THE FATHER BIRD HATCHES THE EGG

Conspicuous among recent birds that have had their private affairs dragged into the ornithological spotlight is a denizen of the reefs and shoals of the Pacific that has managed to hide his domestic life from impertinent scientific inquiry for nearly 150 years. This is the surf-bird of the West Coast, which has occasionally been seen wintering as far south as the Straits of Magellan. It is little wonder he was so secretive, for when Dr. Joseph Dixon of the University of California finally ran him to earth on the slopes of Mt. McKinley, the highest mountain on the continent, and about the last place on Earth where even a naturalist would expect to find the nest of a shore bird, he found that docile male meekly sitting on the eggs doing the lion's share of the incubating while friend wife spent her days in idle gossip with her emancipated female friends.

This rare bird is believed to have been first described by a member of one of Captain Cook's famous expeditions in Prince William Sound, Alaska, in 1789, the year of the adoption of the Constitution of the United States. Ever since that time, hunting for a surf-bird's nest has been a favorite occupation of several generations of naturalists. As the name implies, they are shore birds, usually seen searching for feed far out on the reefs where the long Pacific swells break over the rocks into fine spray. Twice a year in their annual migration, these little creatures traverse the Pacific coastline of two continents from the southern tip of South America to the northwestern corner of North America.

TOXIC SUGAR IS TUBERCULOSIS POISON

The world's first poisonous sugar has been discovered lurking within the tuberculosis germ. Although it is harmless to uninfected animals, it is death to those suffering from tuberculosis. Produced by the tubercle bacillus itself, it is probably the stuff that slowly poisons the victim of the white plague.

OZONE DUE TO PARTICLES

Two layers of ozone in the Earth's atmosphere, one due to ultraviolet light from the sun, the other due, perhaps, to particles or corpuscles shot at the Earth from sunspots, were described at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union. In telling of his studies, Dr. F.E. Fowle of the Smithsonian Institution said that one of these layers of ozone, which is a form of oxygen, shows an annual period of change, depending on the position of the Earth in its orbit. Probably, he thinks, it is due to ultraviolet light.

Unlike this layer, the second layer of ozone shows a close relationship to sunspots. When the sunspots are at their minimum number, it will probably be absent entirely, though the observations have not continued long enough to ascertain this. Dr. Fowle suggested that some emission of minute corpuscles from the sunspots might account for this layer.

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