From the July 15, 1933, issue

LIVELY YOUNG MARMOSETS SURVIVE IN CAPTIVITY

Two lively, chattering young marmosets are growing up in San Francisco without the slightest notion of what “rare specimens” they are. They have a very great distinction of surviving birth in captivity.

Naturalists say that this type of New World monkey is often born in captivity but usually the captive mother has a perverse way of immediately neglecting her young and the tiny creatures have almost never been known to live.

The young brothers who escaped this fate are the offspring of a pair of marmosets brought to San Francisco from Nicaragua. The youngsters are now 6 months old and are half grown. Their parents are about as big as squirrels.

Marmosets are among the most primitive forms of the monkey family. They differ from ordinary monkeys in having sharp claws instead of nails on their fingers. Their long tails are not made for the usual monkey-use of swinging and grasping.

DISEASE-RESISTANT BANANA PROMISES TO SAVE MILLIONS

Victory over the dreaded Panama disease which has cost banana growers millions of dollars in the last few years appears to be within measurable sight of achievement, according to experiments carried out by Prof. E.E. Cheesman, M.Sc., A.R.C.S., of the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture, Trinidad.

Prof. Cheesman believes he has created a fruit which is completely immune to Panama disease and at the present time samples are being sent out to growers for further and more complete tests. Known as 1.C.2, the new variety has been planted alongside trees severely stricken with Panama disease in the grounds of the agricultural college here, yet no sign of the disease has been found.

ELECTRICAL GAGE MEASURES SPRINGY RUBBER ARTICLES

Precise measurements of the dimensions of rubber slabs and cylinders are now possible by means of what might be termed a set of electrical gages developed by W.L. Holt of the National Bureau of Standards. It is obvious at once that the measurement of the thickness of a compressible substance like rubber would be rather inaccurate with the ordinary screw micrometer due to the difficulty of telling when the spindle and foot of the instrument just make contact with the surface of the material without pressing into it.

The new devices make use of the principle of the screw micrometer but substitute a “presser foot” with a spherical surface for the ordinary foot, which is plane. When the contact surface of this presser foot is forced down by the specimen of rubber due to the pressure of the spindle acting on the upper surface, it makes contact in an electrical circuit thus causing the needle of a galvanometer in front of the operator to deflect. The indentations in the rubber made by the presser foot are said to be practically zero so that no errors creep in from this cause.