
l CHARACTETf
MN6-Jffi0UND-B0QUET6-AND-
PILLOWS- OF- FORGET-HE-N(jr&-
AND-&AY-A-LOT-
OF-BEAUTIFUL- THINGS
A1jOUT-.uk-
of mine over and above their expenditures
to purchase a beautiful floral offering
for my funeral. They will aH be on the
forefathers into the tusks of the present
day elephants and the' elongation of the
combined nose and upper lip Into a trunk.
The early species. Dr. Lull explains,
probably fed on succulent vegetation, and
the neck of these animals was of suf
ficient length to enable them to reach
the ground. There was scarcely a sug
gestion of . the trunk and tusks 'of the
present-day specimens.
As the development is traced from
JSUCHA 2
JKOBLL
it JmL
Evolutionary CuanKes of Elephants
GoingTwo Miles a Minute
THERE is a widespread belief, says a
writer in Town and Country, that an
ice yacht can be made to jump clean over
huge cracks in the ice, rising to the leap
like a huge greyhound and gauging the
distance exactly. As a matter of fact,
the pressure of the wind on the sails is
constantly tending to overturn the boat
and the instant the leeward runner leaves
the supporting ice it is sure to drop into
the water with startling suddenness.
The windward runner might rise into
.the air at the same instant, but only be
cause the whole boat would turn with the
backbone as an axis as soon as the lee
runner left the ice. Given a wide crack
or even an expanse of thin Ice and th3
ice yachtsman attempting to do any
fancy jumping is sure to get into trouble.
If the crack 4s wide enough the boat
may shove her bow under the ice on the
far side instead of landing on top. The
writer knows, because he has had this
very thing happen and had to crawl out
on the boom to escape 'drowning.
Watching the sailing of an ice yacht
for the first time is likely to furnish sur
prises for the sailor whose experience
has all been on melted ice. For instance,
the main sheet is never eased; the yacht
always funs close hauled, regardless of
the direction of the wind.
In running before the wind a zigzag
course is taken, the1 boat tacking so as
to keep the wind always on one quarter
or the other. In this way the yacht can
get from one point to another much
quicker than by running a straight course
with the wind, though the distance cov
ered is actually a good deal greater. An
Ice yacht handles very differently from
a water yacht, for the sharp runners
grip the ice firmly, and the slightost
movement of the helm is instantly fol
lowed by a corresponding movement of
the boat; at high speeds a very slight
job again on- that occasion, you can bet
your life on that. The thought of thU
makes me feel gloomy and sad. which is
naturally somewhat of a handicap to a
young man from whom the world expects
so much.
Now, I am not a pessimist, as on
might suspect -from reading some of my
gifted lines, but I believe in "turning on
the light no matter what it reveals." Mr.
Roosevelt copied that idea from me. 1
don't want to take any. credit away from
Roosevelt, because he is certainly a great
man.but when it comes to "turning on
the light," I've got him faded, as the pub.
lie recognizes the fact that I am abso
lutely non-partisan In my views. Mr.
Roosevelt and I are both great men. hut
I have succeeded in keeping It a profound
secret better than he has.
As I said before, I am not a pessi
mist. Not by a long shot. I'm dead
on to the fact that the optimist ban
a lot of fun. as he plugs along through
life, that never costs him a cent. And
I also firmly believe that 90 per cent
of the trouble in this world never hap
pens, and that's the share of the pessi
mist. Hut it is up to the brainy men
of the world, we intellectual giants
with the gift of discernment, whatever
that 4sr to erect the signposts along:
the pathway of life so that the public
will not grope along the trail in total
ignorance of what is before them.
It is all well enough to- gather roses
and take no thought of the thorns but
after a thorn . or two hns etcawied so
fnr under your thumb nail that it pro
trudes at the elbow joint, it requires
considerable faith to keep from think
ing1 about it. The experience Is mighty
apt to make you fight shy of the roses,
too. .
It is only a proof of the eternal fit
ness of things that it is given to the
present age to have a gifted writer like
myself to point out the deception that
lies in some of these old maxims of
past ages. And I say lies advisedly, too.
Because some of them certainly do lie
worse than a show bill. They may
have been all right away back In the
mellow past, when you could go out
and club your breakfast off the trees,
but they arc mere relics of a past ap;
In latterday life, and should be treated
as such.
Some of these days, when I have more
space and the managing editor has
gone away on his vacation, I ayi going;
to show up some of these literary mas
ters of the past. The managing edi
tor's absence will give me a chance to
cut loose in my chaste and cheerful
style and make use of the wonderful
descriptive powers and versatile pro
fanity which his jealousy of my in
creasing fame and renown does not
permit to reach others' eyes than his
own.
of the Elephant
Trunk AVas Developed.
period to period in geological history the
trunk and. tusks become longer and the
neck becomes shorter, the head thereby
receding. As the head,' with the increase
in size of the trunk and tusks, became
heavier and heavier, and was lifted from
the ground further and further, the neck
muscles of necessity increased in size and
strength, . thus preventing the head from
dropping off by sheer overweight.
In tlio matter of teeth the elephant, in
his development through thousands of
years, instead of holding on to his normal
set of St teeth, with which it is believed
that he started life, has apparently lost
all but six.' Dr. Lull holds that he raises
his teeth on the instalment plan.
"There are. all told, six grinders in
each half of the jaw."- he says, "the
first appearing at the age of 2 weeks and
being shed at the age of 2 years. The
second is shed at the age of 6 the third
at 9. the fourth from 20 to. 26, the fifth
at 60, while the sixth lasts for the re
mainder of the creature's life, up to the
age of from 100 to 120 years."
Dr. Lull does not give the elephant
credit for expanding intellectually in pro
portion to its physical development. He
say 8:
"This change in the form of the skull,
while it gives to the physiognomy of the
animal that dignified Intellectual look,
does not imply a similar development of
the brain, for the brain case has increased
but little. The intelligence of the ele
phant has been exaggerated by some
writers and greatly minimized by others.
"Elephants possess a remarkable mem
ory of injuries, real or fancied; of mis
fortunes and of the time and place of
the ripening of favorite fruits. They also
learn to perforin complex labors, as the
carrying and piling of logs in the teak
veards in India without other directions
'than the initial order. They are said to
be weather wise and to be able to fore
tell rain some days in advance.
"There is a possible parallelism between
human mental development and that of
the elephant. One of the most potent
factors in the evolution of man's mind
is his ability to handle various objects
and thus bring them before the face for
examination. This is also found in the
elephant, although to a ICS's extent, and
undoubtedly has aided materially in its
mental development as well."
movement of the tiller changes the course
very quickly.
The up-to-date racing Ice yacht is, in
Its broad principles, the essence of sim
plicity. Two wooden members form a
cross and are held in position by wtcel
wire rope stays; three" ruimera at three
extremities of the cross, one swivelling
for steering, and a lateen or a jib and
main sail of the simplest type, constitute
the craft.
Actually, however, the construction Is
a delicate and complex matter. Some
of the timbers arc cut from certain parts
of the log to produce just the proper
curve. The balancing of the whole craft
the position of the sail plan with refer
ence to the runners must be carefully
worked out. The materials used through
out, and especially the uteel rigging. mft
be of the strongest, for the stresses to
which they are subjected are enormous.
The latest models are expensive, and
they look it. Woodwork is handsomely
finished by varnishing and even polishing:
fittings are nickel-platod, and sails arc
made bv saiimakers whose names on bills
stand for high prices. Kverything is oC
the best, and everything should be or th
best, for the boat is called upon to stand
the pace, which may be as great as a
mile in 30 seconds.
The Queer Querit.
What is the gprm of a German band?
What camcft th rook to caw?
Can n meadow lark about on the land?
Who knows what the cross cut saw?
Does a window ever ffH a pane
At tnn siffht of a hard mill ra-?
While the ksh balls out with misht and
main.
And the boot tonsue wags apace.
Who do- the tree bousrh down to, pray?
Ts drilHnr an awful bore?
Can you mend with glue the break of day?
loes a railway slceoer unore ?
la cloth sold cheap at a cutter's sail
Can you drive a starboard tack?
Are bucket cbop keeper always pale?
Can you call a p:-t boot Jack?
iennv Magazine.
J