ORCHIDS THAT LOOK LIKE GIRLSPlucked from their stems and stood on the table, they are the daintiest little dancers imaginable—dancers in the latest fashionable costumes at that. Their skirts are long and concealing, tight over the slim hips and flaring widely at the bottom. The dancers stand poised, their arms thrown up and out, their heads covered with chic cloche of a rather theatrical pattern, such as one would expect show-girls to wear. One involuntarily waits for them to break their fragile repose at any moment and whirl into their dance.But they are orchids, just orchids. They come from ...

ELEPHANT’S JAWBONE SHOWS LIKENESS TO SCOOP SHOVELWhere the idea of the present-day scoop shovel came from is suggested in the illustration on the cover of this week’s Science News Letter. When President Henry Fairfield Osborn of the American Museum of Natural History received the weird lower jawbone of an ancient Asian elephant, he was struck by its shape and had it photographed with a scoop shovel of the same width.DIABETIC PATIENTS CAN EAT SUGAR IF FATS ARE ELIMINATEDDiabetic patients can safely be given sugar and starchy foods to eat, if fats are carefully eliminated from their diet.This me...

SEEING EYE TO EYE WITH A WHITE WASPThe medieval Japanese, who sometimes closed up the fronts of their helmets with ferocious metal masks painted with vivid war paint, knew the right psychology for hand-to-hand encounters. It is much more disconcerting to be confronted with an immobile, wholly artificial hobgoblin face than to see that your enemy’s countenance is like your own, no matter how much distorted by rage or bloodthirstiness.The faces of insects are masks. Because the whole arthropod phylum has evolved its skeleton outside its body, to be at once support and armor, insects are able to ...

HUGE GENERATORS YIELD BEAUTY TO PHOTOGRAPHERThrobbing electric generators, the machines that are the heart of the great system supplying light and power to more than 120 millions, are odd and beautiful subjects for the talented photographer. In the picture on the cover, Rittase of Philadelphia has caught the spirit of one of the largest hydroelectric generators.It is one of the seven 54,000-horsepower units of the Conowingo plant on the Susquehanna River in Maryland. This plant supplies a large share of the industrial load of the Philadelphia district and is designed so that its 378,000-horsep...

THE GIRL ON THE COVERHer name is Janet Penserosa. She is about four years old and her home is at the New York Zoological Park. And now she can claim the distinction of being the first female gorilla to survive in Gotham’s animal center. Not only that, but she is probably the only gorilla that has stayed out of doors during the day for an entire year in the North Temperate zone. Her attendant let her play in the snow, and she liked it.FLEAS ARE CONVICTED OF CARRYING TYPHUS GERMSFleas, long suspected of transmitting endemic typhus fever in the United States, have at last been convicted of the of...

ANOTHER TEMPLE TO THE WIND GODNear the little Indian village of Prairieville—the Mexican name is Calixtlahuaca—archaeologists have made a rare and unusual discovery.They have found one of those circular temples to the God of the Wind, seen by the soldiers of Cortez, but not one of which was ever afterward found on the Mexican mainland. The Aztec Wind God had his shrine atop a circular structure, so the musty old chronicles say, and the entrance to his lofty sanctuary was through a pair of horrible serpent’s jaws whose grotesque fangs were painted red or smeared with the blood of human sacrific...

TWO ARISTOCRATIC LADIES EMERGE FROM RETIREMENTThere is something about newly-emerged silkworm moths that makes one think of the ladies of Cathay or Cipangu, long ago and far away, clothed in silk spun by ancestors of today’s silk worms.In the cover picture of this week’s Science News Letter, Cornelia Clarke has made an admirable camera capture of that atmosphere, most palpable to the fingers of the eye, but not to be snared in words.DRYING LAKES AND SOIL EROSION DESTROYED MAYAN EMPIREBecause the face of the land in which they lived began to change insidiously, fatally, the Mayas of prehistoric...

THE TRUTH ABOUT DEATH VALLEYDeath Valley is a deep trough between two mountain ranges. It is something over 100 miles long and averages 10 miles wide. Within less than 100 miles of Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the United States proper, it sinks its lowest depression to 276 feet below sea level. This is official measurement; there may be lower spots in the valley still awaiting the surveyor’s telescopic eye.For ages it has been the catch-basin of desert streams and, it is claimed, was once the scene of geyser action that would have made even Yellowstone look tame; there is on its arid floor...

98-TON BUTTERFLY VALVE, A SIMPLE DEVICEA good place for a photographer to take a picture, this penstock will be serving an even better purpose when it begins to carry water through the dam to turn the huge turbines of the Ruskin power plant, British Columbia.The flow of water through this 19-foot-diameter intake pipe is controlled by the butterfly valve just behind the workman in the photograph. The entire valve weighs 98 tons and its moving disk, 47 tons. It is operated hydraulically by a rubber tube carrying water under pressure.UNIVERSE’S OUTPOSTS MAY BE FOREVER BEYOND REACH OF MAN“The larg...

AIR VIBRATIONS IN ORGAN PIPES REVEALED BY PATTERN IN SMOKEMaking smoke rings in organ pipes, to show up the little cyclones that whirl in them when obstacles are placed in the openings, is the curious mode of research adopted by a London physicist, Prof. E.N. da C. Andrade of University College. These little cyclones, or vortices, have important effects on the tones of the pipes. By photographing them in smoke, Prof. Andrade is able to check the accuracy of mathematically calculated theories never before tested.His smoke method is an improvement on the one previously in use, which was devised ...